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https://capturetheatlas.com/things-to-do-the-bronx/
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en
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10 Best Things to Do in The Bronx, NY, + MAP
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Check out the best things to do in The Bronx, NY. Top tourist attractions in The Bronx, activities, parks, and other places to visit.
|
en
|
Capture the Atlas
|
https://capturetheatlas.com/things-to-do-the-bronx/
|
There are lots of cool things to do in The Bronx, so if you’re on the fence about whether to visit, I recommend checking it out. The Bronx may not be as popular as the touristy hubs of Manhattan and Brooklyn, but it’s an interesting area that stands out for its rich, unique culture.
The Bronx is known for being the toughest of NYC’s 5 boroughs, but it’s also the hometown of legends like Al Pacino, Jennifer Lopez, and Mary J. Blige. This borough has its own history and a legacy of artistic exploration and wealth. It’s also full of natural parks and green spaces, as well as some of the oldest homes and monuments in the city.
Plus, it’s just north of Manhattan, so you don’t have to go far to appreciate the best tourist attractions in The Bronx. If you’re short on time or want to make sure you only visit the safest areas of the borough, consider this contrasts tour, which also takes you through Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens.
Of course, I suggest taking the time to visit this borough and its hidden gems. To help you decide what to see in The Bronx, I’m sharing the 10 best attractions and activities below.
1. Visit New York Botanical Garden, the best thing to do in The Bronx
Without a doubt, New York Botanical Garden is one of the best places in The Bronx. It encompasses over 250 acres of themed gardens, walking paths, and greenhouses, making it a lovely spot for all ages.
Here, you’ll find a children’s adventure garden as well as lush areas of azaleas, roses, and herbs. This attraction is open year-round, so depending on when you go, you’ll see seasonal blooms and different plant species.
Don’t forget to visit the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory to explore all kinds of tropical plants, vines, cacti, and even aquatic plants during the warmer months. The outdoor lake has lovely water lilies and lotus flowers, which look absolutely stunning in the spring.
Throughout the grounds, you’ll find wooded walking trails through the arboretum, so this is a great place to go for a date in NYC or for a family outing. This famous Bronx landmark is very popular, so get your ticket here or use your New York Pass.
2. Watch a baseball game at Yankee Stadium, something fun to do in The Bronx
If you’re a sports fan, then Yankee Stadium is a must-see in The Bronx. This massive arena is home to the New York Yankees, one of the most celebrated teams in Major League Baseball, with 27 World Series wins.
Even if the Yankees aren’t your favorite team, it’s worth visiting the stadium for a tour or a summer baseball game. Yankee Stadium has an over 50,000-person capacity, and it holds tours for visitors. Each tour lasts about an hour and includes a stop at Monument Park, the stadium’s open-air museum.
Check out memorials, plaques, and commemorative granite blocks for famous players like Babe Ruth, Mickey Mantle, Joe DiMaggio, and Lou Gehrig. You’ll also see retired jersey numbers and artifacts chronicling the history of the franchise.
3. Edgar Allan Poe Cottage, one of the most famous places in The Bronx, New York
For those who appreciate literary history, the Edgar Allan Poe Cottage is a famous place in The Bronx to check out. This simple house in the Fordham neighborhood of The Bronx served as the writer’s final home, which he shared with his wife and mother-in-law.
During his time here, Poe penned some of his most notorious literary criticisms, as well as poems like Annabel Lee and Ulalume. Today, the home is a designated landmark and listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
You can go and see for yourself the modest, colonial-style furnishings and humble ambiance of the house, which surprised many of Poe’s contemporaries at the time. From the outside, the building doesn’t look any different from the other homes in the area, but it holds significant value for fans of Poe and his dreary and mysterious writings.
4. Little Italy, one of the best places to eat in The Bronx
While you may be more familiar with the Little Italy of Manhattan, The Bronx also has a Little Italy. It’s along Arthur Avenue, in the Belmont section of The Bronx, and is home to various bakeries, restaurants, pizzerias, and shops.
Little Italy is one of the best places to eat in The Bronx since you’ll find mouth-watering pizza, delicious homemade Italian specialties, and scrumptious desserts here. Some notable attractions include Terranova Bakery and Artuso Pastry Shop for fresh-baked bread and sweets, as well as Famosa Pizza and Ivana’s Pizzeria for the tastiest NY-style pizza in the area. Top it off with authentic cannoli, and you’ve got a complete food tour through Little Italy.
In addition, this neighborhood has independently-run shops, markets, butchers, and delis where you can buy fresh mozzarella cheese, handmade pasta, and more. So, if you’re looking for a Bronx tourist attraction that will appeal to everyone, Little Italy is a must-see.
5. Stroll through Wave Hill, something to do in The Bronx as a family
One of the top things to do in The Bronx is to spend time in a park or natural area, and for that, I recommend Wave Hill. This old estate dates back to 1843 and consists of two homes, a conservatory, and beautiful public gardens spread across 28 acres.
Wave Hill was built by a lawyer before being sold to a prominent New York publisher in 1903. Over the years, famous figures have rented the home, such as Theodore Roosevelt and Mark Twain. Today, it’s a gorgeous landmark in The Bronx, New York that’s open to the public.
Here, you can check out the visitor center and explore the wooded walking trail, then stroll through the public gardens full of herbs, perennials, and other blooms. The garden pergola overlooks the Hudson River, so it’s the perfect spot to sit down and spend a few relaxing moments in nature. Keep an eye out for hummingbirds, great blue herons, and bald eagles.
There is also a conservatory with cacti and succulents, and the T.H. Everett Alpine House, which contains mountainous plants and flora. Overall, this is one of the best places in The Bronx to visit as a couple for an outdoor date or peaceful afternoon.
6. Bronx Museum of the Arts, one of the most popular tourist attractions in The Bronx
For something free to do in The Bronx, I recommend visiting The Bronx Museum of the Arts. This is one of the top free museums in NYC and focuses on contemporary art by a diverse group of artists and communities.
The museum has several permanent collections of art installations and sculptures, photographs, paintings, drawings, prints, and more. There are also various visiting exhibits that you can find here throughout the year, not to mention community events like curated tours and family days.
The works here explore all kinds of themes, from different ethnic identities to historical events, as well as legends and local creators. It’s among the most famous museums in The Bronx, NY, so if you’re looking for things to do on a rainy day or you want to experience unique perspectives, check it out. The museum is open Wednesday – Sunday from 1 p.m. to 6 p.m.
7. Pelham Bay Park, one of the best parks in The Bronx, NY
As I mentioned, there are lovely parks in The Bronx, New York, so you can’t come here without spending some time outside. Pelham Bay Park is a great spot for recreation, people-watching, and nature walks, so it’s a must-see during your visit.
Pelham Bay Park is massive, covering 2,700 acres and boasting several different geological areas where you can discover various flora and fauna. The park dates back to 1888 and has grown to include two golf courses, an equestrian center, a running track, and several playgrounds.
For this reason, it’s one of the nicest places in The Bronx to visit as a couple or with kids. You’ll always find people playing basketball, tennis, or bocce here, as well as folks lounging in the grass or chatting on benches.
In addition to the recreational activities, the park offers a break from the busyness of the city. It’s a popular venue for nature walks and bird-watching since ospreys, loons, and willow flycatchers inhabit the area.
Pelham Bay Park is also home to Orchard Beach, the only beach in The Bronx and one of the best beaches in NYC. This public, artificial beach is known as The Bronx Riviera and offers views of Long Island Sound, a beautiful freshwater cove, and a waterfront promenade where you can go shopping or grab a bite to eat.
8. Van Cortlandt Park and House Museum, a famous landmark in The Bronx
Another one of the best parks in New York City is right in The Bronx. Van Cortlandt Park is another popular park in The Bronx, New York for its relaxing atmosphere and sprawling green spaces. People come here to play sports, take a nature walk, and admire the historic monuments and buildings.
One of those famous Bronx landmarks is the Van Cortlandt House Museum. Built in 1748, it’s the oldest remaining building in the borough and has been designated as a National Historic Landmark. This home has a fieldstone exterior, reflecting the Georgian style and over time, the Van Cortlandt family added a grist mill and grain plantation here.
During the American Revolutionary War, generals like George Washington stayed here, and today, you can take a self-guided tour to see what the inside of the house would’ve looked like back in the day. The house museum also has some exhibits and historical artifacts that give you a glimpse of 18th-century life.
Admission is $5 for adults and $3 for kids, but you can get in for free on Wednesdays.
9. Bartow-Pell Mansion Museum, another museum in The Bronx, NY
The Bartow-Pell Mansion Museum is another historic house museum in The Bronx, New York. It’s in Pelham Bay Park, so if you needed another reason to visit this beautiful green space, this is it.
The estate house is one of the area’s few surviving buildings from the mid-19th century and was originally built in 1836. It was first designed in the Greek Revival style, although its later renovations reflect the Federal style. In addition to the main mansion, there is a carriage house and a formal garden with a terrace and a children’s garden.
Moreover, the museum houses impressive objects like Aaron Burr’s old desk and an authentic Lannuier bed, as well as the Pell family gravesites. The estate also overlooks the bay, so it’s a nice place in The Bronx to visit for a change of scenery. Admission to the mansion museum is $10, and you can take a guided tour.
10. Visit Woodlawn Cemetery, a unique thing to do in The Bronx, New York
Finally, Woodlawn Cemetery is a magnificent tourist attraction in The Bronx, even if at first it seems a bit strange. While it is indeed a cemetery, this place is also a National Historic Landmark with over 400 acres of beautiful natural scenery, tree-lined paths, and a tranquil atmosphere.
Taking a reflective stroll along the grassy hills and admiring the monuments, sculptures, and memorials is one of the best outdoor activities in NYC. As one of the largest cemeteries in the city, Woodlawn has over 300,000 burial plots and serves as the final resting place for many famous figures.
For example, author Herman Melville, musicians Miles Davis and Duke Ellington, and entrepreneurs Rowland Hussey Macy and F. W. Woolworth are buried here. You can also visit singer Celia Cruz’s mausoleum and several Civil War-era memorials and war graves.
Overall, this is a lovely outdoor area with a peaceful ambiance that’s quite welcome after a busy day in the city. You can visit on your own or sign up for a walking or trolley tour through the cemetery’s website.
Now you know the coolest things to do in The Bronx, NY! I’m leaving a map here with all my recommendations so you can plan your visit to the best places in The Bronx.
Of course, don’t hesitate to leave me a comment if you have any questions about The Bronx, New York. I would be delighted to help, and I’d love to hear about your favorite thing to do in The Bronx.
Until then, have an awesome trip!
|
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correct_birth_00056
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FactBench
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3
| 51
|
https://albumism.com/celebrations/happy-birthday-mary-j-blige
|
en
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Happy Birthday to Mary J. Blige, Born January 11, 1971
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[
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[
"Albumism Staff"
] |
2024-01-11T00:01:00-05:00
|
Please join the Albumism team in celebrating Mary J. Blige’s musical legacy and share your personal memories of her with us.
|
en
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https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/56858337cbced60d3b293aef/4c7940fd-09d5-4c29-b69d-002cc344ce69/favicon.ico?format=100w
|
Albumism
|
https://albumism.com/celebrations/happy-birthday-mary-j-blige
|
Please join the Albumism team in celebrating Mary J. Blige’s musical legacy and revisit audio & video highlights from her career below!
Born: January 11, 1971
Biography | Discography (Studio Albums):
What's the 411? (1992) | Read More
My Life (1994) | Read More
Share My World (1997) | Read More
Mary (1999)
No More Drama (2001) | Read More
Love & Life (2003)
The Breakthrough (2005)
Growing Pains (2007)
Stronger with Each Tear (2009)
My Life II... The Journey Continues (Act 1) (2011)
A Mary Christmas (2013)
The London Sessions (2014)
Strength of a Woman (2017)
Good Morning Gorgeous (2022) | Read More
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correct_birth_00056
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FactBench
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1
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https://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/bronx-history/48360066
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en
|
A BRIEF history of The BRONCK'S
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2015-05-19T23:12:12+00:00
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A BRIEF history of The BRONCK'S - Download as a PDF or view online for free
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https://public.slidesharecdn.com/_next/static/media/favicon.7bc3d920.ico
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SlideShare
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https://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/bronx-history/48360066
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2. Bronx Natives Non-Bronx Natives Something you associate with this borough What is it like visiting this place? Describe the people, places, scents, and sights. Something you hope others associate with your borough…..and…. …something you hope they DON’T associate with your borough. If you’ve never been to the Bronx, form your own group in the hallway. Just….get….OUT.
3. TOTS: You may have heard things about people or places but after MEETING those people or GOING to those places, some of that stuff may not be true. You gotta find your own truth! Raph: Cultural baggage is usually enabled by stereotypes. Michelle: Cultural SHOCK! This is when you go from one dominant culture to another, and see, smell, and experience those differences! CULTURAL BAGGAGE: Things in your lifetime that you see/heard And you relate to that experience… Something you’ve grown up with that has influenced you to believe a certain thing. Sometimes when traveling you carry similar associations…but they may be FALSE. Often based on assumptions.
4. Throughout Bronx history, the population has been in flux. It started with the Lenape natives, then the Dutch and the Germans in the 1600s, and later saw major emigration from Irish, Italians and European Jews in the 17-1800s. African-Americans and Puerto Ricans became the dominant populations in the mid-1900s, and today we see Dominicans, Albanians, Mexicans, Garifuna, Bangladeshi, Africans and many others joining the great Bronx melting pot…or is it a salad bowl?
5. Popular names from the Bronx The Bronx was the birthplace of hip hop and graffiti culture (though some claim north Philadelphia was the originator of these two urban styles of art), and many others have called The Bronx their home... Woody Allen, Bella Abzug, Herman Badillo, the Belmonts, Lloyd Blankfein, Mary J. Blige, Stokely Carmichael, Afrika Bambatta, Lou Gehrig, John Gotti, Calvin Klein, Edward Koch, Ralph Lauren, Tito Puente, Carly Simon, Sonia Sotomayor, Leon Trotsky, Edgar Allen Poe Jennifer Lopez, and Mark Twain.Bronx Historical Society
6. First Nations Lenape Native Americans Lenape natives had strong family ties when it came to parents and children, and the family’s clan was passed down on the mother’s side. They cleared land for farming, planted and harvested crops, and were crafty with everything from baskets to canoes: basically anything they needed in their society they were able to make by hand. Generally, the Lenape lived in small groups of about 50 people per village, though some were as large as 300. The specific Lenape tribes in the Bronx were called Siwanoy and Wecquaesgeek. Those still alive today typically refer to themselves as “Delaware Indians”Gutenberg,2015
7. Forced to move in 1700’s to present-day Ohio… Forced to move into Indiana/Missouri in 1819 Forced to move into Kansas territory in 1830 Forced to move into Oklahoma territory in 1860 Not recognized by the US government until 1996 as a “tribal nation.” First Nations Lenape Native Americans Carol A. Lipscomb, “Delaware Indians” Fun Fact! The Lenape had a trade route that stretched from the southerN tip of Manahatta (“hilly island”) that stretched all the way to BOSTON. The road that ran through the island and up through the Bronx is called “Broadway” today. Museum of the American Indian
8. Jonas Bronck The Bronx is named in memory of the areas first European settler, the Swede, Jonas Bronck. Bronck was born in ca. 1600. his father was a Lutheran Minister. Bronck moved to the Americas in 1639. Bronck wrote to a friend in Amsterdam, “The invisible hand of the Almighty Father, surely guided me to this beautiful country, a land covered with virgin forest and unlimited opportunities. It is a veritable paradise and needs but the industrious hand of man to make it the finest and most beautiful region in all the world.” Nytimes.com
9. Jonas Bronck The Bronx is named in memory of the areas first European settler, the Swede, Jonas Bronck. A mural in the rotunda of the Bronx County Courthouse depicts Jonas Bronck arriving in Westchester County, or “New Netherland”
10. Jonas Bronck What do you cover in your history class when it comes to early NYC colonialism? What brought settlers over from Europe? What made them STAY? Some native currency was measured in wampum. The Quakers were a religious group that was essentially driven out of Europe because they were WAAAAAY TOO RELIGIOUS. Was there a “wall” on “wall street”
11. Jonas Bronck What do you cover in your history class when it comes to early NYC colonialism? What brought settlers over from Europe? What made them STAY? 7th grade history, shortly reviewed. “ownership of land” Europeans brought the idea of MUCH bigger farms, Europeans brought diseases Rape and murder from both parties. “New Netherlands”…specifically “New Amsterdam!” Actual history of the Native Lenape peoples (not just a Euro-centric view) How did the Lenape adapt to European presence? (read Guns, Germs and Steel) HYBBS!!!! C’mon!!
12. Jonas Bronck Bronck’s time in New Netherland was quite brief. For 4 years he raised cattle and plants in the area that is today known as Mott Haven. Relations between the Dutch and the native American Indian population were tenuous at best, but Bronck grew tobacco and traded with the local Indians, keeping the peace through exchanges of goods. Jonas however had arrived at a rather unfortunate time to be a foreigner, with foreign looks, a foreign language, and a foreign culture.
