"My intention was to build myself up out of this very dark, negative place," Mary J. “I was their homegirl, their friend, their sister in their head.” “Especially in the African American community, I was just Mary,” she says. It also made her seem relatable even as the hits piled up. Blige was singing about her life the way rappers were rapping about theirs the music had an edge that distinguished it from the polished, aspirational love songs of the ’80s. The emotional realism in Blige’s music marked her as a pioneer when she emerged with unflinching hip-hop-soul records like “ Real Love” and the title track from 1994’s acclaimed “My Life” album, which flipped a sample from Roy Ayers’ “Everybody Loves the Sunshine” into a mournful account of hard times. You better sit down, get that tissue box, have a drink, whatever you need, ’cause it’s gonna bring up some s- of your own.” “Mary doesn’t have followers or fans - she has believers,” says Kevin Liles, the longtime hip-hop executive who signed Blige to his label 300 Entertainment to release “Good Morning Gorgeous.” Liles and the singer have known each other for decades he helped organize her classic mid-’90s duet with Method Man, “ I’ll Be There for You/You’re All I Need to Get By.” In his view, “You don’t just listen to Mary. Yet as much as Blige is looking inward in her new music, the key to her appeal has always been her ability to let listeners in. By 2017, the singer was on the stage at Clive Davis’ annual pre-Grammys party, telling the crowd of music-biz insiders that she was “going through some horrible stuff right now.” 1 radio smash and three Grammy Awards with “ Be Without You,” which celebrates the flowering of a romance. In 2005, Blige - dubbed the Queen of Hip-Hop Soul in the early ’90s thanks to her tender yet street-smart work with Sean “Puffy” Combs - scored a No. I cried happy tears.”Ī course of self care after an extended rough patch - that’s the story of Blige’s poignant new album, “Good Morning Gorgeous,” her first since the finalization of her lengthy and painful divorce from record producer Kendu Isaacs, to whom she was married for a decade and a half. “But really I was just happy that I made it to 50. “I remember I was just playing music all day long - ‘Alright’ by Kendrick - and me and my girlfriends were bouncing and dancing and having a good time. “Man, the best present was the one I got me,” the R&B star says with a laugh, recalling a lavish trip to Turks and Caicos that she documented with a series of striking swimsuit photos that quickly went viral online. Blige turned 50 last year, the best birthday present she received didn’t come from a friend or a colleague or a member of her family.
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