Mary J. Blige life and biography

Mary J. Blige, born January 11, 1971 in Bronx, New York, United States is an African-American hip-hop singer songwriter.


"Mary J. Blige has been called the inventor of New Jill Swing," Ron Givens wrote in Stereo Review in 1993. When the vocalist came to the public's attention the previous year, she became a magnet for the kind of superlatives music critics love to create. In an interview for the Source, Adario Strange described his subject as a "delicate ghetto-princess songstress," "the flower of the ghetto," and "the real momma of hip-hop R&B." In his Washington Post review of Blige's second album, Geoffrey Himes called her "the premier soul diva of the hip-hop generation." She rose in esteem over the years to be crowned by the music media as the Queen of Hip Hop Soul.

Grew Up in the Ghetto

Part of the fuel for Blige's rocket to hip-hop stardom was her "street cred." She was born on January 11, 1971, in the Bronx, and raised in Savannah, Georgia, before moving to the Schlobohm Housing Projects--or "Slow Bomb" or "Slambam" projects, as its residents called it, in Yonkers, New York. Blige's coming of age on the mean streets of the Bronx provided her with the "credentials" demanded by audiences who also grew up on city streets. Blige described the setting for Essence's Deborah Gregory, recalling that there "was always some sh** going on. Every day I would be getting into fights over whatever. You always had to prove yourself to keep from getting robbed or jumped. Growing up in the projects is like living in a barrel of crabs. If you try to get out, one of the other crabs tries to pull you down." The family, including Blige's older sister and two younger brothers, subsisted on her mother Cora's earnings as a nurse after her father left the family in the mid-1970s. "My mother made me strong," Blige told Strange. "Watching my mother struggle to raise us and feed us made me want to be a stronger woman," she continued.

Blige's environment also provided the sound and encouragement that first shaped her musical identity. A professional jazz musician, her father left his mark on Blige's ability to harmonize during the brief time he was present. Block parties in the Bronx taught her the rhythms and sampling styles created by the early hip-hop deejays. At home, her mother played a steady stream of R&B, soul, and funk, including Sam Cooke, Aretha Franklin, Stevie Wonder, Chaka Khan, and Gladys Knight. Blige sang regularly with her mother and sister in the choir at the House of Prayer Pentecostal Church, honing vocal skills and imbibing gospel. "We used to go to church all night. Everybody would be real good to us," Blige told Emil Wilbekin in a Vibe interview. She expanded on the experience for Essence's Gregory, remembering that she "felt so much better going to church every Sunday, just being there, testifying and just being kids. It was a lot of fun." By the time Blige was a teenager, she had solo spots in the choir and she made the rounds of local talent shows. Though she attended Lincoln High School--a school that specialized in the performing arts--studied music and participated in school sponsored talent shows, she dropped out of high school in the eleventh grade.

While she enjoyed singing, Blige did not expect to make her living at it and, like most teenagers in her position, helped bring in money with several part-time jobs. She told Allison Samuels of Newsweek, "People in church would say 'You should do something with your voice.' And I'd be like 'What? I am living in the projects in Yonkers. What am I going to do with my voice?'" Her first "demo" tape was, in fact, just a karaoke style recording made one night at a mall to entertain friends when she was 17. Before too long, however, the cover of Anita Baker's "Caught Up In The Rapture" found its way to Andre Harrell, an executive with Uptown Records: Blige's mother gave it to her boyfriend, who gave it to a friend, who gave it to R&B vocalist Jeff Redd. Redd passed it on, enthusiastically, to Harrell. On Harrell's initiative, Blige was brought onto Uptown's growing roster of young R&B talents. Sean "Puffy" Combs (later known as P. Diddy) became the young singer's mentor when the company began preparing her album.

Invented the New Jill Swing

In 1992, What's the 411? introduced Blige's voice to audiences with a growing interest in the New Jack Swing take on R&B. The album not only fit neatly into that R&B revival, but also began to define it. Driven primarily by the single "Real Love," 411 reached double-platinum status after it sold more than two million copies in a short time. Its appeal crossed over from the R&B charts and entered the Top Ten on Billboard's pop chart. When Havelock Nelson gave the album an "A" in his Entertainment Weekly review in August of 1992, he began with the news everyone would soon know--that Blige was "the first diva to deliver frisky, fly-girl funk" and that she "conquers everything she tackles." He concluded that the album was "one of the most accomplished fusions of soul values and hip-hop to date."

