Mary J. Blige
Mary Jane Blige is an American R&B and hip-hop soul singer, songwriter, actress, and entrepreneur. Often referred to by the honorifics "Queen of Hip-Hop Soul" and "Queen of R&B", her accolades include nine Grammy Awards, a Primetime Emmy Award, four American Music Awards, twelve NAACP Image Awards, and twelve Billboard Music Awards, including the Billboard Icon Award.
Her career began in 1988 when she was signed to Uptown Records by its founder Andre Harrell. In 1992, Blige released her debut album, What's the 411?, which is credited for introducing the mix of R&B and hip hop into mainstream pop culture. Its 1993 remix album became the first album by a singer to have a rapper on every song, popularizing rap as a featuring act. Both What's the 411? and her 1994 album My Life ranked among Rolling Stones 500 Greatest Albums of All Time list. So far through her career, Blige has released 15 studio albums, four of which have topped the Billboard 200 chart. Her biggest hits include "Real Love", "You Remind Me", "I'm Goin' Down", "Not Gon' Cry", "Everything", "No More Drama", "Be Without You", "One", "Just Fine" and the Billboard Hot 100 number-one single "Family Affair".
Blige enhanced her popularity with an acting career. She was nominated for two Academy Awards for her supporting role as Florence Jackson in Mudbound and the film's song "Mighty River", becoming the first person nominated for acting and songwriting in the same year. Her other film roles include Prison Song, Rock of Ages, Betty and Coretta, Black Nativity, Trolls World Tour, Body Cam, The Violent Heart, Respect and Rob Peace. Her television work includes the series The Umbrella Academy and Power Book II: Ghost.
Blige received a Legends Award at the World Music Awards in 2006, the Voice of Music Award from ASCAP in 2007 and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2018. In 2010, Billboard ranked her as the most successful female R&B/Hip-Hop artist of the past 25 years. In 2017, the magazine named "Be Without You" as the most successful R&B/hip-hop song of all time, as it spent a then-record 15 weeks atop the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart and over 75 weeks on the chart overall. Blige was featured in listicles such as VH1's 100 Greatest Artists of All Time, Times 100 most influential people in the world and Rolling Stones 200 Greatest Singers of All Time. In 2024, she was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Life and music career
1971–1991: Early life and career beginnings
Mary Jane Blige was born on January 11, 1971, at Fordham Hospital in the Belmont neighborhood in the Bronx, New York, to nurse Cora and jazz musician Thomas Blige. She has an older sister, LaTonya Blige-DaCosta, a younger half-brother, Bruce Miller, and a younger half-sister, Jonquell, both from a relationship Blige's mother had with another man after divorcing her first husband.Blige spent her early childhood in Richmond Hill, Georgia, where she sang in a Pentecostal church. She and her family later moved back to New York and resided in the Schlobohm Housing Projects, located in Yonkers. The family subsisted on her mother's earnings as a nurse after her father left the family in the mid-1970s. Her father was a Vietnam War veteran who suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder and alcoholism.
At age five, she was molested by a family friend; as a teenager she endured years of sexual harassment from her peers. She said these negative experiences prepared her to protect herself in the music industry, where sexual harassment is a major problem for female artists. She would eventually turn to alcohol, drugs and promiscuous sex to try to numb the pain. Blige dropped out of high school in her junior year.
Influenced by the music of Aretha Franklin, Chaka Khan and Gladys Knight, she began pursuing a musical career. Blige spent a short time in a Yonkers band named Pride with band drummer Eddie D'Aprile. In early 1988, she recorded an impromptu cover of Anita Baker's "Caught Up in the Rapture" at a recording booth in the Galleria Mall in White Plains, New York. Her mother's boyfriend at the time later played the cassette for Jeff Redd, a recording artist and A&R runner for Uptown Records. Redd sent it to the president and CEO of the label, Andre Harrell. Harrell met with Blige, and in 1989 at the age of 18, she was signed to the label as a backup vocalist for artists such as Father MC, becoming the company's youngest and first female artist.