13. Painting by Col. J St. Claire, 1914 MUSEUM OF THE CITY OF NYC
14. Jonas Bronck All that changed in the 1640’s, when hot-headed William Kieft became the director-general of the port city of New Amsterdam. In 1643, driven by growing animosities and the murder of a single settler, Kieft ordered troops to locate the Lenape populations at “Corsairs Hook” and the area now known as Jersey City, murdering dozens of Lenape and ensuring years of bloody battles between settlers and natives. An endless cycle of “revenge.” Bronck was the unfortunate recipient of native Indian backlash. That same year, 1643, Bronck and most of his settlers were murdered in an Indian raid. Info: NJ City University Map from Johannes Vingboon, 1639
15. Sterling, Aladine The Book of Englewood Despite Bronck having lived there for only four years, the area was known as "Broncksland" through the end of the 17th century. The modern name of the borough does not come directly from that farmland, however, the river that runs north to south through the area, and which his farm abutted, kept the name Bronck's River, eventually being abbreviated or misspelled Bronx River. This name stuck, and it was this river (which splits the modern borough in two) after which The Bronx was named. Following Bronck's death, and the dispersion of the few settlers, the tract passed through the hands of successive Dutch traders until 1670, when it came into the hands of Captain Richard Morris and Colonel Lewis Morris, at the time merchants of Barbados. Four years later, Colonel Morris obtained a royal patent to Bronck's Land, which afterward became the Manor of Morrisania, the second Lewis (son of Captain Richard), exercising proprietary right. Morrisania continues to be the name of a neighborhood today, and is the location of the exhibition we’ll be going to see!
17. Highbridge, Bronx In 1842 the High Bridge opened, lending character to what was then a tiny village on the east bank of the Harlem River. The bridge was a landmark, attracting sightseers like the Prince of Wales and Edgar Allan Poe. It was built by Irish workers, whose descendants were joined in the 1920s and ’30s by European Jews who lived in the surrounding neighborhoods. In 2013 plans were announced to renovate the bridge for public use. This newfound interest in a long neglected part of city infrastructure has boosted real-estate prices inn the area. NYtimes
18. Kingsbridge, Bronx The neighborhood is named for the first bridge connecting Manhattan to the mainland, erected in 1693 in honor of King William III of England. Tolls applied to all people, and cows, crossing it. The Kingsbridge Armory has been hotly debated a site for renovation. But despite plans by a private company to turn it into a “large shopping mall” the community board has shut down redevelopment plans until ‘sustainable’ wages are in place for workers. Currently there are plans to develop this space as the World’s Largest Ice Skating Rink NYtimes
19. Robert Moses
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correct_birth_00056
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FactBench
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0
| 90
|
https://theweek.com/articles/517610/mary-j-blige
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en
|
Mary J. Blige
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[
"The Week Staff"
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2008-01-10T13:41:19+00:00
|
Over her 15-year music career, Mary J. Blige has evolved into the
|
en
|
theweek
|
https://theweek.com/articles/517610/mary-j-blige
|
Growing Pains
(Geffen)
???
Over her 15-year music career, Mary J. Blige has evolved into the “Oprah of Song,” said Leah Greenblatt in Entertainment Weekly. Born in the Bronx and raised in the projects, Blige has always laid bare her struggles—drug addiction, physical abuse, and self-doubt—in her songs. But life has considerably improved for Blige since 1992’s What’s the 411? Blige pleaded for “no more drama,” and finally she has found peace. Growing Pains, her eighth studio album, charts the Queen of Hip-Hop Soul’s rise to success and self-assurance. Blige doesn’t just “ask you to shake what your mama gave you”; she wants you to “feed it, love it—and maybe put a fierce wig on it.” Blige knows people relate to pain, but here she “makes happiness and contentment seem as compelling as the struggle,” said Glenn Gamboa in Newsday. The majority of Growing Pains plays out like a self-help book, but Blige livens up the lessons with bouncy, vintage Michael Jackson beats and steamy boudoir grooves. She also finds room for plenty of guests, including Usher, Ludacris, and Tricky Stewart, who produced Rihanna’s “Umbrella.” Blige is undoubtedly a survivor, but this Mary-shall-overcome bit has become tired, said Ben Sisario in Blender. Growing Pains only reminds us that “in love there’s really nothing new, just flirting and fights and make-up sex.”
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| 3
|
https://ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/entertainment/2021/06/21/black-music-month--spotlighting-bronx-born-mary-j--blige
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en
|
born Mary J. Blige shares her pain
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[
"New York City",
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"Dean Meminger",
"News",
"The Bronx",
"APP Arts & Entertainment",
"Top Stories",
"Entertainment"
] | null |
[
"Dean Meminger"
] |
2021-06-21T00:00:00
|
Singer Mary J. Blige talks good times and bad times.
|
en
|
/etc/designs/news/clientlibs/css/images/favicon-latest/favicon.svg
|
https://ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/entertainment/2021/06/21/black-music-month--spotlighting-bronx-born-mary-j--blige
|
NEW YORK â June marks Black Music Month and a local star is in the spotlight.
The life of Bronx-born singer Mary J. Blige has been on display for the world to witness over her more than 30-year career. That means her successes and her failures have been well documented. Sharing her pain in her music has helped to make Blige a superstar.
"'My Life' was probably my darkest album, like one of the darkest times I have had," Blige said in her Amazon Prime video documentary, which debuts Friday. "Most of the time I was just depressed and didn't want to live."
Titled, âMary J. Bligeâs My Life,â itâs about the making of her 1994 album, âMy Life.â
"There are so many people in this documentary explaining what this album did for them,â said Blige. "Fans are in groups talking about how it helped them to become better people and save their lives."
Successfully combining the hip-hop flavor of the 1980s and 90s and the gritty soul sound of the 60s and 70s, Mary J. Blige quickly became know as the queen of hip-hop soul in the 1990s.
Sharing her lifeâs story of trials and tribulations makes her extremely relatable and loved by her fans.
No personal topic seems untouchable. From a tough childhood, to her adult battles with abuse, depression and addiction, the music has it all and so does the documentary.
"You get it from the horse's mouth and instead of on paper from a reporter,â Blige said while laughing.
âThere are so many songs that define me because they are all pretty much about me," she added.
Songs like, âWhatâs the 411?" âNo More Drama,â and âTake Me As I Am.â
Blige has earned multiple honors and awards, including nine Grammys. The singer and songwriter also has the acting bug with two Academy Award nominations and two Golden Globe nominations.
If thereâs more drama to come in the singerâs life, weâre sure to hear about it in her music.
------
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correct_birth_00056
|
FactBench
|
3
| 8
|
https://www.tvguide.com/celebrities/mary-j-blige/bio/3030386116/
|
en
|
Mary J. Blige Biography
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Read all about Mary J. Blige with TV Guide's exclusive biography including their list of awards, celeb facts and more at TV Guide.
|
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/favicon.ico
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TVGuide.com
|
https://www.tvguide.com/celebrities/mary-j-blige/bio/3030386116/
|
Fast Facts
Dropped out of high school in the 11th grade, but eventually earned her GED
Her demo tape was a karaoke-type recording of Anita Baker's "Caught Up in the Rapture" that she made at a mall when she was 17
It wound up in the hands of Uptown Records exec Andre Harrell, who signed her
Sean Combs was her musical mentor, helping to produce her 1992 debut album, What's the 411?, and its follow-up, 1994's My Life
What's the 411? sold more than two million copies and helped establish what was then termed "New Jack Swing" (a blend of soul and hip-hop)
Made her acting debut in a 1998 episode of The Jamie Foxx Show
In 2004, appeared in the off-Broadway play The Exonerated
Started her own record label, Matriarch Records
Awards
2018Independent Spirit Awards-Robert Altman Award: winner
2018Golden Globe-Best Original Song - Motion Picture: nominated
2017Critics' Choice Awards-Best Supporting Actress: nominated
2017Screen Actors Guild Awards-Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role: nominated
2017Screen Actors Guild Awards-Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture: nominated
2017Oscar-Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role: nominated
2017Oscar-Best Achievement in Music (Original Song): nominated
2012Golden Globe-Best Original Song - Motion Picture: nominated
2012Critics' Choice Movie Awards-Best Song: nominated
2007Critics' Choice Awards-Best Song: nominated
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FactBench
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https://nmaahc.si.edu/events/nmaahc-hip-hop-block-party
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en
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NMAAHC Hip-Hop Block Party
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] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[] |
2023-08-17T11:17:15-04:00
|
NMAAHC Hip-Hop Block Party
|
en
|
/themes/custom/nmaahc_ds/favicon.ico
|
National Museum of African American History and Culture
|
https://nmaahc.si.edu/events/nmaahc-hip-hop-block-party
|
The legacy of Remy Ma is as tightly woven into the fabric of hip-hop history as a bass line. Over the course of nearly two decades, Remy has impacted rap music both near and far, setting a bar for how artists of all genders should approach the art form. However, we lost her physical presence for nearly half of her career span—a story she details in her long-awaited second solo album 7 Winters and 6 Summers. The Bronx-bred Grammy-nominated legend delivers a brand new iteration of Remy Ma, one who is not only integral to the foundation of hip-hop music, but is elevating it as one of the brightest yet timeless stars in the game.
Bobby Carter is slowly changing the music industry, one genre-bending performance at a time. As the Senior Producer for NPR Music’s Tiny Desk Concerts, he’s brought on an increasingly-growing roster of emerging artists, big names, and icons to the company’s headquarters in Washington, D.C. to perform not only for the building’s employees, but for an audience of millions worldwide.
The St. Louis native’s journey has been long and arduous, but fulfilling, to say the least. “I’ve been at NPR for 23 years,” Carter tells ESSENCE. “But my route to where I am now was a bit unconventional; I started out as an intern in the summer of 2000. I was in the digital media space at the time, my job was to edit our content for the web stream. I spearheaded or managed our live streams – and this predated Tiny Desk.”
Since his full transition to Tiny Desk in 2017, Carter has developed partnerships with Complexcon, and HBO’s Insecure, along with creating new initiatives to grow and diversify the program’s reach. He’s also known for further innovating the Tiny Desk Concert Series with artists such as Usher, H.E.R., Anderson.Paak, Jazmine Sullivan, Kirk Franklin, and more. The process of choosing musicians for the now-iconic performance platform has shifted from the time of its inception, but for Carter, he’s more hands on than ever.
H.E.R. story began in Hampton, Va., where Miss H.E.R. developed a passion for music at a very young age. She first became a DJ in March 2014, before making it her full-time occupation in January 2018. Over the years, she earned multiple weekly and monthly residencies at popular Washington D.C. venues, honing her skills and growing her following to become one of the premier DJs in the DMV area. She has been booked by numerous corporate entities such as Apple, Nike, Vice Media, Black Girls Rock, Kennedy Center, Capital One, Serato and many others. She has also spun sets alongside some of the greatest hip hop DJs of all time such as DJ Jazzy Jeff, J. Period, Lord Finesse, and DJ Scratch! Miss H.E.R. especially enjoys providing the soundscape for special events, where she has worked exclusive engagements hosted by Kevin Hart, John Legend, Dave Chapelle, Debra Lee, and Black Thought to name a few. A successful DJ, businesswoman and influencer, Miss H.E.R.’s childhood dream has manifested thanks to hard work, dedication, and a passion for the music that moves us all!
Marc “Nfinit” Williams hails from Virginia Beach Virginia. Currently residing in Silver Spring MD, MarcNfinit wears multiple hats including, producer, engineer, and DJ. As a member of the True School Corporation, founded by Grammy Award winning producer and DJ, 9th Wonder, MarcNfinit has been an ambassador of bridging the gap, through music, between multiple generations for over a decade. His love for DJing has opened doors to receiving production credits with artist like Wale, Raheem Devaughn, IDK, Torae, and Skyzoo. MarcNfinit is a true student of hip hop, but more importantly music as a whole. His style of production and DJing is far from limited. Ask MarcNfinit and he’ll tell you what drives him is the “sense of gratification when you create something from scratch that moves people”.
The nation’s capitol has a hometown hero that spins, scratches and blends music while staunchly staying true to her roots. You can’t mute D.C. and you can’t mute DJ Heat. This skilled talent was just 13-years-old when she first discovered her interest in turntables courtesy of a Wreckx-N-Effect classic. She then went from fantasizing about spinning records to the real thing. An indelible spark was lit and a summer of saved paychecks led to her ultimately following her path and pursuing her passion. That small spark created a full- on flame, and DJ Heat took purposeful steps to align herself with her dream.
|
||||
correct_birth_00056
|
FactBench
|
2
| 31
|
https://www.timeout.com/newyork/news/a-massive-hip-hop-extravaganza-hosted-by-mary-j-blige-is-taking-over-all-of-nyc-this-month-050124
|
en
|
Mary J. Blige to host a massive hip
|
[
"https://media.timeout.com/images/106093580/170/170/image.jpg",
"https://media.timeout.com/images/106128222/750/422/image.jpg"
] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[
"Ian Kumamoto"
] |
2024-05-01T16:47:00+00:00
|
How to get tickets to the third annual "Strength of a Woman Festival and Summit."
|
en
|
/static/images/favicon.ico
|
Time Out New York
|
https://www.timeout.com/newyork/news/a-massive-hip-hop-extravaganza-hosted-by-mary-j-blige-is-taking-over-all-of-nyc-this-month-050124
|
The queen of hip hop, Mary J. Blige, is about to host her third annual "Strength of a Woman Festival and Summit" throughout New York City and you might want to get the whole crew together for this electrifying family affair.
The three-day festival will include concerts, panels, and female empowerment sessions curated by an all-Black and all-women team.
RECOMMENDED: A huge music festival showcasing Asian-American talent is coming to NYC
Mary J. Blige created the multi-day festival in partnership with PEPSI and Live Nation Urban to empower and give resources to women of color across the music, wellness, tech, beauty and financial literacy sectors.
“I’m so excited to bring our Strength of a Woman Festival and Summit to my hometown, New York City, a place that has always been a huge source of inspiration for me,” the artist said in an official statement. “Having the opportunity to continue to uplift, inspire and build within my community is the reason I created this festival. [...] Nobody does it like New York, so get ready.”
The festival is going to kick off on Friday, May 10, with a jazz concert starring Robert Glasper at Blue Note in Greenwich Village.
The programming will continue on Saturday, May 11, with the Strength of a Woman Summit, an all day affair featuring keynote speakers, panels, workshops and more. The event's hosted by Jess Hilarious, comedian and co-host of The Breakfast Club, and Gia Peppers, a podcaster and entertainment journalist.
The Saturday will close out with a Coachella-level concert at Barclays Center on May 11 where Blige will perform alongside special guests 50 Cent, Jill Scott, Fat Joe, Jadakiss, Lola Brooke and Funk Flex. Angie Martinez will host the event at Barclays.
On Sunday, May 12, a gospel brunch hosted by Blige at the Brooklyn Chophouse in Times Square and a gospel concert featuring The Clark Sisters at the recently renovated Brooklyn Paramount will wrap up the extravagant affair.
|
||||
correct_birth_00056
|
FactBench
|
1
| 72
|
https://www.grubstreet.com/article/best-nyc-restaurants-social-history-new-york.html
|
en
|
A History of New York Through Some of NYC’s Best Restaurants
|
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] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[
"The Editors",
"Marcia Bricker Halperin",
"Paula Aceves",
"Lucy Boyle",
"Chris Crowley",
"Leigh McMullan Abramson",
"Adam Platt",
"Fat Joe",
"Christopher Bonanos",
"Julia Fox"
] |
2024-04-08T07:00:32.762000-04:00
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A social history of New York, told entirely through its restaurants. For our 10th Yesteryear Issue, we dove into the NYC’s most legendary dining rooms. This is “Who Ate Where.”
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en
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Grub Street
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https://www.grubstreet.com/article/best-nyc-restaurants-social-history-new-york.html
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This article was featured in One Great Story, New York’s reading recommendation newsletter. Sign up here to get it nightly.
Go to any city in America and you can likely find a good Italian place, the hot Korean spot, and a semi-secret sushi counter. It’s only in New York that we have the rap-mogul restaurant, the supermodel café, the indie-director diner, and the club kids’ breakfast nook. We go to restaurants for oxtail or cocktails, but we also go to find our people. The great New York critic Vivian Gornick recently told my colleague Hilary Reid about the first time she was taken to Café Loup on West 13th Street by an editor: “He told me it was a ‘writer restaurant.’ I was thrilled. I thought, Oh boy, I’m being initiated.”
It was not always this way. As William Grimes writes in his 2009 book, Appetite City, the word restaurant entered popular usage only about 200 years ago. Paris was the western world’s culinary capital. New York subsisted on tavern grub: beef, bread, beer, oysters. Then the Delmonico brothers gussied up their downtown café with European-style glamour and a new era was born. Henri Soulé unveiled his Pavillon, Edna Lewis put she-crab soup on the menu at Gage & Tollner, and Masa Takayama turned a Columbus Circle mall into a sushi-baller landmark. Tastes change, styles evolve; the essential fact that our restaurants are our hubs and our hideouts does not.