Nelson described, in particular, how Blige took the then male-defined domain of New Jack Swing and remade it in her own image, kicking off the rage for New Jill Swing. She became known as the initiator of a new female incarnation of hip-hop. "Mary has become an icon of today's young Black nation," wrote the Source's Strange, "representing the feminine yet strong-willed woman that many young girls hope to be, and the sexy yet not too cute for a ruffneck girlfriend that many brothers from the hood long for." In April of 1993, Rolling Stone reviewer Steve Hochman noted that Blige had "become the role model for the new breed of strong hip-hop women." Strange dubbed her the "first true feminine hero of R&B lovin' ghetto residents." The singer commented on the phenomenon herself, telling Hochman, "I think I'm creating a style for women--a more feminine version of the way a lot of hip-hop guys dress now." As Strange noted, the impact of 411 showed up soon on other performers, as "baseball caps and boots suddenly became in vogue for female singers" and "divas everywhere demanded hip-hop tracks to back up their cubic zirconian efforts."

The accolades were marred, however, by some bad publicity. It seemed to begin at the 1993 Soul Train Music Awards, where Blige accepted her award not in the expected glittering evening gown, but in standard street gear: jeans and a shirt. The public expressed its disapproval instantly: as the Source's Strange reported, "radio stations everywhere were flooded with phone calls from disgruntled fans." That incident occurred in the midst of other, less public, reports of bad behavior. Wilbekin recounted the history for Vibe, recalling that the "stories of tardiness, cancellations, and general lack of professionalism are endless. Mary was eight hours late to one magazine photo shoot, and threw a fit and walked out of at least one more. She conducted interviews where she did as much drinking as talking and acted like a zombie on national television. Then there was the concert in London where she was so out of it the crowd booed her off the stage."

Worked on Image

It was only after the release of her second album that Blige was able to reflect on what might have fed her behavior at the time. She speculated that the attention had disconcerted her--that she had not been prepared, socially or professionally, for the kind of intense spotlight music celebrity creates. Harrell suggested to Wilbekin in Vibe that "the whole experience was overwhelming for her. She wasn't ready to be put under the microscope in that fashion." Friend and manager Steve Lucas told Gregory that "Mary got an undeserved bad rap because of what was going on around her--the confusion, the lack of organization. When you communicate honestly with Mary, there aren't any problems. She's willing to cooperate and do whatever it takes to be successful. She's basically a very sweet, humble person." The difficulty of the situation was magnified, Blige admitted to Rolling Stone's Hochman, by her basic shyness. "I'm just not a very open person," she told him. "The most open I am is when I sing. I've always been kind of shy." On a more concrete note, she also felt there were problems with her management, which she changed before recording the second album. Combs was fired at Uptown and in 1993 started his own company, Bad Boy Entertainment, where Blige took her management business while still recording with Uptown.

Blige also pursued practical measures to prepare herself for the fresh onslaught of publicity that would accompany the second album: she enrolled with a public relations firm, Double XXposure, that trained artists to deal with the demands of public reputation. She worked extensively with the company's president, Angelo Ellerbee, whom she later credited with not just polishing her interview style, but changing her life more broadly. She told Wilbekin in Vibe that Ellerbee "gave me a totally new kind of life. There was a time when I wouldn't read nothin'," but Ellerbee sparked her interest in books her for the first time, introducing her, for example, to a novel by Zora Neale Hurston called Their Eyes Were Watching God.

When Uptown released My Life in 1994, it marked many changes for Blige, including the personal refining that turned around her public image. The vocalist also contributed lyrics for most of the songs; she had been writing before the debut album, but had little confidence in her skill as a lyricist. The sound of the music shifted also, due in part to the use of live horns and strings in place of the standard sampling, moving Blige deeper into the fusion of hip-hop and soul. Ultimately, all of the changes added up successfully for Blige and her producers: My Life debuted in December in the top position on Billboard's R&B album chart.

