Did you know that Muni Long wrote these bangers?
Muni Long attends the 67th Annual GRAMMY Awards on February 02, 2025 in Los Angeles, California.
Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images
While everyone may know Muni Long as the Grammy-award winning R&B star, she actually got her start in the music industry as a prominent songwriter.
As told in a sprawling interview with Billboard, the singer known as Priscilla Renea struggled to get her solo career off the ground when she started in 2009. She dropped her Jukebox debut that didn’t chart at all, and before returning to her own music for a second album in 2018, dipped heavily into her songwriting bag. While she’d eventually rebrand herself as Muni Long and strike gold with her swooning love song “Hrs and Hrs” in 2021, Grammy-winning executive producer Christopher “Tricky” Stewart described her as “a professional song assassin” during her time penning other people’s tracks.
“I started writing songs to make money because I bought into the [idea of] ‘Well, if you write enough hits, then you can be an artist,’ ” Muni Long told Billboard. “I gave it my all… I did so much free work, got stolen from and taken advantage of so many times, so many bad deals. I’d also been the only Black person in the room writing all these pop songs for years. So I quit to focus on me… keeping these songs for myself.”
It turns out, describing her as a writing “assassin” was putting it mildly. The truth is Muni Long is responsible for some seriously massive chart hits — one of which she admitted she wrote in a mere 10 minutes. From songwriting credits with Rihanna to Chris Brown to Pitbull, here are a few of the songs you may not have known were written by the great Priscilla Renea.
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Rihanna, “California King Bed” (2010)
In 10 minutes, Muni Long crafted Rihanna’s sultry 2010 hit “California King Bed.” In an interview with Complex, the R&B singer said she was shopping for furniture to plan for a move to Los Angeles when she said she was forced to show what progress she was making on the song — which ultimately ended up spending 10 weeks on the Billboard Hot 100.
“I was in Miami at the time for ‘California King Bed,’ working out of We the Best studio, and I was actually working with Jermaine [Jackson] from The Runners,” she said. “They had the chords and everything. I listened, I went back into the room, and they gave me the file. At the time I was planning to move to L.A. I was actually online looking for furniture when Maine comes in the room, and he’s like, ‘What you got?’ I didn’t have anything, because I had been messing around, and I looked at my computer. I was like, ‘Oh, I got a title.’ I said ‘California King Bed,’ and he said, ‘OK,’ and then he left. So I was like, ‘Oh, now I gotta write that…’ I wrote the song in 10 minutes.”
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Selena Gomez & The Scene, “Who Says” (2011)
Selena’s 2011 hit with The Scene at the time marked a stark stylistic shift for the young pop star, who had previously been tapping into a more club-oriented sound. “Who Says,” in contrast, was driven by acoustic guitars and crafted as an anti-cyberbullying anthem. The positive messaging and slower pace of the track was met with positive reviews from critics and fans, and we have Muni Long to thank for it.
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Chris Brown, “Don’t Wake Me Up” (2012)
Muni Long both helped write Chris Brown’s dancefloor anthem, and even leant her voice to the opening adlibs on the track. You know the part where a woman says: “Dearly beloved, if this love only exists in my dreams, don’t wake me up?” Yep, that’s Muni Long!
Fun fact: Muni Long and Breezy also worked together to write “Wet the Bed,” which appeared on CB’s Grammy-award winning album F.A.M.E.
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Pitbull feat. Kesha, “Timber” (2012)
Pitbull’s 2012 juggernaut “Timber” featuring Kesha came to life because of Muni Long’s catchy songwriting. The track sat comfortably at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 for three weeks, and would go on to be certified 12-times platinum. In a seething TikTok last December, Muni Long revealed that Atlantic Records actually had the R&B singer belt out the notes of the “Timber” hook that Ke$ha couldn’t hit.
“About two weeks before the song is ready to come out, [Atlantic Records] hit me up and say, ‘Hey…we need you to come cut some vocals…so I go, and I’m hearing somebody else’s vocals on my song. I’m like, ‘What is this?’…they were like, ‘Oh, she couldn’t sing it like you” so we changed it to ‘Woo,’ and now we want you to go in and sing the ‘Woo’ underneath her.’”
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Fifth Harmony feat. Kid Ink, “Worth It” (2015)
In an interview with People, Muni Long celebrated the song’s 10 year anniversary by revealing that Fifth Harmony’s 2015 song, which spent over 36 weeks on the Billboard Hot 100, was actually three different songs put together.
“I wrote that song in the studio by myself,” she said. “And then Stargate took it and just kind of reproduced it. They took the hook off of the song I wrote, a verse from another song I had written, they took the Kid Ink verse from a song that he had did with them and reproduced it… And they basically made, like they engineered this song. It was like three different songs put together.”
She said by the time she learned “Worth It” had been released, it had already gained serious steam: “By the time I found out that it was out, it was already No. 10 on iTunes. I got a text like, ‘Congratulations!’ I was like, ‘For what?’”
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Nick Jonas feat. Ty Dolla $ign, “Bacon” (2016)
Nick Jonas and Ty Dolla $ign’s “Bacon” would go on to be nominated for song of the summer at the 2016 MTV Video Music Awards, with many critics complimenting Nick Jonas’ “grown-and-sexy” R&B vibes. That vibe was fully curated by Muni Long, who wrote the track alongside producer Sir Nolan.
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Ariana Grande: “Imagine” (2019)
The intro song off one of Ariana Grande’s biggest albums, thank u next, was actually co-written by Muni Long. While Long hasn’t spoken much about the process of helping craft the song — which finds Grande fantasizing about the perfect relationship — the track debuted at No. 24 on the Billboard Hot 100, and has been praised by critics as being one of Grande’s best songs.