The Yesteryear Issue
Who Ate Where
More on ‘Who Ate Where’
See All
Restaurants are extensions of our offices and refuges from our tiny kitchens, many of which are barely functional. With respect, our best spots are not defined only by their cooks and their hosts and their servers; they are defined by us, the indefatigable regulars. What would La Côte Basque have been without its swans? Mr Chow minus Andy and Jean-Michel? It’s impossible to imagine the Odeon without McInerney, Sylvia’s with no Sharpton.
For our tenth “Yesteryear” issue, we dove into the haunts and the joints, choosing the moments when individual scenes flourished. Through dozens of snapshots, we found a history of the city that hasn’t otherwise been told. The restaurants here were great not because of what they were but because of who we were and who we became while we were there. Landmarks may fade, but the feeling of ease that comes from finding your place — or, failing that, the place where the SNL cast likes to hang out — is timeless and universal.
—Matthew Schneier
Cafe La Fortuna in 1980
Where John and Yoko Went for Cannoli
On the day that Cafe La Fortuna opened on the Upper West Side in 1976, business was slow. “We sold one espresso and made exactly 85 cents,” says Richard Urwand, son of the café’s late owners, Alice and Vincent Urwand. “We thought, What the hell did we just do? But I guess someone liked that one espresso enough to tell someone else, and before we knew it, people started coming in.” Eventually, word spread to the two most famous people in the neighborhood (and arguably the entire world): John Lennon and Yoko Ono, who lived a block away at the Dakota.
Cafe La Fortuna, which was best known for its sandwiches and Italian desserts, became the couple’s regular spot. “They used to come in a few times a week, him more than her,” says Urwand. “He would sit at the same table in the back garden, write, and draw on napkins. Sometimes he’d order a sfogliatella or cannoli.” The cover of Lennon’s posthumous 1984 single “Nobody Told Me” features a photo of him and Ono at the café with the former Beatle about to dig into what appears to be a sandwich. They ate breakfast there on the day of his murder in 1980.
Urwand says the pair came to Cafe La Fortuna because the regular customers knew enough not to bother them. They were social with the staff, though. “I remember one time John said he was thinking about going to Florida but he didn’t like it down there because of the mosquitoes. Another time, he and Yoko brought Sean, who was only a couple years old. They had to run out to do something quick, so they put Sean in my lap and said, ‘Hang on to him for a bit. We’ll be right back.’”
Cafe La Fortuna closed in 2008 after the building changed hands and the landlord raised the rent. Alice Urwand died that year, followed by Vincent in 2014. Their son remembers his parents hit it off with John and Yoko and ended up becoming good friends: “Which was funny because my father liked opera. He used to say the Beatles were the devil’s music.”
The Casino in 1929
Where Jimmy Walker Ran the City
Serving as the city’s chief executive in the Roaring ’20s, Jimmy Walker was a twinkly, showy character, a onetime Tin Pan Alley songwriter turned Tammany politician. He was known for devoting maybe three hours a day to the job, traveling the city in a flashy Duesenberg automobile that cost more than most houses and swanning around town each night with his showgirl mistress, Betty Compton. (His wife stayed home.) In 1929, he arranged for a dowdy 65-year-old Central Park restaurant known as the Casino (not a gambling spot, despite its name) to become a swanky nightclub. Specifically, the mayor broke the previous restaurant operator’s contract and handed it to his friend and supporter Sidney Solomon, who got the license for $8,500 per year, which would turn out to be the amount the Casino took in every night. Joseph Urban — the architect behind Mar-a-Lago’s interiors, no less — redid the place in Art Deco shimmer with black glass ceilings. It seated 600. The food prices, it was disapprovingly remarked, were even higher than at the Plaza or the Ritz. One regular Sunday-night customer in the insurance business sometimes spent $300 on caviar alone — equivalent to about $5,500 today — along with the rest of his food and drink. He tipped the orchestra $1,000 at a time and sometimes ran a $7,000 monthly tab.
Prohibition and city ownership be damned, the bar poured plenty of wine, liquor, and Champagne, most of it BYOB, held on ice in the customers’ cars by their drivers. They paid $6 as a corkage fee; club soda was $3 a bottle, comparable to charging $50 now. Never mind the frequent Prohibition raids hauling out illegal liquor. One night in June 1930, the Feds arrested 40 people there, including Solomon. Mrs. Vincent Astor, also present that night, was not picked up.
You could find Walker there multiple nights a week, turning the Casino into the Zero Bond of its day. The band struck up his most famous song, “Will You Love Me in December (As You Did in May)?,” whenever he arrived. He was around so much he kept an office there with its own phone line and a soundproof door, behind which a fair share of city contracts got worked out. The rebuilt Casino had reopened in June 1929. In October, the stock market crashed, the economy fell apart, and Walker’s cuddly crookedness began to look a lot less entertaining. (The caviar-and-$1,000-tips fellow lost all his money and killed himself.) Within a couple of years, investigations into Walker had begun, and in 1932 he admitted on the stand to taking about $1 million in “beneficences,” a fun word for payoffs. Before he could be bounced out of office, he resigned — abruptly, without alerting his aides — and hopped on a ship to resettle in the south of France for a few years and wait out the statute of limitations.
As soon as Walker was out of power, newish Parks commissioner Robert Moses set his sights on the Casino, and in 1936, he tore the building down. Rumsey Playfield, and thus SummerStage, eventually replaced it.
Two Toms in 1987
Where It Felt Like 1967 in 1987
If “the future’s already here — it’s just not very evenly distributed” (see William Gibson), in the Brooklyn I knew growing up in the 1970s and ’80s, the past was strewn around in randomized chunks, like the clamshells in a giant bowl of Two Toms’ linguine. The little spot at Third and Union wasn’t a nostalgic portal into a romanticized Ye Olde Brooklyn (like, say, Gage & Tollner); it was simply stuck in time, like a piece of overcooked pork chop you can’t work out of your back molars until you get busy with a toothpick. Never sublime enough to become any foodie’s fetish, it was a workingman’s red-sauce house to the end, famous for the cops and firefighters, yes, but also home to tradespeople. The restaurant’s fake-stone stucco and tin awning made it comfortingly resemble the unrenovated façades of the slowest-to-gentrify residential blocks of Carroll Gardens, the ones with Catholic sculptures in the front yards. You’d suffer no gastronomic epiphanies here, nor witness any Mafia rubouts, only get a bellyful of marinara.
One Fifth in 1976
Where Keith McNally Shucked the Oysters
Few places had a shorter, brighter, or more impactful run than One Fifth, which opened in the fall of 1976. The elegant, nautically themed establishment is famous as the place where Keith McNally cut his teeth and where the original Saturday Night Live crew hung out because Lorne Michaels lived nearby. One Fifth quickly became a kind of beacon for downtown art celebrities and young New Yorkers who didn’t quite know they were celebrities yet. Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe were regulars, and so was a New York Magazine editor named Anna Wintour. “It was a particular mix of people who were just starting to make it,” says Vincent Fremont, who managed Warhol’s Factory in Union Square. “For many of us, it was one of the first places you could go and feel like you were part of something.” That ineffable “something” vanished when McNally and his bartending brother, Brian, departed, first to Mr Chow uptown, then to open the Odeon with Lynn Wagenknecht, who’d worked as a waitress (and was McNally’s first wife). “One Fifth was the Odeon before the Odeon,” remembers one of the regulars, “but the vibe was somehow more innocent. Most of us were new to the city. It was all ahead of us back then.”
Coffee Shop in 2013
Where I Waited on Anthony Weiner
Anyone who remembers Coffee Shop remembers this big outdoor area. That was where the more finicky people sat, the people who wanted to be seen. I remember working brunch one day, and we were so short-staffed I had that whole outdoor area to myself. It was so busy. At one point, I just set my head down on the edge of the service station and almost cried. I told myself, Okay, you need to just put one foot in front of the other and get through this. I think about that all the time. All the time. There are days now where, obviously, what I’m doing is very different, but I go back to that brunch shift. I worked there for five years. It was one of the most formative experiences of my life. I have so many memories. Uma Thurman was incredibly kind, and at the time she always came in with her daughter. I remember Gerard Butler came in once. I waited on Anthony Weiner. I waited on Eliot Spitzer. I haven’t normally shared that, but it’s true. One time, Hanson, the boy band from the ’90s, came in. We waited on all these super-notable people, but Hanson just did it for us. Like, the inner child came out. And you know, we never really ever asked for pictures or anything like that, but this was the one exception that we made. —As told to Paula Aceves
THE NATIONAL in 1986
Where We Danced Off Our Chicken Kiev
For most of my childhood, I was dragged to a Brighton Beach banquet hall at least monthly. A Russian uncle would ask, “Paydyom v’Nassional?” On went the sequined dresses and Men’s Wearhouse blazers, up went the magenta-tinted hair, out came the knockoff Chanel bags, and off we went, usually to the “Nassional.” Established in 1981 by members of the first immigrant wave to land in Little Odessa, the National presented a windowless façade, but wonders lay within: a two-tiered palace festooned with dizzying carpet patterns, crystal chandeliers, and blinding footlights. Hundreds of seats were crammed into long tables laden with French-inflected Soviet appetizers: smoked sturgeon and tongue; salmon roe and black bread; and — my favorite — Olivier salad, a mélange of eggs, pickles, potatoes, mayonnaise, peas, and bologna. (Trust me.) By the time the kebabs and the chicken Kiev arrived, everyone was full.
The patrons, ranging in age from roughly 1 to 96, danced off the gluttony, lubricated by vodka (a bottle per four or five seats). The highlight of the night was the floor show. A parade of performers sourced from across the Soviet imperium executed stiff but sultry choreography alongside synth-heavy bangers in both Russian and English.
In the early years, the National’s theme was material aspiration. Its regulars had engineering degrees but toiled 14 hours daily in cabs, auto shops, and restaurant kitchens, saving for the next generation as well as the occasional cheapish thrill of getting drunk in front of their kids while feathered-haired beauties leaped among lasers and fog machines.
maxwell’s plum in 1975
Where the Sex Was As Good As the Escargot
The owner of Maxwell’s Plum, Warner LeRoy, the son of Hollywood director Mervyn LeRoy and grandnephew of studio chieftain Jack Warner, had grown up with an appreciation for the magic of celebrity. He kept a list of 450 VIPs, the most important of whom could slide into the tables along the wall in the back room, which was famous for its ceiling covered with glittering Tiffany glass. “You name it — everyone was there. It was the hot restaurant during a time when there were very few inhibitions holding people back,” remembers Drew Nieporent, the future proprietor of Nobu, who found himself running the front of the house at age 23. LeRoy had toyed with a variety of sexually charged names (the Silver Cherry was one) before settling on Maxwell’s Plum, and the restaurant, on First Avenue and East 62nd Street, quickly became one of the first places in town where upwardly mobile single women, newly liberated by the Pill — stewardesses, secretaries, actresses — felt comfortable drinking at a bar alone. The doors were regularly locked after too many singles had flooded into the bar. At least once, a woman streaked around the restaurant for $100. “I hesitate to use the word revolutionary, but a place like Maxwell’s Plum really sort of was,” one of the old regulars tells me. Nieporent agrees: “It was accessible to everybody. The prices weren’t too excessive, so anybody could go there — and did.” During its long prime, which lasted through the ’70s, before aids and greed and the general darkness of the 1980s set in, the 240-seat establishment did 1,500 covers a night. The kitchen didn’t close until after 1 a.m., and the bar kept serving until three. You could get a platter of escargot, frogs’ legs “Provençale,” or a foot-long hot dog with chili. “Oh, the burger. It was a great burger,” recalls Nieporent. “I cannot emphasize enough what a great fucking restaurant this was.”
DA SILVANO in 2006
Where Celebrities Went to Be Snapped
If 2006 ever calls and wants its celebrities back, the caller ID might well come up as “Da Silvano.” Silvano Marchetto’s Italian restaurant spilled onto an unusually broad sidewalk on Sixth Avenue in Greenwich Village from 1975 until 2016 — often with one of his three Ferraris parked outside.
Perhaps its ample outdoor seating — more like the Ivy in L.A. than anything in New York — helped attract the glam clientele for which it was known. The stars provided a buffet for the paparazzi (who were always waiting by the curb) without appearing too thirsty for attention.
Celebrities descended upon Da Silvano throughout its 41-year run, but 2006 — with its saucer-size sunglasses and brand-new T-Mobile Sidekicks — was the year in which Frank Bruni began his New York Times review (dropping it from two stars to one) by highlighting not the food but regulars like Madonna, Tom Hanks, and Sarah Jessica Parker. It was the year Harvey Weinstein had pasta at a back table with Mischa Barton and the year Lindsay Lohan tried to get a spray tan in the restaurant’s bathroom during an Elle cover-story interview.
And it was at the 2006 CFDA awards, a rubber-chicken event at the New York Public Library, that fashion journalist Horacio Silva recalls sitting next to Rihanna: “She was hating the food, and I said, ‘You’re Rihanna. You can have whatever you want.’ So she had her driver pick up her favorite Da Silvano’s pasta, the taglierini contadina, and I think slipped out to go eat in the limo.”
Ham N' Egg Corner IN 1962
Where Saxophonists Ate Breakfast at 3 A.M.
For the jazz musicians of the 1960s, Birdland was the club to play on 52nd Street — then still Swing Street, filled with nightclubs, though not formuch longer — and Ham N’ Egg Corner was the place to eat. Partly, this had to do with practicality (it was across the street) and accessibility (it was open 24 hours), but it was also, as pianist Kenny Barron puts it, “a great vibe.” The peak hour always came around 3 a.m., as the night’s sets wrapped up. “You’d be there for hours,” says Barron, waiting for other band members to trickle in. Once, he remembers, he saw bassist Wilbur Ware looking in through a frosty glass window, smiling at the musicians with their instruments propped up against the linoleum tables. An assortment of performers, fans, and what Barron calls “night people” often mingled, lingering into the early morning. Barron, for his part, had no trouble staying awake: “I’d always start the night off with a cup of coffee.” And what was their regular order? “Probably ham and eggs.”
lucali in 2021
Where I Rearwindowed Taylor Swift
In 2021, we bought a place across the street from Lucali. It was, by that point, famous for its delicious pizza and doubly famous for attracting celebrities. It wasn’t long before I became like Jimmy Stewart in Rear Window, ogling the pizzeria from my living room, watching as a flock of chauffeured SUVs descended upon my otherwise quiet Carroll Gardens street.
Beyoncé and Jay-Z were early adopters. I went for the first time in 2008. No sooner had I finished telling my date that it was Bey’s favorite pizza than an Escalade pulled up and she and Jay-Z proceeded to house a pie at the table next to ours.
The lines really started getting crazy after Lucali was featured on David Chang’s Ugly Delicious in 2018. Now, every time someone like Bella Hadid posts a pic from an evening there, there’s a subsequent bump in the length of the line and the number of schmoes commandeering my stoop as a picnic spot for takeout pies.
On one January night, a trio of dudes with cameras around their necks stopped to watch me and my husband struggle to drag our giant Christmas tree down to the curb. Who were they waiting for? “You promise you won’t put it on Twitter?” one said. I nodded. “It’s Taylor Swift.” I grabbed a bottle of Calvados and brought it outside to quaff as we watched Questlove, Zoë Kravitz, Jack Antonoff, and others arrive. At midnight, Taylor emerged; we only glimpsed her Reputation-green ensemble before she and Blake Lively pulled away in an SUV.
At least one of Tay’s exes is also a fan: One year, we planned a pizza dinner for Rosh Hashanah, and as I ambled across Henry Street to get our order, I saw Jake Gyllenhaal pull up, double-park, and pile six pies into his gull-wing Tesla.
leshko's and the caldron in 1981
Where East Village Punks Went …
… For Eggs
A7, the short-lived but seminal club called the birthplace of New York hardcore, was across the street from Leshko’s, part of a constellation of Polish and Ukrainian greasy spoons that had fed the East Village for years. So it was an obvious place to stop. “We would go there when we got out, which would be like five, or six, or even seven in the morning,” says Jesse Malin of the early hardcore band Heart Attack. “We worked up quite an appetite in that back room jumping around dancing like crazy.” He’d go with other people from the scene, like the False Prophets. Sometimes he’d run into the Stimulators and Jimmy Gestapo from Murphy’s Law. At least one local band, the Bad Tuna Experience, was named after a meal they’d had at Leshko’s.
… For Tofu Pie
The Caldron was opened in 1969 by Marty and Glory Schloss, and in its early years it was known as a place where both hippies and Hasids would go for Jewish macrobiotic meals. That changed in the ’80s: “It was full of hippies and Orthodox Jews — and punks,” says the photographer Richard Sandler, who helped open the restaurant. “The owner’s mother was the head of the bakery next door, and I’m told that she invented tofu pie, amazingly enough,” says Willie Luncheonette, who was deep in the East Village scene at the time. He remembers running into Andy Kaufman, Horace Silver, and Elvis Costello — who once came in asking if anyone wanted tickets to a show — as well as one of his favorite bands, Millions of Dead Cops. “I said to myself, Oh my God, those guys are from MDC. So I went up to them, told them, ‘You guys are great,’ and they told me to come out to the van after I finished eating to hang out for a while.”