In 1996, Blige released another album, Share My World. Along with the album, she sported a new attitude: self-love. She parted company from people who she felt were negative influences, including her producer and mentor, Combs, Deathrow Records president Suge Knight, and K-Ci of Jodeci fame, her on-again, off-again boyfriend. Her new attitude can also be traced to her renewed commitment to God. Blige spoke to Christopher John Farley of Time, "God comes first. If I don't love him, I can't love anybody. And if I can't love me, I can't love nobody."

Share My World also broadened Blige's horizons. She worked with producers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, TrackMasters, and R Kelly. Though known for songs with strong hip hop beats, Share My World's songs were more mellow and showed Blige headed for mainstream R&B and pop. Amy Linden of People exclaimed, "Some might gripe that the overall sound is more polished than on her two previous multi-platinum CDs--and it is." The album also included the Babyface-produced and written song, "Not Gon' Cry," from the Waiting To Exhale soundtrack. The song became the jilted black woman's anthem.

Continued to Transform Herself

Blige also continued to work on her image. In the beginning she did not care about her career or herself. During her interviews, Blige opened up and spoke about her lifestyle, which included using hard drugs. She told Kevin Chappell of Ebony, "I did a lot of stuff, things that a lot of girls wouldn't do, because of a lack of self-love. I did drugs, I did a lot. I did things, not just weed, but beyond...." Her finances also were not in order. She made both management and personal changes. "I'm a young lady now; with growing up comes a lot of responsibilities. So there are a lot of things that I have to do, and there are a lot of things that I can't do anymore.... I want to challenge myself more to see what comes out of it. Patience is a virtue to me," she was quoted as saying in Ebony.

In 1998 Blige headlined her own tour, and that summer she released a live album, called The Tour. "It was a great energy. And it's really at the concert; there are no studio tricks. I'm not afraid for the audience to hear my voice crack," she told Anita Samuels of Billboard. The album featured a medley of previous hits and two new covers. Blige also started her own label, Mary Jane Entertainment. She toured again as a headliner in The Mary Show in 2000 and appeared with Aretha Franklin on the annual VH1 Divas Live broadcast in 2001. With seemingly bottomless energy, Blige made her television acting debut on The Jamie Foxx Show in 1998.

Blige's next album, simply entitled Mary found Blige teaming up with legends such as Elton John, Stevie Wonder, and Aretha Franklin. Critics described the album as more mature, toning down the raunchier elements of her persona that had been evident since her debut and repositioning herself as a true soul singer. Mary was Blige's first attempt to truly shape her new image and the results were spectacular. The single "All That I Can Say" with Lauryn Hill hit the Billboard top ten charts and the album was nominated for both a Grammy and a Billboard Music Award.

Starting in 1999 and continuing on into 2000 and 2001, Blige has been very open and vocal about the path that her career and personal life took throughout the 1990s and how hard she has worked to turn those around into something that she can be proud of. Blige talked of an abusive relationship that she finally realized she had to get out of before something serious happened to her. In an interview with Essence she says of the relationship, "When I looked back I knew I did the right thing, because if I didn't break out I was going to die. Somebody wanted me dead and subliminally it must have been me, because I drew someone to me who wanted to kill me." Blige has spoken at length about her newfound faith in religion. Blige has openly said that it is God that has allowed her to make the changes that she has made in her life. In a Jet interview with Calerence Waldron, Blige said, "I'm trying to build my foundation on the wisdom, the Word, so that I will be able to pass on the right information to the universe. Because you get exactly what you put out there. I'm just happy with that."

One of the main regrets that Mary J. Blige has made public was the fact that she dropped out of high school before getting her diploma. Blige has repeatedly told interviewers that part of the reason that she was so careless with her money and her fame during her early career was due to the fact that she didn't have the proper education and didn't know how to properly invest her money or who she should trust. Blige studied with tutors and gained her Graduate Equivalence Degree (GED). Starting in 2000, Blige began touring schools, trying to convey the message that education was the most important thing and that students needed to stay in school. She told Jet, she emphasized to teens to "... stay in school. Just be patient and pray. Finish school, finish high school. Don't drop out."

