Two-time Grammy-winning R&B star Money Long — born Priscilla Hamilton — is opening up about the health crisis that nearly took her life, revealing she was given just one week to live before undergoing a double lung transplant.
Known for hits like “Made for Me” and “Hours and Hours,” and for penning chart-topping records for Rihanna and Ariana Grande, the singer had been living with lupus since her 2014 diagnosis. But what she described as a much more serious condition was quietly developing behind the scenes.
It came to a head during her run on the Brandy and Monica tour. Already battling the autoimmune effects of lupus in cold Northeast weather, Hamilton developed pneumonia mid-tour but pushed through. By the final stretch she could barely make her call time, and at her last show was only able to perform two songs before her team and family insisted she come home to rest.
Rest wasn’t enough.
After returning home for Thanksgiving, Hamilton woke up in the hospital. What followed was a room full of specialists — pulmonologists, a rheumatologist, and the doctor who invented the ECMO machine, Dr. Maybower — delivering news that stopped her cold. She needed a double lung transplant. When she asked how long she had without one, the answer was a week.
“That’s rude,” she recalled thinking in the moment.
The choice was stark: hospice or new lungs. As a singer, her immediate fear went to her voice. But looking at her son brought clarity. “I can’t sing if I’m not here,” she said.
Six months post-surgery, Hamilton says she is asymptomatic with no infections and describes herself as doing “fabulous.” She still has a vocal checkup scheduled in August, and while she says her voice has actually changed for the better following vocal surgery, she doesn’t yet know when she’ll be ready to perform a full set.
Her new single “The Richest” — recorded in February 2025, before the transplant — is available now. It will be the last music released featuring her pre-surgery voice.
Her message to anyone watching: stop shouldering everyone else’s burden at the expense of your own health. She was direct about the cultural weight Black women carry. “Lupus disproportionately affects Black women who are just expected to show up and be everything for everybody,” she said, urging listeners not to put themselves on the back burner, to rest without guilt, and to speak up for themselves before a crisis forces the conversation.
“I was really faced with my mortality,” she said. “And I thought to myself — have I really served myself the way I should? The answer was no.”