Sofia Fabulous Pizza in 1996
Where Uptown Teens Spent Their Parents’ Money
For a certain set of private-school kids who came of age in the mid-’90s, the Serafina on 79th and Madison will always be Sofia.
The restaurant opened in 1995, the same year I started high school, and quickly became our social hub. My friends and I would come for dinner, marching up the narrow steps in bulbous Steve Maddens, carrying box-cut Kate Spades, with Ricky’s glitter on our eyelids. The hostess would herd us past the main dining room (where grown-ups sat), up another flight to the third story, which had tented ceilings and uneven brick floors. This was the domain of teenagers.
“It was the one place you’d see everyone from all the schools,” says Elana Wexler, a friend from school days. We all showed up: Riverdale, Trinity, Spence, etc. Even if you didn’t know the kids at othertables, you knew of them from promoters’ party flyers or high-school lore.
We’d crowd the long banquette, eating artichoke salad, pizza margherita, and paglia e fieno, green and white pasta. (It was the ’90s; carbs were fine.) We littered tables with beepers, Parliament Lights, and bullet-shaped tubes of M.A.C lipstick. Sofia was where we celebrated birthdays and AP tests, nursed crushes and broken hearts. It managed to feel adult and aspirational while still comfortable for someone using a fake ID to order a glass of Pinot Grigio. Of course, as adult as we thought we were being, the restaurant was an entirely sponsored experience. We paid with our parents’ cash.
Sofia was the first place I felt part of a scene. I learned about the magic of bumping into people and the specific energy of a New York evening that could go in an infinite number of directions — even if those nights mostly petered out into loitering on brownstone stoops.
In late 1998, following a dispute with a restaurant of the same name, Sofia was renamed Serafina. Now there are ten Serafinas in the city, along with outposts in White Plains, Scarsdale — even Tokyo and Kolkata. Where Sofia felt singular, Serafina has the whiff of a chain. My meals there now happen at 5 p.m. with crayons and kids’ menus. I still spot people from the Sofia days. We give weary smiles over tennis-racquet pasta or, in the spirit of high school, pretend we don’t know each other at all.
The Forum of the Twelve Caesars in 1957
Where CEOs Cosplayed As Emperors
Like any talented theatrical restaurateur, Joe Baum had his share of hits: Windows on the World, Tavern on the Green, Fonda del Sol. He also had his share of flops, none more titanic or comically misconceived than the extravagantly over-the-top Roman establishment that opened in the fall of 1957 on the ground floor of Rockefeller Center. Like the Four Seasons, which Baum debuted two years later, the Forum of the Twelve Caesars was built to cater to the high-rolling, high-spending captains of industry who populated midtown during its corporate-restaurant heyday. Unlike Philip Johnson’s sleekly modern, famously tasteful space in the Seagram Building, Forum featured faux-mosaic murals, Baroque-like portraits of Rome’s first dozen emperors, Champagne buckets designed to resemble upturned centurion helmets, and water taps in the restrooms that Mimi Sheraton merrily reported were shaped like bronze dolphins.
Guests dined on bizarre creations such as “Oysters of Hercules” and “Fiddler Crab Lump à la Nero,” a dish that was served tableside and flaming, of course. Weirdly, the reviews weren’t horrible (Craig Claiborne praised the restaurant’s “lusty elegance”), though Michael Whiteman, a longtime restaurant consultant and Baum’s partner of 29 years, says it quickly became apparent that there weren’t enough corporate fat cats in midtown who “viewed themselves as Roman senators wandering around in togas, or whatever it was Roman senators used to wander around in,” to support it. When the managers of the Four Seasons offered to buy that restaurant in 1974, Baum’s former company, Restaurant Associates, made them take the Forum, too. They closed the place shortly after that, though for a long time, if you took a seat at the also-departed Rockefeller Center steakhouse AJ Maxwell’s, you could still see the faded murals — remnants of a vanished time.
Jimmy’s Bronx Cafe in 1995
Where the Yankees Banned Their Own Players
Jimmy’s Bronx Cafe basically started New Age Latino cuisine. The spread could be legendary, like 100 lobsters, 100 steaks, paella — their seafood paella was crazy.
At Jimmy’s parties, you would have everybody from Eminem to Mary J. Blige to Derek Jeter. In fact, they gave a warning to all the Yankees players because they used to be at Jimmy’s every day. The team told all the players, like, “Yo, you gotta stay out of this joint.” —As told to Ben Kesslen
Delmonico's in 1905
Where Mark Twain Threw a Rager
Here’s what kind of an event Mark Twain’s 70th-birthday party, on December 5 at Delmonico’s, was: Before it even happened, the New York Times ran not one but two stories about the invitations. The guests ultimately numbered 170, and it was a true A-plus list of literary, powerful, and just plain rich New Yorkers. On the night of the dinner, Andrew Carnegie spoke. So did William Dean Howells, the novelist and Atlantic Monthly editor routinely called “the Dean of American Letters.” President Theodore Roosevelt couldn’t make it, but he sent a message to be read. George Harvey, the editor of Harper’s Weekly, hosted. Delmonico’s was almost 80 years old by that time and still the omphalos of American fine dining. Everyone received a foot-high bust of the guest of honor.
The former Samuel Clemens was by then one of the most famous men alive. He’d made a fortune, lost it in a series of bad business moves, and gone on lecture tours and published his memoirs to earn some money. By 1905, he was on his feet again, and the party was meant to celebrate what was, at the time, the extraordinarily advanced age of 70. He joked about that in his speech, bringing up his skepticism about the medical treatments of the era and his diet, which he said he’d finally moderated after many decades of indifference. He also, it appears, was an intermittent faster before its time. “For 30 years,” he noted, “I have taken coffee and bread at eight in the morning, and no bite nor sup until 7:30 in the evening. Eleven hours.”
What did Twain and his guests eat that evening, presumably after 7:30 p.m.? Delmonico’s served heavy food without a lot of inclination to seasonality, and it showed. Even though it was December, there were stuffed tomatoes. Oysters, of course — every New York meal of consequence in those years probably included them. There was turtle soup, then a staple of affluence, and fried Baltimore terrapin and quail and saddle of lamb. Parsleyed potatoes and creamed mushrooms on toast rounded it all out.
Limelight in 1992
Where Club Kids Loaded Up on Macrobiotic Dinners
Wednesday night was our flagship party, Disco 2000 at Limelight. After three hours of getting ready at the Chelsea Hotel, where I lived throughout the ’90s, I’d join my fellow club kids at photographer Michael Fazakerley’s studio to have our looks documented. Emerging as a Technicolor chain gang, we would tread in our platform shoes to an outlaw party staged at a high-traffic hub like Twin Donut or the L train — think flash mobs but before they were invented. We’d flood the joint with splendor and party until the cops came, then drinks would fly into the air and a herd of club kids, ravers, and banjee boys would stampede toward Limelight.
Whisked through the crowds waiting to get in, we’d regroup for a surreal, yet surprisingly civilized, sit-down dinner party around 11:30 p.m. The strategy behind the dinners was to get as many fabulous people into the club as early as possible, so when the paying patrons made their way though the door, they weren’t confronted with an empty room. Seats were given to the top-notch club kids, hinting at our internal hierarchy. There’d always be a quirky special guest, usually a personality from a campy ’70s show like Three’s Company or The Jeffersons. These dinners had an Alice in Wonderland quality with all of us sitting at a table in colorful sparkling costumes, surrounded by onlookers, eating a macrobiotic meal and chatting with someone we’d grown up watching on television.
The energy would build throughout the night until everyone was completely lit — obliterated on E, a mushroom punch, or some other powder or potion that had been passed around. For those of us working, it was a signal that it was time to get paid. Some of us would go home, shower, then dance until noon at places like Sound Factory. Wherever your nose or your feet led you, eventually you had to eat breakfast, and that spot was usually Cafe Orlin on St. Marks Place, which was known for its cheap breakfasts and gender-nonconforming staff. There was a giant round table in the corner near the front windows where club personalities would often hold court and swap gossip about the previous night’s adventures.
Pink Pony in 2005
Where I Ate As Much Steak As I Could
Pink Pony was a place I used to go every single day because I was friends with Lucien, who also owned Lucien on First and 1st. I grew up with his son, Zac. So I could go there and get free meals and then sneak into Max Fish and just get wasted. I was 15, and I would eat so much. It was like French American fusion: cheeseburgers, steaks, delicious French onion soup, oysters. They had snails, I think. I was such a big pothead during those days. I remember having the craziest munchies and eating everything on the menu because it was free. —As told to Ben Kesslen
Sugar ray’s in 1950
Where the Champ Parked Out Front
You knew Sugar Ray Robinson — arguably the greatest fighter in history — was at his restaurant by the flamingo-pink Cadillac convertible sitting outside. Future congressman Charles Rangel, working a few doors away as a desk clerk at the Hotel Theresa, would escort visiting dancers over if they wanted to get a glimpse of the champ. “I’d tell them they probably weren’t going to see him,” he told Robinson’s biographer Wil Haygood, “but they wanted to go anyway.”
Hatsuhana in 1983
Where Tokyo’s High Rollers Could Enjoy Their Toro in Peace
Before Nobu and Masa, the city’s sushi world was a smaller, more settled place. “The restaurants were very old-fashioned, they were in midtown, they were marketed mostly to Japanese businessmen, and these guys did not want to see any fucking white people in their restaurants,” recalls Nobu’s Drew Nieporent. Sushiden on East 49th Street was partially owned by the Mitsubishi Corporation; it was a forbidding oasis for salarymen dressed in their dark suits. Kurumazushi, which is still doing business in a small walk-up space on 47th Street, was the big-money venue where the sushi was stored in a golden box and the chef (who called his carefully selected fish “my jewels”) charged upwards of $200 for an omakase dinner when, as one sushi-snob friend remembers, “no one had ever heard of doing such a crazy thing.”
Then there was Hatsuhana, on East 48th Street, a slightly less severe, more eclectic establishment, which thanks to a glowing review by Mimi Sheraton became a kind of proving ground for influential members of the city’s avid sushi community. Ruth Reichl, who honed her taste for sushi while living in L.A., recalls seeing the novelist Renata Adler silently communing with her omakase dinner at the bar. Reichl had been introduced to the restaurant by her father, who worked around the corner, and they used to dine with the rest of the gaijin crouched at one of the darkly lit tables downstairs. She only managed to ascend to the bar upstairs when she went to work for the New York Times and acquired an expense account. “My husband used to eat tuna, some yellowtail, maybe a little bit of eel, and then he’d leave,” she recalls. “I would stay and our regular chef, Mr. Osada, would give me the most exotic things — fermented squid guts, little tiny crabs that were deep-fried, which you couldn’t get anywhere else in the city.”
As with higher-end enclaves in Japan, ingredients were never bragged about at Hatsuhana (it was a given that the toro belly was the best), and the key to happiness was a special relationship with a chef like Osada. “I used to give him bottles of Johnny Walker Blue at Christmas,” Reichl recalls. If she showed up when he wasn’t working, the authorities would seat her ignominiously at one of the tables. Like Le Pavillon in the French realm, Hatsuhana helped an entire genre achieve gourmet status, and chefs who worked there went on to open other influential spots, including the great Sushi Yasuda five blocks south.
The LE’s and LA’s
Where High Society Could Feast on Foie Gras and Gossip
There was already French food in New York — at the Colony, the big hotels, Delmonico’s to some degree — when the 1939 New York World’s Fair opened in Flushing Meadow. But it was there that Le Restaurant du Pavillon de France served un-Americanized, uncut Gallicness, run by a hotheaded restaurateur named Henri Soulé and prepped by a well-drilled team brought over aboard the grand Art Deco liner Normandie. There was capon in tarragon aspic; saddle of lamb; there were, of course, frogs’ legs. An order of foie gras was 75 cents. The restaurant served more than 136,000 customers from April through October and did it again for the Fair’s repeat engagement in 1940.
When it was time for Soulé and his chefs to go home, France was no longer France. The Nazis had reached Paris, and the Normandie was seized for conversion into an American troopship. Soulé opted to start fresh in New York; his restaurant, Le Pavillon, opened that year on West 55th. Affluent New York took notice, The New Yorker profiled Soulé, and the place was consistently, reliably full. He moved Le Pavillon to a larger location in 1957 and, in its old home, unveiled a very slightly less expensive restaurant, calling it “my Pavillon for the poor”: La Côte Basque opened in October 1958.
Midtown, within a decade or so, gathered a huge array of descendants: La Caravelle, Le Poulailler, La Seine, La Grenouille, Le Cygne, and Le Mistral were all opened by Soulé’s former staff members and their employees. André Soltner and André Surmain’s Lutèce, though not directly linked to Le Pavillon, opened in 1961 and was widely understood to be the best restaurant in the U.S. They became known, both affectionately and disdainfully, as the Frog Ponds, and the best regarded among them gradually took on the moniker Les Six.
The ladies who lunch (labeled as such in 1970 by Stephen Sondheim, who lived about 300 feet from Lutèce) were the core customers. The ancillary Jackie O.’s of New York — her sister Lee Radziwill, the social queen bee Babe Paley, so many others — treated La Côte Basque’s banquettes as their cafeteria, smoking their way through countless lunches and slicing up other members of their cohort as expertly as servers did their Dover sole.
Florent in 1989
Where the Meatpacking District Was Born
In July 1989, as Bastille Day celebrations lit up Paris, an immigrant restaurateur named Florent Morellet dressed up as Marie Antoinette and threw a party in the meat market of downtown Manhattan.
Florent, his bistro-diner that felt like a Weimar speakeasy with a Debbie Harry soundtrack, had been a hit since opening on Gansevoort Street four years earlier. Madonna was an early customer, followed by seemingly every boldface name in New York: Calvin Klein, Johnny Depp, Keanu Reeves, Roy Lichtenstein, Christo and Jeanne-Claude, David Bowie and Iman, Prince. But business sagged in the late ’80s as recession loomed and NYPD efforts to clean up Times Square pushed the sex trade into the neighborhood, where meat-packers still hung carcasses from hooks under the sidewalk awnings.
“It was dead, it was summer, and we were having a very bad time,” Morellet, 70, recalled recently from his home in Bushwick. “To find a good time, I decided to focus on Bastille Day.”
It was a hit, and Florent’s annual Bastille Day parties blossomed into a street festival that, at its peak around 1997, he estimates attracted 20,000 people. The party downsized in 1999, but it remained the signature event of a restaurant that was like a gay Elaine’s with better food.
Even as the restaurant’s reputation grew, Morellet kept it feeling like a neighborhood hangout. Some of his artwork, detailed maps of imagined places, lined the walls. After being diagnosed with HIV in 1987, he updated his T-cell count on the specials board.
And then Florent appeared on Sex and the City — twice. In retrospect, it was a clear sign this was the Meatpacking District now. “It’s impossible to say when it changed. It’s like the frog that can’t figure out when water’s boiling,” said Morellet.
It was the rent that finally did in Florent — what had been $6,000 a month became a reported $30,000. At the same time, more businesses in the area meant more regulations. After a series of five parties, themed around the Kübler-Ross stages of grief, Florent closed at the end of June 2008, just two weeks before Bastille Day.
“Democracy, I hate it,” Morellet said. “It was so much easier when there was only one queen on the block.”
Bo Bo IN 1950
Where Chinese Actors Served Chow Gai Kew
Esther Eng was said to be the first Chinese woman to direct movies in both the U.S. and China. Eng, who lived openly as a lesbian, dressed in masculine clothing, and went by the nickname Big Brother Ha, grew up in San Francisco, made movies in Hong Kong, and moved to New York by 1950.
As the story goes, Eng ran into an old friend, Bo Bo, a Chinese actor who was reluctant to return to China, which was then under Mao. She decided to open a restaurant to give her friend and his troupe work. Called Bo Bo, it was located on Pell Street in the heart of Chinatown. In time, the restaurant became a harbor for expat Chinese actors, a place where they could get help learning English and money to pay their rent. The food was notably excellent: egg roll stuffed with lobster, chow gai kew, snails in black-bean sauce, and duck with litchi. Eventually, it became known, too, for long waits, which Craig Claiborne said in his New York Times review was the only issue he had with the place.
22 west in 1964
Where Malcolm X Organized Over Omelets
James Alston IV opened his homestyle Harlem diner in 1962, and it quickly became a destination for Black politicians, religious leaders, and community organizers. 22 West doubled as a bar, a jazz club, and even a gallery. It never fully embraced the trappings of a social club, but, with its plates of oxtails, smothered chicken, and greens, the restaurant nurtured a sense of community and trust among its diners. Frequent customers included Muhammad Ali; Percy Sutton; labor leader Howard Bennett, who would go on to fight to make Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday a national holiday; and, most notably, Malcolm X, who became such a fixture that he used the restaurant’s pay phone to make radio announcements and regularly held court in his own back booth. (And it’s where he took meetings with Alex Haley, who was writing The Autobiography of Malcolm X.) Following his assassination in 1965, a black-and-white oil portrait was hung over his table.
lavagna in 2004
Where the Strokes Brought Their Girlfriends (And Then Other Girlfriends)
There’s a certain kind of restaurant that feels fancy when you’re young and broke and brand new to the city, as I was in 1999, the year Lavagna opened on East 5th Street just west of Avenue B. By the time I started hanging out there in the mid-aughts, the rustic Italian joint was part clubhouse, part grown-up restaurant that adults hadn’t spoiled: It was ours.