Made Further Strides

Blige continued to further her career and image with her 2001 release of her album No More Drama. This much-developed album with songs such as "Love," "Family Affair," and "No More Drama" earned her another Grammy nomination and secured Blige's place in the soul diva category. Blige attributed the popularity of the album to the fact that she herself is continuing on her in journey of self discovery and that her fans have turned the corner with her. In a Jet magazine interview, Blige says of No More Drama, "This album is a continuation of a turnaround. The Mary album was a cleanup. It was about cleaning up me. And this album? It's about solidifying and moving even further with the things I've learned and the strides I've made."

The positive reviews on Blige are endless. Music critic Geoffrey Himes, among others, paid particular tribute to Blige: "Blige may be a gospel-trained siren like older soul divas," he remarked in the Washington Times, "but these arrangements sound like no record ever made by Aretha Franklin, Diana Ross or Patti LaBelle. All the gooey orchestrations that have sugarcoated romantic crooners from Dinah Washington to Anita Baker are gone, leaving a skeletal rhythm track and a spectacular voice freed from all superfluous sentiment and ornamentation." J.D. Considine, of Baltimore's Evening Sun, noted that "Blige has more than surpassed expectations" and argued that as "good as the grooves are, it's her vocal work that ultimately drives these songs." Similarly, Himes declared her a "major voice of her generation."

She reunited with Diddy for Love and Life, in 2003. Also that year, she married music producer Kendu Isaacs. Blige won a Grammy award in 2004, with Sting, for Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals for their work, "Whenever I Say Your Name." In addition to making hit after hit, Blige continued to act. She has appeared in Prison Song, but it may be her last film as she explained in People, "I didn't like being on the set all day and doing scenes over and over.... I like performing more than getting up in the morning." Nevertheless, Blige did continue to act, appearing on the CBS series Ghost Whisperer in 2007. Blige has lent her name and celebrity to support causes she believed in. She has appeared in ads for cosmetic company MAC's Viva Glam lipstick, which raised money for the MAC AIDS fund. Blige has performed at three VH1's Divas Live concerts that helped raise money for the cable channel's Save the Music Foundation. Blige was also featured on Carson hair company's Dark & Lovely's permanent hair color box, named Red Hot Mary, after the singer.

Achieved a Breakthrough

As Sean Combs explained to Strange in the Source, Blige "represents all the honeys in the urban communities in Detroit, Harlem, Chicago, and Los Angeles [who are] growing up and going through regular every day things that are a part of hip-hop culture." Blige sums up herself the best. Though gifted with a beautiful voice, she lacked confidence in herself. Mary J. Blige has come through her growing pains into a mature young lady who cares about herself. She stated in Time, "You better believe that I give a damn now."

Her newfound confidence showed in her later recordings. In The Breakthrough, Blige included song that showcased her past, such as "Enough Cryin" and "Baggage," as well as her calmer present sense of self, as in "Be Without You." Blige explained her different approach to this album to Richard Harrington of the Washington Post: "I remember when I was a woman that was solely about pain--everything was pain, pain, pain. Now we're selling triumph over tragedy, and that's what [the album] was all about--being a victor instead of a victim. I put a lot of work into trying to get myself together, to get to the point where I could have the strength to show people my weaknesses like that." The album was a triumph itself, selling more copies in its first week than any other R&B album for a female solo artist. Blige was also honored in 2006 with eight Grammy nominations for her music--more than any other artist that year. For her efforts, she won three Grammy Awards, for Best R&B Album, for Best R&B Song, and for Best R&B Female Vocal Performance.

Blige continued her personal healing and next revisited her past as a way of moving on. She offered listeners her own take on her 15-year career with her 2006 album, Reflections--A Retrospective. The album featured re-recordings of some of her biggest hits as well as four new songs, including "We Ride (I See the Future)." "I'm just taking a look back before I move forward again," Blige told Jessica Herndon of People about the album. Blige's transformation from an unfocused young woman to a poised, principled R&B diva without missing a beat proves the Queen still reigns.

