Nearly seven months after leaving Brandy and Monica’s The Boy Is Mine tour on Nov. 29, Grammy winner Muni Long disclosed that she underwent a double-lung transplant after pneumonia worsened her condition. She says she’s doing “fabulous” and expects a check-up
By the time Muni Long stepped away from Brandy and Monica’s The Boy Is Mine Tour on Nov. 29, she had already crossed a line she didn’t think she’d have to face so soon: the edge of her own mortality.
Nearly seven months later. the Grammy winner opened up about what happened after she exited the tour. describing a fall health crisis that escalated from pneumonia to a double-lung transplant. In a June 23 appearance on “Good Morning America,” Long told Robin Roberts that she was “really faced with my mortality.”.
“I was really faced with my mortality,” she said. “Midway through [the tour] … I got really sick. I got pneumonia, and I had to step away for a few dates.”
Her return to the schedule didn’t bring relief. Long said she initially felt compelled to go back, but her condition continued to worsen after more performances. “I’ve got to go back,” she recalled thinking. After playing several more shows. she said she reached a point where she couldn’t even reliably make it to preparations for the stage. “I couldn’t even get out of the bed to make my call time for the stage.”.
She described her last performance before announcing her exit as being physically limited to a fraction of a set. “I came out only able to do two songs,” Long said, before deciding to take a break.
“When I came home for Thanksgiving, then I woke up in the hospital,” she said. Long added that she felt “so much better” following an unspecified procedure that stabilized her condition. but then doctors informed her she needed a lung transplant to survive. Without it, she said, she had “a week” to live.
Long also linked the deterioration to her long-running health history. Diagnosed with the autoimmune disease lupus in 2014, she said she recognized something was wrong before the hospitalization. “Every day I’m spitting in cups and coughing all the time and trying to take all these medicines just to get through the day. ” she explained.
Half a year later, Long said she’s in a different place. “Doing fabulous,” she said, adding that she has not experienced negative symptoms or infections. She also said she has a check-up planned for August as she anticipates vocal cord surgery.
The transplant has also changed her voice—both how it feels and how she expects it will perform onstage. Long said her sound is now “totally different.” “It’s actually better, should I say?. But I don’t know that I can perform yet,” she continued. She told Roberts that recovery after surgery is estimated to take six to 12 months and described her uncertainty about singing a full song. “I don’t know what it’s going to sound like when I open my mouth to try and sing a whole song.”.
For now, Long’s next releases are personal milestones tied to a specific moment in her timeline. She said her upcoming releases will be “the last music that was recorded before all of the things happened.”
Her health revelations also reach back into how she prepared for performances even before the tour exit. Long previously detailed her pre-show regimen in an interview with a national outlet. describing tea with fresh ginger crystals. a good night’s sleep. and steering clear of stimulants such as coffee and alcohol. She said stress had affected her as well—especially with lupus. “I didn’t used to take it as serious. I was just so stressed out and trying to do everything,” she said. “Especially with having lupus. I was just inflamed. and I couldn’t get the inflammation down. and I would lose my voice a lot.”.
She described a specific moment from 2023: on the morning of her breakthrough performance of “Made For Me” at the Soul Train Awards. she said she couldn’t speak. and it took a vocal coach two hours to bring her voice back. “It’s like you’re an athlete. It’s not a joke,” Long said. “So sometimes I even have to walk around with a sign or a sticky note on my shirt that says ‘vocal rest.’ Or I have hand signals [to show] I’m not talking. It’s a very strict regimen.”.
The sequence of her tour exit and her recovery underscores how fast a health crisis can alter an artist’s plans. Pneumonia hit “midway through” the tour. her ability to keep performing eroded show by show. and what began as stepping away for “a few dates” ended with doctors telling her she needed a transplant to live.
As she moves into the next phase of her care—reporting that she’s “doing fabulous. ” anticipating a check-up in August. and preparing for vocal cord surgery—Long is also working toward one question her body hasn’t fully answered yet: whether her voice. transformed by surgery. will translate into the kind of full-song performance she’s used to bringing to fans.
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