The Strokes were and remain the most enduring regulars. “Brett first brought them,” recalls the restaurant’s owner, Yorgos Hatziefthimiou, referring to Brett Kilroe, the art director at the Strokes’ label, RCA, who designed the cover of their 2001 debut album, Is This It. “The Strokes started bringing their families, their girlfriends, and the other girlfriends, and their friends,” Hatziefthimiou says. “They were part of the furniture.”
“It was our go-to spot for birthdays and celebrations,” remembers then–Strokes manager Ryan Gentles.
The guys from the National and Kings of Leon, Adam Green of the Moldy Peaches, and Jack White “and his band of the moment,” as Hatziefthimiou puts it, were also regulars, along with “comedians who were friends with the Strokes,” like David Cross and Andy Samberg, with whom Hatziefthimiou wound up playing on an indoor soccer team assembled by Strokes lead singer Julian Casablancas. Behind the bar all these years later, there’s still a trophy they won in a tournament at Chelsea Piers.
I don’t live in New York anymore, but the last time I was at Lavagna, this past November, Gentles was there, too, celebrating his 46th birthday with a table full of friends. It’s still his go-to spot.
44 at the Royalton in 1995
Where Graydon, Anna, and Tina Had Their Own Booths
Back in the early 1990s, when magazines were fat with ads, relevance, and prestige, there was no place where the raw social power of Condé Nast’s top editors was more on display than at 44. The restaurant was housed inside an Ian Schrager hotel called the Royalton at 44 West 44th Street, just around the corner from Condé’s offices. The hotel’s interior was designed by Philippe Starck. “An early-’90s masterpiece,” remembers Graydon Carter, editor of Vanity Fair starting in 1992.
It was run by Brian McNally, who had been encouraged to open it by his friend Vogue editor Anna Wintour. “She was there from day one, which, you know, certainly didn’t hurt,” McNally recalls. “Graydon was a good friend as well, and he came every day as soon as he took over Vanity Fair, so that starts a little bit of a thing, having those two there every day. And Tina Brown, too.” The most important thing about having lunch at 44 was where you sat. Dana Brown wrote about the status scramble in his memoir, Dilettante, beginning with how he was actually working at 44 when Carter took a shine to him and hired him at Vanity Fair. There were only four banquettes at 44; one belonged to Wintour, one to Carter, one to Tina Brown, then editor of The New Yorker. The remaining banquette “was left open for whatever big shot happened to be in that day — Jackie O., Karl Lagerfeld,” Brown wrote. When Condé boss Si Newhouse was lunching, he bumped everyone down a banquette.
The rest of the room was defined by proximity to those tables. Gabé Doppelt, a former Condé editor, says, “Sometimes, Brian would ask, ‘Whose number is this?’” when a reservation would come in. “I would look it up in the directory, and I’d say, ‘Oh, a junior editor at Glamour,’ which basically informed him that he could put them near the kitchen.” (“We weren’t that snobbish!” insists McNally, laughing.)
“Inevitably,” says Doppelt, who now works for the San Vicente Bungalows, “in the middle of the morning, Brian would call me in a panic and say, ‘I only have three booths, and Anna, Calvin, Donna, and Ralph are coming. What am I going to do?!’”
well's supper club in 1938
Where Billie Holiday Would Down the Night
Known simply as Well’s, it opened in 1938 as a three-booth, five-stool bistro in Central Harlem. It would later become a 250-seat restaurant famous far and wide for its chicken and waffles. Although Smalls Paradise, another Harlem staple, was likely serving its own version over a decade earlier, owner Joseph Turner Wells eventually trademarked a logo, helping to stake the Supper Club’s claim — misattributed — as the dish’s founder. The origins hardly mattered to the Black musicians and performers who headed there after shows at the Cotton Club, which, like many of the spots they performed at, remained segregated, prohibiting them from eating dinner there. Regulars included everyone from Billie Holiday and Duke Ellington to Sammy Davis Jr. and Frank Sinatra. In a 1984 New York Times article, published two years after Well’s closed its doors, Wells himself recalled, “People from Paris, when they’d come, would get chicken and waffles … The jazz greats — you name ’em, they’ve been here.”
DUBROW’S in 1960
Where Brooklyn Went After Shul
According to its slogan, Dubrow’s was the “Cafeteria of Refinement” — never mind that the BMT subway ran almost directly over its roof. The chainlet (established in 1929, dismantled in 1985) operated in several locations, but the one that lingers in the mind was at Kings Highway and East 16th Street. There, surrounded by showy Italianish murals and an elaborate tile water fountain, three generations of Flatbush residents ate well for not much. The food was comparable to what they’d get at an Automat or a coffee shop but with a slightly Jewish accent: coffee cake, blintzes, chopped liver. Dubrow’s was open 24 hours, arguably busiest on weekends after services let out at Temple Ahavath Sholom. That made it a useful place to mingle with — and court — voters. John F. Kennedy, campaigning on a Thursday night in October 1960, dropped by to shake hands and have dinner with Carmine De Sapio, head of the Tammany Hall political machine. JFK ordered a steak and a Heineken; he beat Nixon in Brooklyn two votes to one.
Le Cirque in 1980s
Where Sirio Greeted Us Beautifully
Four Upper East Side grandes dames, who were regulars, reminisce.
You walked in …
Sharyn Mann, co-founder of the Food Allergy Initiative (now FARE): Sirio Maccioni would be at the door and sat everyone. He was just one of the most intelligent people. I wish he could have run for president! He knew everybody and seated everybody perfectly.
Barbara Tober, former editor-in-chief of Brides and longtime philanthropist affiliated with the Metropolitan Opera and Citymeals on Wheels: We were greeted beautifully.
Jamee Gregory, author of New York Parties: Private Views and past president of the Society of Memorial Sloan Kettering: You know, whenever you entered Sirio’s kingdom, he made you feel really, really special. And if he knew you, it was a place you could always call at the last minute and he would find a table for you. I think that’s one of the things all of the regulars really appreciated. He seated people like it was a chess game.
BT: There were the tables of prestige. Sirio knew who should get the top table of prestige and the second top table of prestige. He kind of knew who was an “I’m important and you’re not” person, and he put them in the best place possible. If he couldn’t find the best place, he’d apologize six ways to Sunday and put them in the next best place possible.
SM: Sirio had an eye. He picked people out. I don’t know what he was looking for, but he was brilliant.
Then subtly looked around …
JG: My friends and I would go there at least once a week. At lunch, Sirio held the tables on the banquette for people who came a lot. You would always see, say, ten pairs of women or men or whoever that you knew. And the ones you knew, you were glad you knew them. It felt like a club. It was not just random people. And then there would be the odd one you’d never seen before, like Richard Nixon.
Kimberly Yaseen, past chair of various fundraisers for the American Cancer Society and the New York Philharmonic: Sophia Loren would be there, or Ron Perelman would be holding court, or Gayfryd Steinberg. You looked across the room and everybody just sparkled. They looked beautiful.
JG: People came in dressed for the occasion. All the women had a Bill Blass suit or an Oscar de la Renta dress. You didn’t go to that restaurant coming from the gym. You wouldn’t walk in there unless you were pulled together.
BT: It was chic. My husband always wore a tie and suit, and he always looked elegant. He was a real gentleman. And I look at these guys today, and some of them are very, very handsome. But they look like they just came out of the gym. Why? I mean, do you really think you look so gentlemanly and terrific and handsome that way? No, you don’t. It’s pitiful.
SM: You would always have to drop your napkin and look both ways. Henry Kissinger would be sitting in the front. Or the conductor Zubin Mehta. You felt really good about yourself just being there.
BT: There was a corner where everybody would look right away to see who was sitting there. But I wasn’t looking around much. I was so in love with my husband.
Someone might call Nancy Reagan on the house phone …
KY: My recollection is that I ate lunch there several times a week, not always with the same women. We would chitchat. And, you know, if you were trying to finance a charity ball or you wanted someone to be an honoree, you would take them to Le Cirque because it was a glamorous place.
SM: We went there for lunch for a reason. By the end of two hours, you had figured out your whole committee. It was done. We didn’t have texting back then. You took out a little piece of paper; you had a pen. We planned the sponsoring committee for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund — the one in New York, not in Washington — at lunch at Le Cirque. I remember Pat Buckley used the house phone and called Nancy Reagan and she agreed to join.
JG: If you were celebrating something or wanted to have a good giggle with your girlfriend, that was the place to go.
The food, the food …
BT: I remember always trying to lose weight. I don’t even think about it now. But in those days, because we ate out so much, I was always trying to figure out what was delicious but small.
KY: I didn’t eat very much — lots and lots of salad and grilled fish.
SM: The pasta primavera was the best in the city. That was the first time I ever had pine nuts that were roasted before they put them into the pasta. Oh, and there was the cheese soufflé.
JG: I remember going, and I won’t name names, but one person ordered three lettuce leaves in a salad. But they did have wonderful Italian food. My people weren’t so dietetic. We had the pasta primavera, and it’s pretty healthy because it had all the vegetables, right? It wasn’t like carbonara in cream sauce. When my mother-in-law, Lydia Gregory, was dying in 1979, Sirio heard that she was ill and he sent pasta primavera to her in the hospital. It was her favorite.
SM: And he did these amazing desserts. You didn’t just order an apple pie. When I had tables of ten or 15 women, he would bring out all these desserts, and each one was different. They had these desserts in the 1980s that weren’t so much about eating but about looking at them. There was one in the shape of a piano and another in the shape of a clown. Altogether, it was like a circus.
BT: The desserts always had something charming to decorate them. You would get your dessert, and Sirio would say, “Oh, look, isn’t that cute?”
Rubout Joints
Where the Mob Ordered Its Takeout
It’s a cliché, but it’s true: A restaurant is a good spot to knock someone off. The target is accessible, possibly seated, and likely unable to make a run for it. That’s what happened in 1979 to Carmine Galante, a top boss in the Bonanno crime family. On July 12, he was finishing up a meal at Joe & Mary Italian-American Restaurant in Bushwick. A cigar he’d lit after lunch would end up outlasting him.
It’s certainly the way it went in April 1972 for Crazy Joe Gallo at Umbertos Clam House, a seafood place that had opened a couple of months earlier. He saw the men coming for him — on his birthday! — and tried to bolt, but he couldn’t get out the door until it was too late. Two weeks later, New York’s “Underground Gourmet” ran a review of the restaurant. “Service was straightforward and not unfriendly,” the authors noted, “but a slight strain in the atmosphere was undeniable if understandable.”
Joe & Mary is gone. Umbertos moved across the street but kept its notoriety. Sparks Steak House in midtown seems to exist with no such gangster stigma, however, even though it was the site of what might have been the last great public rubout: Paul Castellano, arriving for dinner in December 1985, stepped out of his black Lincoln Town Car and into three men’s gunfire. The hit, it eventually came out, had been ordered by John Gotti, who soon superseded Castellano as the top man in the Gambino family, a spot he held on to until the government put him away in the early ’90s.
portofino in 1963
Where Elaine Kaufman Got Her Start
“If you know where the lesbians are, please take me,” Edie Windsor asked a friend in the early ’60s. Divorced for a decade, Windsor was unsure where to meet other women without risking her career at IBM. She ended up at Portofino Restaurant on Thompson and Bleecker, where she met Thea Spyer. Portofino was a straight restaurant that cultivated a discreet but dedicated lesbian following. Passing in whispers between friends, word spread: The food was delicious, the crowd was artistic, and on Friday nights, the women were almost certainly gay.
In the early days, Portofino was managed by Elaine Kaufman, who was honing her knack for drawing writers, artists, and musicians. “It was a wild and fun and very scary time because you never knew when the place was going to be raided,” says Friday-night regular Carlotta Rossini, now 79. But as a restaurant, Portofino had a loophole that offered a layer of protection: “There was no dancing, so what were they going to raid?” A dispute over finances led Kaufman to end her romance with Portofino owner Alfredo Viazzi, and she stormed out of the relationship and the business. “I smashed every glass and plate in the place,” she told Vanity Fair in 2002. Kaufman started fresh uptown, while Portofino carried on into the ’70s.
elaine’s in 1970
And Where She Made Her Name
More has been written about Elaine’s than maybe any other restaurant, probably because writers and movie stars adopted it as their hangout. People liked to trash the food, but nobody went to Elaine’s for the meal. You went to Elaine’s for any of three reasons: (1) Elaine liked you and was willing to carry your tab if you were talented and broke; (2) Elaine liked your friends and you were allowed in by proxy; or (3) you wanted to get a glimpse of Norman Mailer, Michael Caine, or Woody Allen. Woe betide you if you were in group No. 3 and intruded on the privacy of group No. 1. Elaine was never shy about chucking people out.
o. henry’s in 1964
Where the Village Watched Itself Walk By
O. Henry’s Steak House replaced a butcher shop on the corner of Sixth Avenue and West 4th in 1959. The menu, apart from some onions, was almost all meat (to mix it up, there was a clam bar). The real draw was the people-watching afforded by the outdoor seating and the center-of-it-all Village location; Bob Dylan was known to sit out among the sidewalk tables.
Cositas Ricas in 2006
Where a Panadería Became a Party
When Cositas Ricas opened in 2000, it became a refuge for Jackson Heights’ Colombian community, a modest bakery where you could nurse a café con leche and a guava pastry for hours. The energy inside skewed campy: Employees dressed in beige-and-green uniforms, and hamburger-shaped neon signs adorned the walls. Customers often stopped by wearing waist-trainers and with their hair in rollers. Then, in 2006, True Colors, a popular gay bar, opened next door.
The restaurant quickly became — and remains — a queer haven: To this day, it’s not uncommon to see a table of trans women and gays sharing a bottle of aguardiente sitting next to a group of straight dudes cursing at the soccer games playing on TV monitors overhead, all while waitresses float effortlessly among the aisles calling everyone amor. Over the years, the owners expanded the menu, painted murals on the walls, and added a giant yellow cow above the front door to advertise the various cuts of steak Cositas Ricas now serves, transforming it from a cozy corner panadería into a bacchanal befitting Roosevelt Avenue. After ten o’clock, the restaurant becomes a party. Salsa and cumbia play as diners dance in their seats when their song is on. Tune your ears and you’ll hear accents from El Salvador and Uruguay and the Dominican Republic mingling with those of the cooks shouting out orders for bandeja paisa — the classic Colombian dish consisting of rice, beans, chicharrón, chorizo, fried egg, avocado, and a crispy arepa — in the open-concept kitchen.
In the past two decades, Cositas Ricas has hosted the likes of Action Bronson and J Balvin, who filmed the music video for “Nivel de Perreo” on the roof in 2022. The real stars of the show are the locals. Paula Caceres, a line cook who was raised in Jackson Heights, was a regular at the restaurant around 2010. “It’d be packed with people coming home from work, couples on dates, the gay hairstylists from the salons down the street,” they recall. “I swear you’d see a baby getting baptized at a table, just chilling.”
Time Cafe in 1995
Where Def Jam Lunched
It seemed like all of Def Jam used to go to Time Cafe. The female record executives, especially — Rhonda Cowan, Tracey Waples — used to hang out there. We were having so much fun. And that food was good. The angel-hair pasta — oh my God, it was just incredible. One time, I was gonna have a meeting with Andre Harrell, God rest his soul, the former head of Uptown Records and Motown. I told my relative to meet me before so I’m not sitting by myself. She sat down and started to steal the silverware. I was like, “Oh my God, put it back.” Andre and Russell Simmons came walking in, she got up, and the silverware fell everywhere — clink, clink, clink. I turned bright red. When the waitress came over, she just picked up the silverware, gently placed it back on the table, and said, “Would you like anything else, Rosie?” I never did tell Andre. —As told to Ben Kesslen
mcdonald’s
Where We Drank, and Fought, and Ate Big Macs With Andy Warhol
To a heedless visitor, every McDonald’s looks about the same. But for as long as the fast-food chain has been in New York (its first store opened here in 1972), certain locations have served different purposes — as a high-low venue for a black-tie benefit gala attended by Andy Warhol in 1976, a quasi rec center for elderly Korean patrons in Flushing in 2014, or simply as hubs for various, and often debaucherous, crews throughout the five boroughs.
In the late aughts, at around 2 or 3 a.m., when the Lower East Side nightlife scene known as Hell Square began shutting down, the McDonald’s on Delancey and Essex provided an antidote to closing time: You didn’t have to go home, and you absolutely could stay there. “It was another character
in our lives. It wasn’t just an establishment,” says Brenden Ramirez, a bartender who remembers eating “McGangbangs” (a folkloric McDonald’s item that involves shoving a McChicken into a McDouble) while patrons took swings at one another. Lola Jiblazee, who hosted parties at clubs like Hotel Chantelle and the DL, would often marshal groups of people who thought they were following her to an after-party for a late-night visit.
In Tribeca, the Chambers Street McDonald’s has long replaced suburban family basements for Stuyvesant High School students in need of somewhere to misbehave. “If before a school dance, you wanted to get a little buzz, that was the place to be,” says Emma Carlisle, who graduated in 2006. “Its value was that it was lawless,” says the writer Becky Cooper, who graduated from Stuy that same year and doesn’t remember ever eating any
food at that McDonald’s.
