From Gifford to Grammys: How R&B singer Muni Long is making Hollywood dreams come true

Delusions can make dreams come true — at least, that’s true for Muni Long.

From shooting sand-filled soda cans on her grandparents' farm in Wabasso to beating Beyoncé and Mary J. Blige to win her first Grammy this year, she has paved the way for herself throughout her 15-year career.

The 34-year-old singer-songwriter — who now lives in Los Angeles, California, and goes by "money long" instead of Priscilla Renea Hamilton — is cementing herself as a force to be reckoned with in the music industry as she makes the grandiose dreams she had as a tween come true.

Awards: Muni Long of Gifford nabs iHeartRadio Music Award one month after Grammy win

Grammys: Muni Long wrote lyrics for Ariana Grande, Pitbull, Fifth Harmony. She beat Beyoncé, Mary J. Blige

Movies: Amazon Prime features 'Balloon Animal' by Vero Beach High grad with ties to Riverside theater

Her journey has been formative, teaching her about herself and the challenges of the music industry.

"One of the things that I had to work on is just getting it out of (my) head that people are going to help you," she told TCPalm. "You have to help yourself. This is really something that I try to remind myself very frequently. I get frustrated sometimes because I'm trying to get my vision across and then I remember — just go do it."

Muni Long went viral on YouTube, signed with Capitol Records

She has the internet to thank for jump-starting her career. In the early days of YouTube, she uploaded a video of herself rapping different words from the dictionary to the tune of “Fergalicious” by Fergie in 2007.

With over 1.2 million views, the video brought her first stroke of fame, then her first contract with Capitol Records, where she released her debut album "Jukebox" in 2009. She took a break from the spotlight and stepped back to be a songwriter, penning some of the biggest hits of the 2010s for artists such as Pitbull, Rihanna and Selena Gomez.

However, 2018 changed everything. She pulled back the layers on Renea and introduced the world to Muni Long, shaping her identity as a performer and starting her own record label, Supergiant Records. In 2021, she released her first two albums — "Nobody Knows" and "P.D.A." — before signing to Def Jam Recordings in March 2022.

She went viral again after her single "Hrs & Hrs" dominated TikTok users' ForYou page, bringing new listeners into her sultry and soulful world. "Hrs & Hrs" received multiple nominations, but the song almost did not make it to the album. It was a last-minute addition she wrote one night while washing dishes, she said.

"It just exploded, and other artists started trying to make songs that sounded like it," she said. "I did not think that it was going to have as big of an impact as it did."

From Gifford, Florida, to Hollywood, California

When she moved to Hollywood, she didn't tell her family about the tough times she had trying to make it as an artist. While stretching meals of Ramen noodles and chicken breast for breakfast, lunch and dinner, she quietly waited for her success to come.

“You don't want to let them know that you're struggling," she said. "So there is this huge gap (that) they have no clue what I was going through and what I had to do, to just stay out here and keep trying."

Now she's on a roll, having won various awards, including:

• 2022 Soul Train Awards: Ashford & Simpson Songwriter’s Award

• 2023 Grammys: Best R&B Performance

• iHeartRadio Music Awards: Best New R&B Artist

Writing and performing for herself now, she is no different than the young girl who ran around her grandparents' farm eating guavas off the tree and watched MTV and its Total Request Live.

"Muni Long is the 10-, 12-year-old girl watching the TRL video countdown, wishing that I could be in the video with LFO, Aaliyah and Britney Spears," she said. "I'm that girl still today, wanting to do larger-than-life things."

Who is Muni Long of Supergiant Records?

While the world knows her as Muni Long, she’s Priscilla Renea, or simply just P back home.

Growing up in Gifford, she kept to herself, but her talents were never something she was sheepish about. She was always singing at home, at funerals, at the Riverside Children's Theatre and musical productions at Vero Beach High School, where she graduated in 2006.

From a young age, her stardom was never a question for anybody in her life.

"She had a vision and the Lord gave her a gift and it must manifest on Earth," said longtime friend Robert Brant.

Brant remembers their high school production of "Funny Girl," when she surprisingly beat out another girl for the lead role of Fanny Brice. He knew then she could accomplish anything she set her mind on.

She worked odd jobs to make ends meet, but the work wasn't fulfilling, she said.

"Before it was what it is now, you are planning to assimilate into the workforce and provide for yourself so that you can eat, and that was just never my plan," she said. "I'm just doing this until I leave and go be on stage. I don't know, it was just always in the back of my mind, that it never occurred to me that I would actually have to get a job."

Despite being shy, she works hard to stay current in the industry.

"Unless you can create your own lightning, it's really hard to stay," she said. "If you're consistent, it's not really that hard because there's only a handful of people who are delusional enough to think, 'I can do this for the rest of my life.' "

Gianna Montesano is TCPalm's underserved communities reporter. You can contact her at gianna.montesano@tcpalm.com, 772-409-1429 or follow her on Twitter @gmontesano13.

This article originally appeared on Treasure Coast Newspapers: Grammy winner Muni Long making R&B dreams come true in Hollywood