Mary J Blige
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Mary J Blige Biography
When her debut album, What's the 411?, hit the street in 1992,
critics and fans alike were floored by its powerful combination of
modern R&B with an edgy rap sound that glanced off of the pain and
grit of Mary J. Blige's Yonkers, NY, childhood. Called alternately the
new Chaka Khan or new Aretha Franklin, Blige had little in common
stylistically with either of those artists, but like them, she helped
adorn soul music with new textures and flavors that inspired a whole
generation of musicians. With her blonde hair, self-preserving slouch,
and combat boots, Blige was street-tough and beautiful all at once, and
the record company execs who profited off of her early releases did
little to dispel the bad-girl image that she earned as she stumbled
through the dizzying first days of her career. As she exorcised her
personal demons and softened her style to include sleek designer
clothes, she remained a hero to thousands of girls growing up in the
same kinds of rough places she came from. Blige reinvented her career
again and again by shedding the bad habits and bad influences that kept
her down; by the time her fourth album, Mary, was released in 1999, she
had matured into an expressive singer able to put the full power of her
voice behind her music, while still reflecting a strong urban style.
With her fifth album, No More Drama, it wasn't just Blige's style that
shone through the structures set up for her by songwriters and
producers, it was her own vision -- spiritual, emotional, personal, and
full of wisdom, it reflected an artist who was comfortable with who she
was and how far she had come.
Born in the Bronx on January 11, 1971, Blige spent the first few years
of her life in Savannah, GA, before moving with her mother and older
sister to the Schlobam housing projects in Yonkers, NY. Her rough life
there produced more than a few scars, physical and otherwise, and Blige
dropped out of high school her junior year, instead spending time doing
her friends' hair in her mother's apartment and hanging out. When she
was at a local mall in White Plains, NY, she recorded herself singing
Anita Baker's Caught Up in the Rapture into a karaoke machine. The
resulting tape was passed by Blige's stepfather to Uptown Records CEO
Andre Harrell. Harrell was impressed with Blige's voice and signed her
to sing backup for local acts like Father MC. In 1991, however, Sean
Puffy Combs took Blige under his wing and began working with her on
What's the 411?, her debut album. Combs had a heavy hand in What's the
411?, along with producers Dave Hall, Mark Morales, and Mark Rooney,
and the stylish touches that they added to Blige's unique vocal style
created a stunning album that bridged the gap between R&B and rap
in a way that no female singer had before. Uptown tried to capitalize
on the success of What's the 411? by issuing a remixed version of it a
year later, but it was only a modest success creatively and
commercially.
Her 1995 follow-up, My Life, again featured Combs' handiwork, and if it
stepped back stylistically from its urban roots by featuring less of a
rap sound, it made up for it with its subject matter. My Life was full
of ghetto pathos and Blige's own personal pain shone through like a
beacon. Her rocky relationship with fellow Uptown artist K-Ci Hailey
likely contributed to the raw emotions on the album. The period
following the recording of My Life was also a difficult time
professionally for Blige, as she severed her ties with Combs and
Uptown, hired Suge Knight as a financial advisor, and signed with MCA.
Released in 1997, Share My World marked the beginning of Blige's
creative partnerships with Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis. The album was
another hit for Blige and debuted at number one on the Billboard
charts. Critics soured somewhat on its more conventional soul sound,
but Blige's fans seemed undaunted. By the time her next studio album,
Mary, came out in 1999, the fullness and elegance of her new sound
seemed more developed, as Blige exuded a classic soul style aided by
material from Elton John and Bernie Taupin, Stevie Wonder, and Lauryn
Hill. Mary made it obvious that the ghetto fabulous style and more
confrontational aspects of her music were gone, while the emotive power
still remained.
That power also helped carry the more modern-sounding 2001 release No
More Drama, a deeply personal album that remained a collective effort
musically yet reflected more of Blige's songwriting than any of her
previous efforts. The Mary J. Blige on No More Drama seemed miles away
from the flashy kid on What's the 411?, yet it was still possible to
see the path through her music that produced an older, wiser, but still
expressive artist. In 2003 she was reunited with P. Diddy, who produced
the majority of that year's patchy Love and Life album. The
Breakthrough followed two years later and was a tremendous success,
spawning a handful of major singles. By the December 2006 release of
Reflections (A Retrospective), The Breakthrough's lead single, Be
Without You, had spent nearly a year on the R&B chart, while the
album's fifth single, Take Me as I Am, had been on the same chart for
over four months. ~ Stacia Proefrock, All Music Guide
Written by Stacia Proefrock