Uptown, from around 2013 to 2016, denizens of Murray Hill may recall a mostly finance-guy scene at the 33rd Street McDonald’s after a night at Bowery Electric or Phebe’s. “The Wolf of Wall Street had just come out,” says one former regular of that location. “It was all these kids who thought they were Gordon Gekko — rich kids in suits at the McDonald’s, pulling out their BlackBerrys.”
Belmore Cafeteria in 1971| punjabi deli in 1998
Where Cabdrivers Made Their Pit Stops
Belmore Cafeteria
Park Avenue South between East 28th and 29th was always lined with cabs; Belmore Cafeteria, named for a brand of cigars, served food to drivers at all hours. The Belmore occupied a culinary niche that’s now gone, that of steam-table corned-beef hash and boiled potatoes, borscht and roasted squash, served on fiberglass trays. The hamburger was reportedly pretty good, and there were pitchers of water in case a customer needed to run outside and top up his radiator. Taxi Driver made it famous — Peter Boyle, as Wizard, lays out his earnest if incoherent philosophy to Travis Bickle there late one night — but times change and cabbies retire. The building came down for a beige apartment tower in 1984. —Christopher Bonanos
Punjabi Deli
By the early 1990s, South Asian immigrants had taken on the mantle of the yellow-cab industry. As a cabdriver for five years, Kulwinder Singh faced what he calls “the big problem” of finding a bathroom — public restrooms had vanished and store owners would often turn him away. In 1994, he set out to solve this himself, opening Punjabi Deli in a sliver of a space on East 1st Street. Getting the message out was easy: He told drivers he knew, who spread word over the radio. He offered not only a bathroom but tea, coffee, and affordable food made by his family members. There was kheer, samosas, and kadhi pakora that tasted like home for men who had left their own families behind. Singh estimates 300 to 500 cabbies would visit every day. The business could go through 3,000 disposable cups in a week. It was open 24/7 because there was always a cabbie on the road. By the time Harpal Singh started driving in 2003, Punjabi Deli was well established. It was the first place he found in New York that felt familiar: “For me, the food I was getting there was a dream come true.” —Chris Crowley
lot 61 in 1998
Where I Accidentally Invented the Clubstaurant
When I was 8 years old, I wrote a note saying I was going to have my own restaurant by the time I was 30. But as that birthday approached, I was looking and looking for a space and everything was too expensive. My best friend, Yvonne Force Villareal, said Chelsea was going to be the next big place, but I wasn’t totally convinced. I wasn’t looking to be cool. I was looking to be successful.
Our first night, Lot 61 had 500 people from all over. The only celebrity I ever knew, an old pal, a bestie, was Bruce Willis. He was really so instrumental in sending so many people. When Kevin Costner was in town for three months, he came in because Bruce Willis told him to. It just clicked from there. I had a great referral system because we made people feel comfortable, safe, and happy. And we never talked to the press.
We didn’t really have a cocktail hour because nobody was around Chelsea at five o’clock. The exception was Annie Leibovitz, who would bring in her whole crew after a shoot. She’d come around 4:30. I even opened up at three for her. She got us on the Vogue radar in the first few months. We then did a big after-party for Armani Exchange for 250 A-list people, true A-list: De Niro, Sophia Loren, Marty Scorsese.
We’d serve food all night, and at 10 p.m., it turned into a disco. Mark Ronson was our first DJ. We also had amazing art on the walls: Damien Hirst, Jorge Pardo, Rudolf Stingel, and Sean Landers. I wasn’t trying to do anything other than put together something that I thought people would like. I came from Bouley, four-star dining. I was not a club owner, but I was too afraid to do a classic restaurant. —As told to Ben Kesslen
Sammy's in 1988
Where We Ate Lobster Till It Hurt
We’d go to either Pink Tea Cup or Sammy’s on City Island. We ate there every day. They always were able to cater to 20 or more people. Fried clams, lobster with butter, king-crab legs — that was the pig-out place. You’d leave there hurting, mad that you went to eat. We’d always get the same table: in the back, by the water, right before the deck. We were never outside. It was me and my people and Jay and his people. Everybody met at City Island. —As told to Ben Kesslen
San Remo in 1953
Where Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg Saw Through the Smoke
The writers and artists who loitered around Macdougal Street in the 1950s have been called a lot of things: “irresponsible tea heads,” Allen Ginsberg used to say; “subterraneans,” Jack Kerouac called them; and “real bastards,” according to the artist Mary Frank. To most people, though, they are and will forever be the Beats — a group united not so much by artistic style as by proximity and a desire to drink, do drugs, screw around, write, and repeat.
Where, then, did food fit into the equation? Mostly, it didn’t. To them, it was just “something they put in their mouth,” says Frank, who was married to the photographer Robert Frank, himself a part of the Beat crowd, for 19 years. The restaurants, cafés, and bars they frequented throughout their 20s served more as backdrops, places where they could “proselytize and argue,” Frank says. Ginsberg trolled the all-night cafeterias around what he referred to as the “lumpen world” of Times Square, seeking a bit of thrill and sleaze and occasionally picking up guys. He even briefly worked at Bickford’s on Fifth Avenue, busing tables and watching, as he later wrote in Howl, the best minds of his generation sink in its “submarine light.” Places like Caffè Reggio, Minetta Tavern, Cedar Tavern, and the jazz club Five Spot Café became frequent haunts but none more influentially than San Remo Café, on the corner of Bleecker and Macdougal.
In journals and letters, Ginsberg and Kerouac often refer to it simply as “Remo.” Frank, who “barely drinks now and didn’t drink at all then,” remembers it as a “corner filled with people,” though “you couldn’t hardly see anyone because of the smoke.” Wherever they went, she says, Kerouac, Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, Gregory Corso, Lucien Carr, and whoever else happened to be tagging along with them attracted an audience. “They performed in the way they talked,” Frank says. “Especially Ginsberg, who had a voice like a rabbi.” The Living Theatre, Judith Malina and Julian Beck’s avant-garde troupe that was at the center of the early Off Broadway movement, was more or less founded in the San Remo. So were the casual flings the couple’s open marriage allowed.
Remo was where Kerouac embarked on a tryst with Gore Vidal, which the two wrote about separately in later books — Kerouac vaguely denying it happened and Vidal asserting it very much did. Remo was also one of the places Kerouac got into drunken brawls and Ginsberg nursed any number of crushes. “I would have liked to know you that night, wish I could have communicated who I was,” he wrote about seeing Dylan Thomas at the café in 1952. “Ran into Dick Davalos in Remo the other night, and we stared at each other and in low voices exchanged compliments,” he said in a letter to Kerouac. “It was always a drama,” says Frank. “And we were addicted to drama.”
Willie’s Steakhouse in 1993
Where Mambo Kings Jammed Every Night of the Week
When Kenneth Giordano took over Willie’s Steakhouse, a restaurant in the shadow of the rattling 6 train on Westchester Avenue, he knew he wanted to feature live jazz. So to facilitate the descargas, he bought some instruments and left them onstage. Whoever came in could get up and play. Giordano counted the “King of Mambo” himself — Tito Puente — among his customers. “It became the epicenter of the Bronx,” says the music historian Joe Conzo Sr., who was Puente’s confidant and longtime friend. “Queen of Salsa” Celia Cruz, trumpeter Alfredo “Chocolate” Armenteros, flutist Dave Valentin, drummer Carlos “Patato” Valdes, Latin soul’s Joe Bataan, a young Marc Anthony, and Fania Records founder Johnny Pacheco were all regulars too. Al Pacino showed up with Puente when he was filming Carlito’s Way. As Conzo remembers it, Puerto Rican baseball star Orlando Cepeda walked in the same night. “These guys are cursing at each other, joking with each other,” he remembers. “They were letting their hair down.” Word quickly got out that whenever Puente was in town, and no matter where else he was playing — Copacabana, El Morocco, Latin Quarter, or even Jimmy’s Bronx Café — he would eventually end up at Willie’s and diners would get a free show with their bistec encebollado. On those nights, Conzo says, Willie’s felt like the center of the universe: “When he got on those timbales, forget about it.”
Cafe Tabac in 1993
Where You Had to Get Past Two Velvet Ropes
One winter night in 1993, when I was 29 and still finding my way, a man I’d been seeing tried to impress me, I think, by taking me to Café Tabac. Of course, I’d heard of it. The gossip columns were full of items about the glamorous shenanigans going on nightly at the funky-looking little bistro on East 9th Street, opened the previous year by Roy Liebenthal, a soulfully handsome 28-year-old model, and his business partner, Ernest Santaniello. Madonna, Bono, and the so-called Trinity — Naomi Campbell, Linda Evangelista, and Christy Turlington — were showing up on a regular basis. “It was like lightning striking the gold pot and the gold pipes burst open and all the gold coins spill out. That’s what it was,” the journalist George Wayne has said.
My eyes growing wide as Lucy’s at the Brown Derby, I saw Robert De Niro come in wearing a leather duster and go upstairs with Harvey Keitel and some women in furs. Then Jim Jarmusch arrived, followed by Willem Dafoe, Steve Buscemi, and Iggy Pop, like some Reservoir Dogs–inspired fever dream. Then I saw the Trinity lope in and climb the stairs, all laughing and smiling as if being that beautiful was even more fun than it seemed.
And there was Debi Mazar. Oh my God, I thought, does this mean Madonna’s coming?
I resolved in the middle of dinner that I had to somehow get up those stairs and into the inner sanctum, which had its own velvet rope, followed by a curtain, then another velvet rope. My date had only enough clout to score us a table downstairs — no small feat, but suddenly it wasn’t enough. So I told this guy (an older British journalist who resembled the avuncular actor Stephen Fry, ascot and all) that I was going to the ladies’ room.
And then — quickly working out that it wasn’t my youth or cuteness that would gain me entry but knowing someone up in the exclusive room — I told the doorman at the stairs that I was Jarmusch’s cousin and on my way to meet him. Both ropes (and the curtain) magically opened. (I guess it must have seemed impossible that anyone would make up a story that ridiculous?)
The rest of that night stays in my mind like glossy stills shot by some great nightlife photographer. I remember looking around and thinking, I want to write about this someday.
Albee Square Mall in 1982
Where Downtown Brooklyn Went for Fries After School
Imhotep Bey and his son Kaseem dropped by the food court inside the mall — now the site of City Point — after school in 1982. (Biz Markie released his song “Albee Square Mall” a few years later.) Jamel Shabazz, the photographer who caught them on that day, reconnected with Kaseem in 2003. “He grew up to be a fine young man,” Shabazz says.
tuesday lunch club in 1990
Where an Art Collective Ate Cheap Fish Balls
They called it Tuesday Lunch Club, a hang with the regularity of a sacrament. Just about every week starting in the late ’80s, the artists Bing Lee and Ik-Joong Kang would round up a crew of friends like Martin Wong, Ken Chu, and Arlan Huang to meet at a rotating series of Chinatown spots. There was Tai Tung, where the Hong Kong chef knew to lace his fish balls with orange peel and seaweed. Or Yuen Yuen, where their performance-artist friend Frog King used to write out the daily menu for the restaurant in exchange for a free meal. Or Canal Seafood, where Kang liked to order the squid. “The criteria was ‘affordable.’ Food has to be good. And,” says Lee, “that the waiter or waitress doesn’t bother us. If they kick us out when we finish, it won’t work.”
“And nobody really talked about art,” says Kang. “You talked about food!”
But they were making art — a lot of it. They were part of a churning, bubbling downtown scene full of ambitious Asian painters, sculptors, dancers, and performance artists whom at that point the mainstream art world mostly ignored. They ate. And they shared frustrations.
Soon, they started to channel those frustrations into action: In 1990, Lee, Chu, and the artist and scholar Margo Machida, among others, formed Godzilla, a collective they called an Asian American Arts Network, which they wanted to use to get more shows and more critical attention for Asian American artists. Godzilla grew quickly, since anybody who came to a meeting was automatically considered a member. It organized shows and publications and in 1991 widely distributed an open letter they’d written to David Ross, the director of the Whitney Museum, pointing out that the Biennial that year included only one Asian American artist. It got results — that letter, and their subsequent meeting with Ross, is one of many reasons why the 1993 Biennial included more Asian American artists than ever before.
Godzilla stopped meeting shortly after 9/11. But Lee and Kang still get lunch. Now 75 and 64, respectively, they like to meet at Spongies on Baxter Street, where they linger over a $1 Hong Kong–style sponge cake before they decide where to go for the main event. Kang says that to him, their regular meals together are “more important than Godzilla. The spirit is different. It’s not about showing what we believe. It’s about the heart.” He laughs. “And the mouth. And the stomach.”
grange hall in 1994
Where I Asked Brad Pitt to Wait for a Table
Tucked on the quiet corner of Commerce and Barrow Streets in the West Village, across from two identical townhouses separated by a shared gated garden (fancifully rumored to have been built for warring twin sisters) and a few doors down from the Cherry Lane Theatre, was Grange Hall.
I was hired as a waiter before it opened in 1992, which, at the time, was something of a surprise. Typically, restaurants had a stunning Black woman at the host stand, eye candy for the white male patrons, but Black men were mostly relegated to being busboys or barbacks, even in bohemian downtown. Luckily, one of Grange’s owners, Jacqui Smith, took a shine to me.
Grange served comfort food in a Great Depression–speakeasy type setting — down to the portrait of FDR over the bar and the Berenice Abbott photography. (Abbott had lived in an apartment above the restaurant decades prior.) With its refurbished wood-and-leather booths, vintage wall sconces, and stunning bar, Grange had a warm glow of comfort and privacy without the pretense that usually goes with that. Those were
the last days of indoor smoking at restaurants, and the walls had a cigarette patina.
It immediately became popular: Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson, seemingly in a state of unease, liked to sit at one of the three bar booths, gazing contemplatively out the window; Rosie Perez preferred the dining room. Matthew Broderick had exquisite taste in wine and liked the booth nearest the kitchen door. He was always cordial, which I suppose one has to be when dining with one’s mother, which he often did.
By 1994, I had stopped waiting tables and become the weekend brunch manager (it gave me more time to work on my first novel, The View From Here). One sunny afternoon, rays filtering through the vintage milk bottles used as flower vases, Brad Pitt walked in holding the hand of Gwyneth Paltrow. I sensed a shift in the energy in the bar area before I even saw them. He demurely made his way through the crowd to the host stand and asked for a table for two. I scanned the dining room, assessing the progress of tables, and looked at my list. “That’ll be about 20 minutes,” I said. There was a pause. Perhaps three seconds, which can be a long time. He didn’t say anything. I didn’t say anything. Paltrow didn’t say anything. “Would you like to put your name down?” I asked. He looked to his side at her. “Yes,” he said, then after a shorter pause, as if embarrassed to even mention it, but almost appreciative, he said, “Brad.” I wrote it down, and they made their way back through the bar crowd, past the vintage telephone booth, and exited the bar entrance.
What stood out was not the two of them but how others reacted. Didn’t I know they were rumored to be dating? These were the years before smartphones made everyone a roving reporter and social-media paparazzo. Had it been dinner, I think no one would have cared, but at brunch, without the cloak of night, people easily notice. One woman even said, “You could have given them our table.”
For a moment, I thought, Perhaps I’d made a mistake. I must have, the way everyone around me was behaving. Surely, having them there would be good for business. This was on my mind as I glided through the dining room, clearing tables, to get the next guest in. Then I immediately let it go. They weren’t regular customers. I had to keep it moving.
Still, when they returned 20 minutes later, I was relieved. Not just for the sake of the restaurant but because they’d chosen to come back. Humility. A table had just opened up. I seated them and continued on my way. The energy immediately returned to normal. No one gawked. The rest of the day went off without a hitch. Days later, I found out that someone had called “Page Six.” I was sorry someone invaded their privacy, yet, in a way, I was pleased. I knew it would make my job easier. If Brad and Gwyneth can wait, trust and believe, so can you. “Name?”
From 1950s to 2000s
Where Political Power Wheeled and Dealed
1950s: Joe’s Restaurant in Brooklyn Heights
The spacious two-story diner near Borough Hall with an exhaustive menu and surf-and-turf specialties attracted politicians, Catholic organizations, and civic groups to its banquet tables. Joe’s most famous patron was Dodgers co-owner Branch Rickey, who had discussed signing Jackie Robinson at his favorite table. It was torn down in 1959 to make way for Cadman Plaza West.
1960s: Antun’s in Queens Village
The catering hall appealed to Democratic bigwigs and labor leaders who needed a banquet room spacious enough to fête governors and senators. JFK stopped by for a women’s luncheon three days before the 1960 election to shore up the Irish American voting bloc in what was then a key swing state. “Everything is always pretty good there,” says former Queens congressman Joe Crowley. “For a catering hall, they had excellent seafood.”
1970s: Foffe’s in Brooklyn Heights
After Meade Esposito became the state’s most powerful Democratic leader, he summoned aspiring candidates and judges he backed to lunch at a table facing the front window so he could see who was coming in. The Italian trattoria specialized in wild game, and Esposito frequently recommended a veal dish named after him. Sometimes he even dined with reporters, telling one Timesman in 1972 that if he didn’t like the story, he’d “break his ankles.”