Blige continued her winning streak in 2007, amassing three more Grammy Awards, including best female R&B vocal performance and best R&B song, both for "Be Without You"; and best R&B album, for The Breakthrough. She also shared the BET Award for best collaboration, for "Runaway Love" with Ludacris. In 2008 she shared two Grammy Awards, including best R&B sperformance by a duo or group with vocals for "Disrespectful" with Chaka Khan, and best gospel performance for "Never Gonna Break My Faith" with Aretha Franklin in a tie with the Clark Sisters.

Growing Pains was, in fact, the first CD of new material that Blige had released since The Breakthrough. On Growing Pains, Blige wrote on her Web site, fans would hear "just the sincere honesty and love that I have for them. I'm always putting myself out there like, look. I love ya'll. I got ya'll. I'm rocking with ya'll. So that's what they're going to get, that commitment. I hope they're going to be very happy with that." Upbeat and positive, the album sends the message, "Love yourself. Believe in yourself and kick negativity to the curb," Blige wrote on her Web site. Listeners liked that message, and so did the voters at the GrammysùBlige won the Grammy Award for best contemporary R&B album for Growing Pains.

Blige was due to release another album, Stronger, in November of 2009.

PERSONAL INFORMATION

Born Mary Jane Blige on January 11, 1971, in Bronx, NY; raised in Savannah, GA, and Yonkers, NY; daughter of Cora (a nurse) and a jazz musician; married Kendu Isaacs (a music producer), 2003 Education: GED. Addresses: Web--www.mjblige.com.

AWARDS

Soul Train Music Awards, 1993, 2000; New York Music Award; Grammy Award, Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group (with Method Man), 1996; American Music Award, Favorite Soul/R&B Album for Share My World, 1998; Soul Train Lady of Soul awards, 1997, 1998, 2000; Grammy award, Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals (with Sting) for "Whenever I Say Your Name," 2004; BET Award, Best R&B Female Artist, 2006; BET Award, Best Video of the year for "Be Without You," 2006; American Music Award, Favorite Female Soul/R&B Artist, 2006; American Music Award, Favorite Soul/R&B Album for The Breakthrough, 2006; Billboard Music Award, R&B/Hip-Hop Album of the Year for The Breakthrough, 2006; Billboard Music Award, Song of the Year for "Be Without You," 2006; Billboard Music Award, Female R&B Artist of the Year, 2006; Billboard Music Award, R&B/Hip-Hop Artist of the Year, 2006; Grammy Award, Best Female R&B Performance, for "Be Without You," 2007; Grammy Award, Best Song, for "Be Without You," 2007; Soul Train Best R&B/Soul Album, for The Breakthrough, 2007; BET Award for Best Collaboration, for "Runaway Love" with Ludacris, 2007; Billboard Female R&B/Hip-Hop Artist of the Year, 2008; Billboard R&B/Hip-Hop Artist of the Year, 2008; Billboard Album of the Year, 2008, for Growing Pains; Grammy Award for Best R&B Performance by a duo or group with vocals, for "Disrespectful" with Chaka Khan, 2008; Grammy Award for Best Gospel Performance, for "Never Gonna Break My Faith" with Aretha Franklin, 2008; Grammy Award for best contemporary R&B album, for Growing Pains, 2009.

CAREER

Singer, 1992-; actress, 1998-.

WORKS
Albums

* What's the 411?, Uptown/MCA, 1992.
* My Life, Uptown/MCA, 1994.
* Share My World, MCA, 1996.
* The Tour, MCA, 1998.
* Mary, MCA, 1999.
* No More Drama, MCA, 2001.
* Dance for Me, MCA, 2002.
* Love & Life, Geffen, 2003.
* Not Today, Geffen, 2003.
* Love Is All We Need, Geffen, 2004.
* The Breakthrough, Geffen, 2005.
* Reflections--A Retrospective, Geffen, 2006.
* My Collection of Love Songs, Geffen, 2006.
* Mary J. Blige and Friends, Geffen, 2006.
* Growing Pains, Geffen, 2007.
* Stronger, Geffen, 2009.

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