1992–1996: ''What's the 411?'' and ''My Life''
After being signed to Uptown, Blige began working with record producer Sean Combs. He became the executive producer and produced a majority of her first album. The title What's the 411? was an indication by Blige of being the "real deal". What's the 411? established Blige as a dynamic storyteller whose performances of love narrative drew upon both her musical influences and her lived experiences as an icon of the hip-hop-generation. The music was described as "revelatory on a frequent basis". Blige was noted for having a "tough girl persona and streetwise lyrics".On July 28, 1992, Uptown/MCA Records released What's the 411?, to positive reviews from critics. What's the 411? peaked at number six on the Billboard 200 and topped the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart. It also peaked at number 53 on the UK Albums Chart. It was certified three times Platinum by the RIAA. According to Entertainment Weeklys Dave DiMartino, with the record's commercial success and Blige's "powerful, soulful voice and hip-hop attitude", she "solidly connected with an audience that has never seen a woman do new jack swing but loves it just the same". According to Dave McAleer, Blige became the most successful new female R&B artist of 1992 in the United States.
What's the 411? earned her two Soul Train Music Awards in 1993: Best New R&B Artist and Best R&B Album, Female. It was also voted the year's 30th best album in the Pazz & Jop—an annual poll of American critics nationwide, published by The Village Voice. By August 2010, the album had sold 3,318,000 copies in the US.
What's the 411? has since been viewed by critics as one of the 1990s' most important records. Blige's combination of vocals over a hip hop beat proved influential in contemporary R&B. With the album, she was dubbed the reigning "Queen of Hip Hop Soul"
The album's success spun off What's the 411? Remix, a remix album released in December that was used to extend the life of the What's the 411? singles on the radio into 1994, as Blige recorded her follow-up album.
Following the success of her debut album and a remixed version in 1993, Blige went into the recording studio in the winter of 1993 to record her second album, My Life.
The album was a breakthrough for Blige, who at this point was in a clinical depression, battling both drugs and alcohol – as well as being in an abusive relationship with K-Ci Hailey. On November 29, 1994, Uptown/MCA released My Life to positive reviews. The album peaked at number seven on the US Billboard 200 and number one of the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart for selling 481,000 copies in its first week and remaining atop the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart for an unprecedented eight weeks. It ultimately spent 46 weeks on the Billboard 200 and 84 weeks on the R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart. In 2002, My Life was ranked number 57 on Blenders list of the 100 greatest American albums of all time. The following year, Rolling Stone placed it at number 279 on their 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, and in 2006, the record was included in Times 100 greatest albums of all-time list.
Blige involved herself in several outside projects, recording a cover of Aretha Franklin's " A Natural Woman" for the soundtrack to the FOX series New York Undercover, and "Everyday It Rains" for the soundtrack to the hip hop documentary, The Show. Later in the year, she recorded the Babyface-penned and produced "Not Gon' Cry", for the soundtrack to the motion picture Waiting to Exhale. The platinum-selling single rose to number two on the Billboard Hot 100 and number one on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs in early 1996. Blige gained her first two Grammy nominations and won the 1996 Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group for her collaboration with Method Man on "I'll Be There for You/You're All I Need to Get By". Shortly after, Blige was featured on Jay-Z's breakthrough single, "Can't Knock the Hustle", from his debut Reasonable Doubt and with Ghostface Killah on "All That I Got Is You" from his debut, Ironman, which was also released that year. In addition, Blige co-wrote four songs, provided background vocals and was featured prominently on two singles with fellow R&B singer Case on his self-titled debut album including the US top 20 hit, "Touch Me, Tease Me", which also featured then up-and-coming rapper Foxy Brown.
What's the 411? highlights the featuring of woman centered narratives although in this album her narratives were regularly policed and told through male emcees. Nonetheless, it marked the start of a transition towards black women centered narratives that focused on the daily experiences and troubles of the black experience through the lens of women rather than necessarily singing about black trauma. Treva B. Lindsey, in her piece "If You Look in My Life: Love, Hip-Hop Soul, and Contemporary African-American Womanhood", highlights the regulating by men saying, "Although the lyrics on What's the 411? establish an African American woman-centered discourse, male artists' words of adoration and longing first introduce listeners to Blige as a hip-hop storyteller. What's the 411?, therefore, functions as an African American woman-centered storytelling space created largely by black men."