Few musical artists can claim to have been as influential as Mary J. Blige, whose fusion of hip-hop beats and soul vocals invented an entire genre of music and spawned countless imitators. She’s battled incredible adversity throughout her life, but always forged her own path rather than bowing to trends, and through her painfully honest lyrics she’s shone a light on the experiences of young black women, making her as relatable a figure as she is an influential one.
Becoming The Queen of Hip-Hop Soul
Mary was born in 1971 in the Bronx, New York, and her life was full of turmoil from the beginning. Her father was physically abusive towards her mother, and Mary has described how even after her parents split up when she was 4 years old, her father would return “to abuse us some more”. As a child, Mary found herself surrounded by abuse and violence outside the home as well as within it; as she later told People magazine “We lived in the ghetto… I’d hear women screaming and running down the halls from guys beating up on them. People chased us with weapons. I never saw a woman there who wasn’t abused. When I was 5, sexual stuff was done to me. My mother was a single parent, a working woman. She left us with people she thought could be trusted. They hurt me. After that happened, I thought: ‘Is it somehow my fault?’”
Her only refuge in childhood was the church, where she was able to sing in the choir with her mother and sister, and where nobody attempted to harm her or her family, but when she was 16 she dropped out of school and fell in with a bad crowd: “I ended up becoming my environment… it was bigger than me. I had no self-respect. I hated myself. I thought I was ugly. Alcohol, sex, drugs—I’d do whatever it took to feel a little better.” Fortunately her teenage instincts weren’t exclusively self-destructive: one positive step she took when she was only 17 was to head to her local mall and record herself singing along to Anita Baker’s Caught Up in the Rapture. She did not expect anything to come of it, but the tape was passed around and eventually ended up in the hands of Andre Harrell, the CEO of Uptown Records. He signed Mary up as an in-house backing singer, and put her in the studio with a promising young producer who would also go on to enormous fame, Sean “Puffy” Combs. The pair came up with Mary’s debut album, What’s The 411?, which was the beginning of the signature Mary J. Blige sound, mixing hip-hop beats with soul vocals. This had rarely been done before, and never by someone with such obvious songwriting and vocal talent. Critics loved the record, and swiftly started referring to Mary as “The Queen of Hip-Hop Soul”.
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Few musical artists can claim to have been as influential as Mary J. Blige, whose fusion of hip-hop beats and soul vocals invented an entire genre of music and spawned countless imitators. She’s battled incredible adversity throughout her life, but always forged her own path rather than bowing to trends, and through her painfully honest lyrics she’s shone a light on the experiences of young black women, making her as relatable a figure as she is an influential one.
Becoming The Queen of Hip-Hop Soul
Mary was born in 1971 in the Bronx, New York, and her life was full of turmoil from the beginning. Her father was physically abusive towards her mother, and Mary has described how even after her parents split up when she was 4 years old, her father would return “to abuse us some more”. As a child, Mary found herself surrounded by abuse and violence outside the home as well as within it; as she later told People magazine “We lived in the ghetto… I’d hear women screaming and running down the halls from guys beating up on them. People chased us with weapons. I never saw a woman there who wasn’t abused. When I was 5, sexual stuff was done to me. My mother was a single parent, a working woman. She left us with people she thought could be trusted. They hurt me. After that happened, I thought: ‘Is it somehow my fault?’”
Her only refuge in childhood was the church, where she was able to sing in the choir with her mother and sister, and where nobody attempted to harm her or her family, but when she was 16 she dropped out of school and fell in with a bad crowd: “I ended up becoming my environment… it was bigger than me. I had no self-respect. I hated myself. I thought I was ugly. Alcohol, sex, drugs—I’d do whatever it took to feel a little better.” Fortunately her teenage instincts weren’t exclusively self-destructive: one positive step she took when she was only 17 was to head to her local mall and record herself singing along to Anita Baker’s Caught Up in the Rapture. She did not expect anything to come of it, but the tape was passed around and eventually ended up in the hands of Andre Harrell, the CEO of Uptown Records. He signed Mary up as an in-house backing singer, and put her in the studio with a promising young producer who would also go on to enormous fame, Sean “Puffy” Combs. The pair came up with Mary’s debut album, What’s The 411?, which was the beginning of the signature Mary J. Blige sound, mixing hip-hop beats with soul vocals. This had rarely been done before, and never by someone with such obvious songwriting and vocal talent. Critics loved the record, and swiftly started referring to Mary as “The Queen of Hip-Hop Soul”.
Her success did little to help her personal life. She was still depressed, still struggling with drug abuse, and was in an abusive relationship with the Jodeci singer K-Ci Hailey. All of these subjects became themes on Mary’s second album, 1994’s My Life, a breakthrough commercial success despite its dark and unsettling lyrical content, and a record that cemented the young star as one of the most popular and influential recording artists of the decade. She picked up her first of nine Grammy awards the following year for her stunning collaboration with Wu-Tang Clan’s Method Man, I’ll Be There For You/You’re All I Need To Get By, which influenced a tidal wave of crossover collaborations from other artists in the years to come. Similarly, her proud, defiantly feminist lyrics about relationships have been credited with influencing the likes of TLC’s No Scrubs and Bills Bills Bills by Destiny’s Child.
Throughout this period, she had a reputation as a fierce and uncompromising interviewee - famously challenging former model and journalist Veronica Webb to a fight - and her personal life continued to be a source of constant sadness. A low point came in 1995 when she appeared on the British tabloid television show The Word, where the presenters had set her up in a sickening trap; they asked her about her widely-rumored engagement to K-Ci Hailey, and she confirmed that they were indeed engaged, before the presenters played her footage of Hailey on the same show the previous week denying the engagement. Her success also worsened her addictions, and she developed a serious cocaine problem that plagued her throughout the first decade of her career. Happily, the end of her relationship with Hailey, after 12 long and arduous years, also led to the end of her substance abuse problems, and she got sober in 2002.
An inspirational role model
From an early stage in her career Mary was aware of her status as a role model to other young girls from similar backgrounds. As she told New York magazine in 1999 “I am every young girl in every hood… the fans understand that whatever they’re going through in their lives, I’m probably going through it, too – and then some. But whatever happens, we’re gonna get each other through it. We’re gonna cry at my concert, we’re gonna be mad, we’re gonna go through the emotions that we’re having, you know what I mean? It’s not just songs and glamor. It’s sweat, blood, broken toes, and mistakes… It’s life.” She has become famous for her raw, emotional live performances, and her connection with fans; as the rapper Nas stated when nominating her as one of Time’s 100 Most Influential People in 2022, “she was the one for it because she wasn’t made up. She was the girl around the way with the big earrings. She was like a spokesperson for a particular type of girl coming out of New York and coming out of the streets.”
Mary performing during the Superbowl LVI halftime show
Now Mary is more than just a spokesperson for New Yorkers, she’s also using her success and influence to help lift up others from her area. In 2007 she created Foundation For the Advancement of Women Now (FFAWN) with the goal of using her personal story and success to inspire and empower women. She provides practical support in Yonkers, the area where she grew up, through The Mary J. Blige Center for Women, which provides diverse services including adult basic education, parenting lessons, and other life skills training, as well as serving as a food bank for needy families in the area. It’s a vital local service that provides valuable support, and coupled with Mary’s own inspirational career, it’s part of a legacy that unquestionably marks Mary J Blige out as a True Superhero.
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