1980s: Gargiulo’s in Coney Island
While Manhattan elites hobnobbed at Elaine’s or the Rainbow Room, Brooklyn bosses preferred a family-run red-sauce joint that hadn’t changed much since 1907. Anthony Genovesi made judges and legislators over antipasto, while Brooklyn’s health-conscious borough president Howard Golden preferred roast chicken with broccoli rabe. Party functionaries trekked to Coney Island for fundraisers, although the banquet hall was also a favorite of developer Fred Trump, whose son Donald would tag along with him.
1990s: Sylvia’s Restaurant in Harlem
When David Dinkins became the city’s first Black mayor in 1990, Sylvia’s — already a landmark that had been open nearly three decades — became a second City Hall. “Lunches were scheduled, but breakfasts were more organic,” former governor David Paterson says. “You went there, you looked up the three to four people you were going to interact with that day, and you all kind of changed seating to talk about issues you’d deal with later.” Harlem’s next generation of political leaders — Paterson, Greg Meeks, Keith Wright, and Al Sharpton — were regulars. “Reverend Jackson, who was a soul-food connoisseur, would sit and lecture me on who I should become,” Sharpton recalls.
2000s: City Hall Restaurant in Tribeca
The bistro’s tall ceilings, cozy booths, and brass fixtures embodied the clubby atmosphere of the Bloomberg era, when technocrats and the lobbyists seeking to influence them gathered. It opened in 1998 but earned enormous goodwill among the political class for being one of the few downtown spots to stay open after 9/11. “I remember the scene a lot better than the food,” Bloomberg’s former deputy mayor Howard Wolfson says.
Bubby’s in 1997
Where JFK Jr. Ordered Oatmeal Next to His Stalkers
Nineties Tribeca had a local god, and he was JFK Jr. Everyone in the neighborhood knew that he jogged shirtless through the still-cobbled streets, that he became a regular at Mary Parvin’s salons at the newsstand–slash–Oriental-rug shop she operated on Hudson. And while he was said to drop in at Walker’s, you would more reliably find him at Bubby’s one block west, which Ron Silver opened in 1990 to sell his pies before it grew into one of the neighborhood’s most durable restaurants. “He came in on the second day that we were open,” Silver says. And he ate his last breakfast there before his plane crash. Kennedy was a regular. Sometimes alone, often with Carolyn. “I would be reading the New York Post, some sort of John-John story, and I would feel, like, hot air on my neck,” Silver says. It was Kennedy, reading over his shoulder. Silver would tell him, “Dude, there’s a fucking paper right over there.” Once Kennedy and the former Carolyn Bessette married, in 1996, the media attention only increased. Carole Radziwill, the journalist and latter-day Real Housewife, recalled ordering delivery from Bubby’s with Carolyn while a crush of paparazzi waited outside. At the restaurant, “there might be a stalker,” Silver concedes. “I wasn’t going to throw them out just for being stalkers — I felt a responsibility to try to manage it.”
Diner in 1999
Where Artists in Illegal Lofts Ate Grass Fed Burgers
When Diner opened in 1998 in a dining car that had been sitting empty just south of the Williamsburg Bridge, it wasn’t entirely clear who its actual diners might be. Shoppers at the nearby thrift store Domsey’s, maybe? Owners Andrew Tarlow and Mark Firth hadn’t known that the Gretsch, the battleship-size guitar factory across the street, was full of artists living there illegally. “There weren’t a lot of restaurants,” remembers Casey Spooner, who ate there daily while recording the Fischerspooner album #1. For a very brief bohemian moment, Diner was a world-class distillery of high-proof cool. The fashion editor Cecilia Dean brought Hedi Slimane there in a Town Car looking for “pasty-white lanky rock-and-roll hipsters” to model. In May 2000, a pop-up version, with actual Diner diners flown in to hang out, was installed at the Färgfabriken in Stockholm.
indochine in 1984
Where You Wanted to Be in the Smoking Section
Right out of the gate, Indochine was one of the hottest spots in the city — alongside Area and Danceteria. But while those places were wild and messy, Indochine, which served Vietnamese food from its perch on Lafayette Street, was chic. The opening-night crowd in 1984 included Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and Kenny Scharf. Debi Mazar visited throughout the ’80s, sometimes with Madonna in tow. “I loved walking up those stairs with the red light,” Mazar recalls. “And then there’s some gorgeous model going, ‘Hello, let me take you to your seat.’ And me just going, Why can’t I look like her? Why is she a waitress?” (The staff has long been intimidatingly gorgeous. “Whoever did the hiring must’ve been a casting director,” Bethann Hardison told me.)
You could see U2 sitting in a booth listening to a cassette of their still-unreleased record on a boom box, or an extremely pregnant Sarah Jessica Parker dining with husband Matthew Broderick the night before giving birth to their son, James. (Gossip columnists called the restaurant the next day asking if she’d eaten something spicy that triggered the labor.) One night when I was there with my favorite bodybuilder bottom gay porn star who was in town to film a gang bang, the king and queen of Sweden were in another booth with their daughter Madeleine. Willem Dafoe liked to sit at the bar behind the giant floral arrangement, where he would study the script for the play he was working on. Donatella Versace liked a table in the back when she brought her family in for Sunday dinners.
Jorg Rae, the bartender turned manager, remembers the time Catherine Deneuve almost didn’t get a seat. “I was standing at the door, and I see her just peeking into the window. The bar’s crowded and busy, and I see her turning around and leaving. I was thinking, Not on my watch. And I ran after her and I was like, ‘Miss Deneuve, were you looking for a table?’ She said, ‘Yes, but it looks very crowded.’ I said, ‘No, I have a great table for you.’ And she goes, ‘Well, can I smoke there?’ I said, ‘But of course.’”
Pre-Bloomberg, the restaurant was blanketed in smoke. “Indochine was always a restaurant where people smoked because cool people smoked back then,” Jean-Marc Houmard says. (He has run the restaurant since 1992, when owner Brian McNally sold it to him and two fellow employees, Michael Callahan and chef Hui Chi Le.) This applied to the staff, too: “They would light the cigarettes in between taking orders, and the bartenders would smoke in between shaking cocktails — and when there was that law that you had to have a nonsmoking section, the best tables were always in the smoking section. I remember these two old ladies, they were in their 80s, they came in, and I asked if they wanted to be in the nonsmoking section, and they said, ‘No, no, we want to be in the smoking section even though we don’t smoke because that’s where everybody who is interesting sits.’”
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Mary J. Blige: The True Superhero of Hip-Hop Soul
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Mary J. Blige: The True Superhero of Hip-Hop Soul
|
en
| null |
â
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. Sheâs battled incredible adversity throughout her life, but always forged her own path rather than bowing to trends, and through her painfully honest lyrics sheâs shone a light on the experiences of young black women, making her as relatable a figure as she is an influential one. Â
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 âto abuse us some moreâ. 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 âWe lived in the ghetto⦠Iâd 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 wasnât 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: âIs it somehow my fault?ââ
â
â
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: âI 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, drugsâIâd do whatever it took to feel a little better.â Fortunately her teenage instincts werenât 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 Bakerâs 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 âPuffyâ Combs. The pair came up with Maryâs debut album, Whatâs 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 âThe Queen of Hip-Hop Soulâ.Â
â
â
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. Sheâs battled incredible adversity throughout her life, but always forged her own path rather than bowing to trends, and through her painfully honest lyrics sheâs shone a light on the experiences of young black women, making her as relatable a figure as she is an influential one. Â
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 âto abuse us some moreâ. 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 âWe lived in the ghetto⦠Iâd 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 wasnât 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: âIs it somehow my fault?ââ
â
â
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: âI 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, drugsâIâd do whatever it took to feel a little better.â Fortunately her teenage instincts werenât 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 Bakerâs 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 âPuffyâ Combs. The pair came up with Maryâs debut album, Whatâs 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 âThe Queen of Hip-Hop Soulâ.Â
â
â
My Life and beyond
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 Maryâs second album, 1994âs 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 Clanâs Method Man, Iâll Be There For You/Youâre 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 TLCâs No Scrubs and Bills Bills Bills by Destinyâs Child.Â
â
â
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. Â
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 âI am every young girl in every hood⦠the fans understand that whatever theyâre going through in their lives, Iâm probably going through it, too â and then some. But whatever happens, weâre gonna get each other through it. Weâre gonna cry at my concert, weâre gonna be mad, weâre gonna go through the emotions that weâre having, you know what I mean? Itâs not just songs and glamor. Itâs sweat, blood, broken toes, and mistakes⦠Itâs life.â 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 Timeâs 100 Most Influential People in 2022, âshe was the one for it because she wasnât 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.âÂ
â
â
Now Mary is more than just a spokesperson for New Yorkers, sheâs 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. Itâs a vital local service that provides valuable support, and coupled with Maryâs own inspirational career, itâs part of a legacy that unquestionably marks Mary J Blige out as a True Superhero.
â
|
||||||
correct_birth_00056
|
FactBench
|
2
| 70
|
https://www.phillymag.com/news/2017/04/21/mary-j-blige-4th-of-july-philadelphia/
|
en
|
Mary J. Blige to Headline Philly 4th of July
|
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2017-04-21T00:00:00
|
With the announcement that Mary J. Blige will headline Philadelphia's 4th of July this year, we wonder if the city has finally figured this thing out.
|
en
|
Philadelphia Magazine
|
https://www.phillymag.com/news/2017/04/21/mary-j-blige-4th-of-july-philadelphia/
|
Mary J. Blige Will Headline Philly’s 4th of July
Has the city finally figured this thing out? Let's hope so.
After a few years of 4th of July concerts and fireworks that ranged from unforgivable (hello, Nicki Minaj) to just plain chaotic (hello, last year), Philly is ready to give it a go again, this time with R&B superstar Mary J. Blige at the helm.
Philly’s 4th of July festivities will also include an early-in-the-day performance by members of Kidz Bop as well as a Philly Pops concert with special guests Mandy Gonzalez from Hamilton and jazz pianist Tony DeSare. And because it’s Philly, you can also expect a performance from Boyz II Men. More performers are scheduled to be announced in May.
“She’s a huge get,” says Philly 4th of July organizer Jeff Guaracino of Blige. “And a hot topic with a great message.”
Guaracino is right. Blige is a huge get, with something like 50 million in album sales and plenty of Grammy and other awards to show for her work.
You can watch the whole thing live on NBC 10, Telemundo or streamed at NBC10.com. Or you can, you know, go down to the Parkway and see Blige in person.
There was a lot of confusion surrounding last year’s event, but Guaracino says he expects the 4th to run a lot more smoothly this year, pointing out that he came on board with the Kenney administration, which took control of City Hall less than six months before the 2016 concert.
The free concert on the Parkway will begin at 7 p.m. and the fireworks are scheduled to be set off at 9:30 p.m. In some years, the fireworks have been quite a bit later than that.
“People who work the next day are home earlier,” Guaracino says. “There’s better coordination with Septa schedules, and its saves the city money by being earlier. And Kidz Bop for a second year in the early afternoon gives families with kids a way to enjoy, too.”
The concerts came under fire in 2014 after Minaj delivered a set that was more suited for a frat house than what should be a patriotic, family event. And the city didn’t do much better one year later when they picked Miguel, who has songs like “Fuck Right Now” and “Quickie”. No, he didn’t sing them on the Parkway, but still. When you think of the 4th of July, he just wasn’t good fit.
But Blige is different. She’s got class. She avoids controversy. And, hell, she’s got a great voice and puts on a killer show. So we’re optimistic. OK, cautiously optimistic.
Below, a complete history of Philly’s 4th of July concerts.
July 4, 1994
The 218th birthday of American independence was celebrated with 54-year-old Smokey Robinson, while Czech President Vaclav Havel was in town to accept the Liberty Medal. Captain Noah (it was his last year on TV) was grand marshal of the Liberty Lighted Boat Parade.
July 4, 1995
Even though The Beach Boys owed Philadelphia $267,000 due to a debacle surrounding a 1985 “charity” concert they did here, we still paid them to show up again in 1995. The intrepid Daily News launched an investigation, and Meryl Levitz, then one of the people in charge of our July 4th celebrations, told the paper she couldn’t remember who chose the Beach Boys. But we’re pretty sure that then-Mayor Ed Rendell had something to do with this unfortunate choice.
July 4, 1996
The one, the only, the queen of Philadelphia’s soul, Miss Patti LaBelle. Naturally, she closed with “Over the Rainbow,” wearing a sequined red dress. Check it out:
July 4, 1997
You haven’t seen “America the Beautiful” performed live unless you saw Ray Charles do it here.
July 4, 1998
Boyz II Men, seven years after Cooleyhighharmony, at the beginning of their slow slide down the hill of fame and fortune. Consummate bluesman Keb Mo was the featured guest.
July 4, 1999
The greatest-hits set from Dionne Warwick included “Walk On By,” “Do You Know the Way to San Jose?” and her 1985 song “That’s What Friends Are For.” This was one year after the Psychic Friends Network, which Warwick had controversially been shilling, went bankrupt. The week’s festivities also included a black-tie tribute to… Gregory Peck?!?!
July 4, 2000
The guys from Earth, Wind and Fire put on a good show, and they came back less than a month later to entertain GOP leaders at a soiree on the waterfront during the Republican National Convention we hosted. (Remember that?)
July 4, 2001
Country music star Garth Brooks played some tunes, but the real celebrity power that day came from the Hollywood A-listers on hand for a dramatic reading of the Declaration of Independence on the 225th anniversary of its adoption by the Continental Congress. It included Mel Gibson, Morgan Freeman, Kathy Bates, Michael Douglas, Whoopi Goldberg, and Kevin Spacey, among others. The live recording of this isn’t so good, but here’s a pre-recorded version they did:
July 4, 2002
We could live with Brian McKnight, but special guests The Baha Men? Oh, what, you don’t remember The Baha Men? They gave us the treacherous earworm “Who Let the Dogs Out?” Below, the segment where an extremely sweaty McKnight performs “Back at One.”
July 4, 2003
Neo-soul crooner Musiq was joined by 1970s wah-wah-wah-wah-wah enthusiast Peter Frampton. On the same day, the National Constitution Center opened its doors for the first time.
July 4, 2004
We’re guessing that then-Mayor John Street was a huge fan of headliners The Isley Brothers. The same night, Madonna brought her Re-Invention Tour to what was then The Wachovia Center. 30,575 people showed up for that.
July 4, 2005
This was also known as the Philadelphia Freedom Concert, and it starred Elton John and Patti LaBelle. If you wanted a seat near the front, you had to fork over $500 for HIV/AIDS research, and there was a $1,000/person ball as well.
The show itself was fun but didn’t exactly meet its fundraising goal of at least $1,000,000 for local charities and organizations. In fact, it was a big flop. Organizer (and Philadelphia Gay News publisher) Mark Segal placed the blame on the Live 8 concert, which occurred in Philadelphia just days before. “[Live 8] took the publicity edge away,” Segal told the Inquirer. “We couldn’t get the people after that. Everything dried up. It’s just an unlucky break.”
Sir Elton opened the family-friendly show with “The Bitch Is Back.” Here’s “Rocket Man.”
July 4, 2006
Lionel Richie showed up in the middle of his Coming Home Tour. Special guest: Fantasia, back when a few people were still watching American Idol. She won in 2004.
July 4, 2007
We love Hall & Oates. But… their July 4th performance was totally off, filled with technical problems and sour notes. On top of that, there was a ton of rain. At 10:45 p.m., the city sent everyone home due to the rain and potential for lightning. Then, about forty minutes later, the fireworks were set of anyway.
July 4, 2008
We brought in John Legend, back when we still considered the UPenn grad an honorary Philadelphian.
But the real highlight had to have been the sculpture of our Founding Fathers made out of Cheez-Its.
July 4, 2009
The show was originally announced as just Sheryl Crow, to absolutely not thunderous applause. The Roots were soon added to the bill, and they’ve been there ever since. Crow’s VIP swag bag included lemon body butter, a Starr gift card and a free dinner at Chima (woo hoo!).
July 4, 2010
For some reason, The Roots were paired with the Goo Goo Dolls. The Philadelphia Weekly‘s Brian McManus christened the Goo Goo Dolls portion his “Week’s Worst” music pick.
July 4, 2011
The Roots delivered. As did guests Earth, Wind & Fire and Estelle. And DJ Jazzy Jeff did his thing:
July 4, 2012
This was a truly great show featuring The Roots (they played a killer cover of “Paul Revere” as a tribute to the just-passed MCA from the Beastie Boys), Queen Latifah, and Lauryn Hill, who showed up unannounced for a hot and sweaty set. But the big news was the shooting that occurred at 15th and JFK right after the show. Mayor Nutter called the 16-year-old shooter a “little asshole.”
July 4, 2013
We could have done without John Mayer and Demi Lovato, but The Roots and Jill Scott tore it up. Kevin Hart was the host.
