When Gamal Lewis was in the tenth grade, hip-hop producer Salaam Remi gave him the nickname that has stuck with him to this day. Then an aspiring rapper, Lewis worked under Remi for a few years. “Salaam liked my vibe and took me under his wing,” he explains. “One day, I was sitting with him while he was getting a haircut and he looked at me and said, ‘Yo, if I was a little chubby kid like you, I’d call myself LunchMoney.’ And he and everyone he worked with started calling me that and it just stuck. It resonated with me because I’m kind of a big kid at heart.”
In person, Lunch is a mountain of a guy who radiates not so much a child-like vibe, but a genuine sincerity and positivity that is hard to resist. That uplifting spirit comes through both lyrically and sonically in the music Lunch has created with his primary collaborators, songwriter Jacob Kasher (AKA JKash) and producer Ricky Reed (Wallpaper), for veteran hitmaker Dr. Luke’s Kemosabe Records. Songs like first single “Bills,” “Mama,” and “Love Me Back” are toe-tapping, feel-good tunes that recall the Philly soul of Gamble and Huff and the Southern gospel of Stax, while still entirely making sense within the world of contemporary urban pop. Lunch writes with touching honesty about real-life things like paying his bills, his supportive mama, and the trials of loving a girl who doesn’t love him back with a complete lack of artifice.
The Miami native comes by his love for soul and hip-hop authentically. Lunch was raised in a musical family of Jamaican descent and grew up listening to reggae and Motown, as well as to James Brown, Marvin Gaye, Prince, and The O’Jays. His father Roger and his uncle Ian were founding members of the legendary reggae band Inner Circle, who scored a Top 10 hit with “Bad Boys” when it became the theme song to the TV show Cops. Lunch’s older brother Abebe runs Miami’s Circle House Studios, a popular recording hub for both local hip-hop artists like Pitbull, Trick Daddy, and Flo Rida as well destination studio for national acts. Lunch was a teenager when his brother took over running Circle House from Roger and Ian, and would hang out there on weekends. “Everyone knew me as ‘Abebe’s little brother who could rap,’” Lunch recalls. “Every time I’d come around, his friends, who were all producers, would be like, ‘Abebe, tell your brother to rap.’ So I started writing raps and handing them over.”
Lunch caught the bug for performing himself at age 13 when he and his friend wrote a song that became a neighborhood hit. “It was called ‘Living in America,’” he says. “It was around 9/11 and we were like, ‘We’ll do a song for America!’ We had American flag bandanas, it was the worst, but looking back, it was mad funny. And all the kids in our neighborhood loved it and we became kind of like local celebrities. I thought, ‘Wow, I can do this. I can be cool. All the girls like me. The girls like rapping.”
Eventually Lunch’s talent led him to write for Meek Mill (“Off The Corner,” featuring Rick Ross), Ace Hood (“We Don’t”), and P. Diddy (“Big Homie,” featuring Rick Ross). He also put out a few singles and a mixtape that were local hits in Miami before a mutual friend introduced him to JKash, who had just signed on with Dr. Luke’s Prescription Songs. “Kash was like, ‘You should come to Los Angeles and do other stuff,’” Lunch recalls. The two collaborated on Juicy J’s “Scholarship” before Lunch made the move to L.A. last year and joined JKash at Prescription Songs as a writer. He soon found himself writing for Nicki Minaj (The Pinkprint’s “Trini Dem Girls,” which Lunch is also featured on), as well as for Fifth Harmony (the gold-certified “Bo$$”) and Jessie J (“Burnin’ Up” featuring 2 Chainz) with Ricky Reed. The night of the Jessie J session, Lunch, JKash, and Reed, still fired up, wrote “Bills” and hit on Lunch’s unique “soul/rap fusion” sound (as he puts it) in the process. Impressed by “Bills” and Lunch’s facility for undeniable pop melodies, Dr. Luke and his team at Kemosabe Records offered him a recording contract.
Now Lunch is looking forward to launching his career as an artist. “I know what I want to say now,” he explains. “I know who I am, in a weird little way, and I want to write about honest things with real emotion. My dad was so good at what he did and it gave me a taste for wanting to do great things and making good music. I want people to remember me for doing dope shit.”