Monay Sha'Reece: The Bay Area and Central Valley Artist Who Never Lost the Gift and Is Back With Everything to Give

Some artists find music. Monay Sha'Reece was born into it.

Her grandmother, Omie Cormier, was a musician. The church was where her voice first found its purpose, singing in the choir and feeling something that most people spend their whole lives searching for. That early connection to music was not just an influence. It was a calling that has never left her no matter what life brought her way.

She is back now. Fully. And the music she is bringing with her carries everything she has lived through since the last time the world heard from her.

A gift given to give back

Monay Sha'Reece does not take her talent lightly. She sees it as something bigger than herself.

"It is the gift God gave me to give back to the world," she says. That perspective shapes everything about how she approaches her craft. She does not make music just to be heard. She makes it because someone out there needs to hear it. Someone who is going through something she has already survived. Someone who needs to know they are not alone in what they are feeling.

That mission is what keeps her motivated even when life makes it complicated. When she is not creating she does not feel like herself. The music is not what she does. It is who she is.

Double Back: Ten years of a real life story put into one song

Her latest release "Double Back," produced by Syknesz on the Beat, dropped June 19th and it may be the most honest thing she has ever recorded. The song is not fiction. It is not inspired by something she observed from a distance. It is the story of a ten year relationship, the emotional cycle of returning to love that was not healthy, the pull of something familiar even when familiar means pain.

Monay wrote every word of it from that real place. The frustration. The vulnerability. The exhaustion that comes from a complicated relationship that keeps pulling you back in no matter how many times you try to walk away. She did not just write about it. She relived it through every lyric so that anyone who has ever been in that same cycle could hear themselves in the music.

That is what makes "Double Back" more than a song. It is a chapter of her life offered to the world so that someone else going through the same thing knows they are not alone in it.

She performed it live during Juneteenth celebrations in Hanford and has 14 performance engagements this month alone. This is an artist who does not just release music. She shows up for it.

"It is the gift God gave me to give back to the world."

Bay Area roots and legendary company

Monay Sha'Reece is deeply rooted in the Bay Area and Central Valley and her collaborations reflect that. She has already recorded with J. Stalin, Shady Nate and Mistah Fab, three artists whose names carry serious weight in Bay Area hip-hop and beyond. Those are not casual connections. Those are relationships built on mutual respect between artists who recognize real talent when they hear it.

She still performs live regularly, showing up in the Bay Area, Los Angeles and even Mexico, bringing her music to rooms full of people who feel it in person the same way listeners feel it through speakers.

What is coming

The pipeline is full and it is exciting. She is currently working on an EP with Shady Nate that is shaping up to be something special. Alongside that she is building a personal project centered around healing and therapy, which speaks directly to the woman she is beyond the music. Someone who mentors youth, volunteers with women from domestic and traumatic backgrounds and pours herself into the people around her as much as she pours herself into her art.

More collaborations are in the works with talented artists she believes in. The same way Bay Area legends believed in her.

She also holds a chart achievement that does not get talked about enough. Her song "Better Days" landed on the digital radio chart and stayed at number 38 for seven consecutive weeks. That kind of staying power on a chart is not luck. That is a song that connected deeply with a lot of people over a sustained period of time.

More than music

Monay Sha'Reece is one of those rare people who gives in every direction at once. She paints. She draws. She braids and styles hair. She mentors young people and women who have been through trauma. She shows up for her community the same way she shows up in the studio. With everything she has.

She took a step back from music to be present as a mother. Life happened the way life does. But she never stopped being who she is. And now she is back in motion with more to say than ever before.

The world is about to hear all of it.

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