Karungari Mungai, known professionally as Karun, has released Eternal, a four-track EP recorded with Nigerian producer Bigfootinyourface in Lagos in 2022 and held back until now.
The project marks her first release after a deliberate year away from music, and she arrives with a clear statement of intent.
“As I enter this new era, I want to set some things straight,” she wrote in a pinned Instagram post ahead of the lead single Feel You. “This music is not for everybody and I am deeply at peace with that.”
What the EP Sounds Like
Eternal opens with Feel You — Karun’s voice set against a single synth, later expanded with strings and swells. Restraint runs through the project. The other tracks, Hold Me, Treasure, and Still, carry a similar energy of presence and stillness. Hold Me features South African artist Nana Atta, deepening the EP’s intimacy. The four tracks share a quality that separates them from Karun’s earlier pop-facing work — quieter, more spacious, and built around a different kind of attention from the listener.
A Year Off That Became Something More
The hiatus that preceded Eternal started as six months and became a full year. Karun had been running hard, albums, collaborations, festival cycles, radio rounds and the momentum eventually hollowed out the process.
“I was getting pretty burnt out,” she said. “Still loving the process, so happy that people are liking the music, but I was getting tired.”
The burnout reached the music itself. “I stopped listening to music for fun because it just reminded me of work.” The year away reversed that. “Right now I’m back. Time off gave me so much time to fall in love with music again.”
What the break also clarified was how far her daily life had drifted from making music. “Most of my time was spent doing admin,” she said. “I’m a musician by profession. But did I feel like a musician in my day-to-day life? It didn’t feel like I was.”
Building a Life Where the Numbers Don’t Run the Show
Part of what made the return possible on her own terms was what Karun built while away. Embe Creatives — a family-run hub founded with her mother and sister, repurposed her grandmother’s former fashion school into shared studios and workspaces, housing Embe Music Studio, an affordable recording space designed for independent musicians with women’s safety built into its design.
That business foundation changed the creative equation. “I’ve set myself up in a way where those numbers don’t matter,” she said. “I have a business. If the money doesn’t come from music, I’m good.”
The Unsolicited Advice She Is No Longer Taking
Karun has been in the industry since her teens, first as part of Camp Mulla, the alternative hip-hop group whose 2010 track Party Don’t Stop broke nationally and earned a BET Awards nomination. She is 31. That gap between early visibility and current artistic direction creates a specific kind of audience pressure.
“Every time I release music, I get unsolicited comments about people telling me what I should do to get more popular,” she said. The pattern follows a familiar structure. “There’s always a ‘you’re so good but…'”
The pinned Instagram statement before Feel You dropped was a direct response, a boundary set in public before the conversation could move somewhere she had no interest in revisiting. “I wanted to clear the slate. I wanted to set the tone for this season,” she said. “I love you guys, and I’m not doing this for popularity.”
What Comes Next
Eternal is a bridge, not a destination. Karun has confirmed a full-length self-produced album later in 2026. That detail matters to her.
“My whole career, I have been a producer since Camp Mulla times, but I have never released a song I produced,” she said. “So when people ask, ‘who are you?’ and I say, ‘I’m a singer, songwriter, producer,’ I feel like a fraud.”
The album resolves that. It also answers the question she has been sitting with throughout this season — what does it mean to make music for yourself again, after years of making it for everyone else?
“If you turn this into a business, then the music doesn’t come first — the entertainment does,” she said. “So now you have to ask: what kind of an artist are you?”
Eternal is available now on all streaming platforms.