July 4, 2014
The aforementioned Nicki Minaj mess. She let loose with her filthy mouth, guest Ed Sheeran couldn’t help but curse as well, and host Marlon Wayans used the word “nigga” every chance he could get. Happy %!@#$ 4th of July, America!
July 4, 2015
As we put it back then, “With Miguel, Philadelphia has officially ruined the 4th of July.” Banal country singer Jennifer Nettles was also on the bill.
July 4, 2016
No major problems with the performers — songwriter Leon Bridges, Hamilton star and Philly native Leslie Odom, and The O’Jays — but a Philly Pops show got scrapped at the last minute and people were upset over the fireworks timing and television coverage.
|
|||||
correct_birth_00056
|
FactBench
|
0
| 86
|
https://www.power1061.com/lsp/artist/bio/mary-j-blige/
|
en
|
This website is unavailable in your location. – Power 106.1
|
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en
|
/pf/resources/images/sites/cmg-rd-20054/favicon.ico?d=856
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Power 106.1
|
https://www.power1061.com/unavailable-location/
|
We’re Sorry!
This website is unavailable in your location.
Error 451
It appears you are attempting to access this website from a country outside of the United States, therefore access cannot be granted at this time.
|
|||||
correct_birth_00056
|
FactBench
|
2
| 71
|
https://music.apple.com/us/album/a-mary-christmas/1440819962
|
en
|
âA Mary Christmas
|
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[
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[] |
2013-01-01T00:00:00
|
Listen to A Mary Christmas by Mary J. Blige on Apple Music. 2013. 12 Songs. Duration: 46 minutes.
|
en
|
/assets/favicon/favicon-180.png
|
Apple Music - Web Player
|
https://music.apple.com/us/album/a-mary-christmas/1440819962
|
Leave it to Mary J. Blige, the queen of emotive, edgy soul, to turn her first holiday album into a dramatic and often poignant affair. A Mary Christmas does have its share of cheer: backed by a live orchestra, as are many of the tracks, âThis Christmasâ is a bright rendition of the Donny Hathaway classic. Still, Bligeâs take on âMy Favorite Thingsâ is hushed and delicate, and on her version of âPetit Papa Noël,â she sings in French over melancholy guitar.
|
||||
correct_birth_00056
|
FactBench
|
0
| 87
|
https://matrix-music.com/artist/mary-j-blige/
|
en
|
Mary J. Blige
|
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American R&B/Soul singer/songwriter, actress and philanthropist. Born: 11 January 1971 in The Bronx, New York City, New York, USA. In November 2010, Billboard Magazine ranked Blige as the most successful female R&B artist of the past 25 years, she ranked number two (overall) ahead of [a=Janet Jackson], [a=Mariah Carey], and [a=Whitney Houston].
|
en
|
Matrix Music
|
https://matrix-music.com/artist/mary-j-blige/
|
Biography
American R&B/Soul singer/songwriter, actress and philanthropist.
Born: 11 January 1971 in The Bronx, New York City, New York, USA.
In November 2010, Billboard Magazine ranked Blige as the most successful female R&B artist of the past 25 years, she ranked number two (overall) ahead of [a=Janet Jackson], [a=Mariah Carey], and [a=Whitney Houston].
|
|||||
correct_birth_00056
|
FactBench
|
1
| 24
|
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/mary-j-blige-on-becoming-herself/
|
en
|
Mary J. Blige on becoming herself
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2012-04-20T13:49:34-04:00
|
The "Queen of Hip-Hop Soul" is a Grammy-winning survivor who has grown more aware and confident of the woman she is
|
en
|
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/mary-j-blige-on-becoming-herself/
|
The miraculous singer Mary J. Blige is a "soul survivor" in more ways than one. Byron Pitts pays her a visit:
With nine Grammys and six multi-platinum albums to her name, Mary J. Blige has earned the title "Queen of Hip-Hop Soul."
But to her fans, she is simply Mary.
It's an intimacy Blige herself welcomes, by sharing the ups and downs of her life ... communicating and connecting with her fans like a preacher in a pulpit.
Her lyrics reflect her struggles, heartache and joy ...
"Life has a way of making you live it.
Sometimes it takes you to giving it..." (from "Press On")
And Blige again bares her soul on her latest album, "My Life 2."
"I just want to remind everybody how far we've come," Blige said, "because everybody can get so down on themselves. And we're not perfect. We're never going to be perfect."
The title is a nod to her 1994 sophomore record, "My Life," released when Blige was just 23 and figuring out her place in the world.
"I started speaking about what I was dealing with through my music, and 4 million women responded and said, 'Us too, Mary,'" she said. "And I didn't know that everyone was hurting like I was hurting. I had no idea."
What Blige was dealing with - in frank and sometimes raw terms - was the sexual abuse she experienced when she was five at the hands of a family acquaintance.
Her music struck a chord, and propelled her to the top of the hip hop and R&B charts.
Blige had arrived, but wasn't entirely comfortable with fame.
"I've read that the younger Mary J. Blige could be sometimes difficult to deal with," said Pitts. "How did you get from that person to who you are now?"
"Well, the younger Mary J. Blige, I would call her, she was very unaware, ignorant," Blige said.
"She didn't know how to sit down and give an interview and respect the interviewer, and the same, you know, stupid questions that they would ask over and over and over again," she laughed. "What you do is what you do, and I can't get angry about, you know, you asking me the same stupid questions. I've grown up a lot in that area."
"Are you calling my questions stupid?" Pitts asked.
"Not yours! " she laughed.
Hoping to smooth out the rough edges, her record label sent her to an etiquette class.
"I don't know how I knew that whatever I am - which is broken and unarticulate, and I didn't know that - would help people. Because I didn't know I would grow and evolve to this. But I just was completely like, 'I don't want to take no etiquette.' I didn't care about taking an etiquette class."
Blige also put her foot down when record executives suggested she change her name, to Mary Brown.
"It's like I didn't want to get rid of anything that meant something to me," she said. "My name is all I had. That's the only thing I can identify with, and my culture."
Mary Jane Blige was born in the Bronx and raised in a rough neighborhood in Yonkers, a suburb of New York City.
Pitts asked what Yonkers do for her?
"Yonkers made me strong and made me believe in myself, because so many people would doubt you and not believe," she said. "There are people that would believe in you, but the environment was so harsh, nobody wanted you to get out, you know?"
Blige's father left the family when she was 4, and her mother Corinne raised four children in a public Housing project.
"When I was a kid, I needed to sing because it makes me feel good about myself," Blige said. "It makes me feel good, period."
"You needed to sing?"
"I needed to, because when I was having like a down day, I mean, I would come down here, right down to the pier, and sing, like really loud. It would just lift all the oppression and depression and sadness and make me feel better. It does the same thing for me now."
When a tape of a 17-year-old Blige - recorded in a karaoke booth - made its way to music producer Andre Harrell, he immediately signed her up.
"I was street, I was every single thing that every little girl from the 'hood can relate to."
Blige forged a new genre dubbed "hip-hop soul," and helped pioneer the fashion trend called "ghetto fabulous."
"That was something that I was happy about, because it's all I had in identity," she said. "You know, I didn't know who I was. So if ghetto fabulous and keeping it real and all of that was what I was, I was cool with that ... until I learned that I can be more than that."
After years of drinking and cocaine use, Mary J. Blige shed the drama in her life, with the help of her husband and manager Kendu Isaacs.
And although she and Isaacs have been married for eight years, Blige initially had some doubts about the relationship:
"Even after I was married, I still couldn't believe it, that it was real," she said. "And he really did love broken down, little old me. 'Cause I just never saw myself like the woman that a man like him would want."
"Explain that? Because?"
"Because my past was just horrific. I felt ashamed about everything. Me dropping out of high school, me not, you know, just not being beautiful enough. I just didn't feel like I was smart enough or beautiful enough, you know, for years."
But after almost two decades in the spotlight, 40-year-old Mary J. Blige has finally made peace with her past, present, and future.
"You've been in this business for a while. Do you still enjoy it as much as you did when you were 17, 18, 19 years old?" asked Pitts.
"I enjoy it more now," she said. "Because now I can see it. And I know what it is. But when I was younger, I didn't know what the heck was going on. I was just singing for my life!
"I was running and hurting, and the only thing was coming out was pain. So now I'm enjoying my life because I know who I am."
"Who are you now?"
"I'm Mary Jane Blige. Jane Blige! You know, that's it. I know who I am. I am not perfect. I'm not the most beautiful woman in the world. But I'm one of them."
For more info:
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||||||
correct_birth_00056
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FactBench
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2
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https://www.npr.org/transcripts/7238067
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en
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Career Profile: Singer Mary J. Blige
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2007-02-07T13:00:00-05:00
|
R&B singer Mary J. Blige is up for eight Grammy awards this year — more than any other artist. We take a closer look at the career of a woman many consider to be the "queen of hip-hop soul."
|
en
|
NPR
|
https://www.npr.org/2007/02/07/7238067/career-profile-singer-mary-j-blige
|
(Soundbite of song, "Family Affair")
Ms. MARY J. BLIGE (Singer): (Singing) Hmm. Oh.
MADELEINE BRAND, host:
Switching gears to beat now, that song is called "Family Affair". It's one of the biggest hits from R&B singer Mary J. Blige. She is up for eight Grammys at this Sunday's Grammy Awards. That is more than any other artist. Mary J. has been topping urban and pop music charts for more than a decade.
NPR's Christopher Johnson has a profile on the singer her fans call Ms. Mary.
CHRISTOPHER JOHNSON: Mary J. Blige is doing her thing. The R&B star had an incredible year in '06. Her album "The Breakthrough" sold more than 6 million copies around the world. Blige just carted home nine Billboard trophies and two American Music Awards. She could clean up at the Grammys, too. Her eight nominations include Record and Song of the Year for "Be Without You." That hit spent a record-breaking 15 straight weeks at the top of R&B charts.
(Soundbite of song, "Be With You")
Ms. BLIGE: (Singing) Oh, put your hands up. Hands up. Look him right in his eyes, and tell him that you're too strong for too long.
Unidentified Woman: (Singing) And I can't be without you, baby.
Ms. BLIGE: (Singing) Can't be without you, baby. And I'll be waiting…
JOHNSON: Over the past few years, the beautiful Ms. Mary has started fashion runways, shown up on TV and off Broadway, and then featured on more than a dozen magazine covers. Vibe, an urban music and culture monthly, chose Mary for the front of their 150th issue next month.
Vibe's editor in chief Danielle Smith has been following Mary since the singer's career took off 15 years ago. Smith says all the attention Mary's getting is long overdue.
Ms. DANIELLE SMITH (Editor in Chief, Vibe magazine): I don't see how it didn't happen sooner. She is a gift to hip-hop fans, and she is a gift to R&B fans. But she's a gift, really, to everyone. Maybe she has on a cuter dress now, but you listen to the albums, and it's always been the same beauty, the same grace and the same soul.
JOHNSON: Mary talked about a new image in a recent interview with Oprah Winfrey. She explained that her new album title marks a relatively new phase in her life.
(Soundbite of TV show, "The Oprah Winfrey Show")
Ms. BLIGE: "The Breakthrough" is the self-love. If we believe in negative things about yourself…
Ms. OPRAH WINFREY (TV Host): Yeah.
Ms. BLIGE: That's what's going to happen. If we believe in positive things about yourself, that's just going to happen. I believe that I'm smart. I'm beautiful. I'm strong. I'm loved.
JOHNSON: Ms. Mary's put in work to get that secure. Life started out rough for the Bronx native, who grew up in some dangerous projects in New York. She dropped out of high school and spent her idle time at a local mall.
That's where the 17 year old cut a karaoke tape in 1988 that eventually made its way to the head of Uptown Records. Her break came when producer Sean "Puff Daddy" Combs helped Mary craft her debut disc, "What's the 411?" It went double-platinum, thanks to hit singles like "You Remind Me". That song was the jam back in the summer of '92, and eventually went number one on Billboard's R&B chart.
(Soundbite of song, "You Remind Me")
Ms. BLIGE: (Singing) You remind me, you remind me, you remind me. You remind me. Oh, baby…
JOHNSON: When Mary came out in the early '90s, Mariah, Whitney and Janet were among the reigning young R&B stars, but nobody was mixing heavy, love-sick soul with knocking hip-hop beats quite like Mary. She was the female soul singer showing up in combat boots on "Yo! MTV Raps", moving with as much swagger as her duet partner, then rap star Grand Puba. It was obvious how Mary got her crown as the queen of hip-hop soul.
(Soundbite of music)
Ms. BLIGE: (Singing) I know our love was meant to be.
GRAND PUBA: (Rapping) Hey, yo, Mary Blige is something kind of special.
Ms. BLIGE: (Singing) Love is a knife, and life is a mystery. You're very special.
GRAND PUBA: (Rapping) Uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh. Yeah.
JOHNSON: Mary's second album, "My Life", was bigger than her first, selling more than 3 million copies. Unlike 411, Mary co-wrote most of the tracks on this heavier, moodier, more emotional disk. Listen to "My Life", and it becomes clear: Mary was going through some things, including abusive relationships, heavy drug addiction and depression.
(Soundbite of music)
Ms. BLIGE: (Singing) If you looked into my life, oh, you will see I'm so through (unintelligible). Do know what to do or say.
JOHNSON: As Mary fought some serious pain, her name just got bigger. She did music for TV and movies, and took home her first Grammy in '96 for "You're All I Need to Get By", a duet with rapper Method Man. Through the late '90s, Mary dropped three more multi-platinum disks and headlined her first North American tour.
The millennium brought success in her personal life, as Mary kicked her addictions, started going back to church and entered a steady, stable romance. Today, Mary's sound and style have led critics to rank her among soul divas Aretha Franklin and Chaka Khan. Editor Danielle Smith says fans love Mary because she's just real. She's open about her past and about her climb out of the abyss. And to Smith, that's the reason Mary shines.
Ms. SMITH: Mary has done a lot of stumbling, but I think that it just makes her all the more human. and she always says pretty much at some point in the interview - when someone says well, Mary, you're just so great - she always says some version of look, I'm just trying to get it together.
JOHNSON: Chances are, the queen of hip-hop soul is busy getting herself together for a big night at the Grammys this weekend. Ms. Mary recently said she has eight acceptance speeches to write, one for each trophy she's hoping to take home this Sunday. Christopher Johnson, NPR News.
(Soundbite of music)
Ms. BLIGE: (Singing) She's been down and out, she's been wrote about, she's been talked about constantly. She's been up and down, she's been pushed around, but they held her down (unintelligible). She has no regrets, she accepts the past, all these things they help to make she. She's been lost and found, and she's still around, there's a reason for everything. Yeah.
You know I've been holding on, tried to make me break, but I still stay strong. Put my life on the (unintelligible), just so you can tell me (unintelligible). Don't take me as I am.
BRAND: There's more to come on DAY TO DAY from NPR News.
Copyright © 2007 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
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correct_birth_00056
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FactBench
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1
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https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/04/25/fivio-foreigns-big-move
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en
|
Fivio Foreign’s Big Move
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[
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"Kyle Chayka",
"Doreen St. Félix",
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"Condé Nast"
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2022-04-25T00:00:00
|
Kelefa Sanneh writes that Fivio Foreign made his name rapping about gang warfare. Can the Brooklyn-raised drill rapper go mainstream?
|
en
|
https://www.newyorker.com/verso/static/the-new-yorker/assets/favicon.ico
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The New Yorker
|
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/04/25/fivio-foreigns-big-move
|
“This is what New York City feel like and sound like,” Funkmaster Flex exclaimed, one recent night on Hot 97. For thirty years, Flex has been New York’s most prominent hip-hop radio d.j., tasked with figuring out what might be popular and then telling people what should be popular—turning audience research into a series of definitive statements, delivered so volubly and so frequently that he sometimes drowns out the music. On this night, Flex was drowning out a new track, “City of Gods,” which seemed sure to become a local favorite. “Fivio, I see you,” Flex said, calling out the rapper behind the track. A few years ago, Fivio Foreign was just one more guy from Brooklyn mean-mugging into the camera in a bunch of YouTube videos. Now he is emerging as the kind of reliable hip-hop star that New York, not too long ago, seemed to have stopped producing.
“City of Gods” had a chorus by Alicia Keys, singing, “New York City, please go easy on this heart of mine.” It had a newsworthy verse, in which Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, threatened the “Saturday Night Live” star Pete Davidson, who was dating his ex, Kim Kardashian: “This afternoon / A hundred goons / Pulling up to ‘S.N.L.’ ” Most important, it had Fivio Foreign, who staged a self-coronation in the track’s opening lines:
Nigga, this my shit
Welcome to the city of gods
Pop was the king of New York
Now I’m the nigga in charge.
“Pop,” as just about every listener would have known, was Pop Smoke, an ally and friend of Fivio who was approaching mainstream stardom when he was murdered, in February, 2020; his first album, released posthumously, made its début at No. 1 on the Billboard chart. Pop Smoke was about a decade younger than Fivio Foreign, who just turned thirty-two. But he got famous first, and took a fraternal interest in Fivio’s career: he tried, unsuccessfully, to get the label that signed him to sign Fivio, too, and when he travelled to the Hot 97 studios for an interview, in 2019, he included Fivio in his entourage.
Nowadays, it is Fivio who has an entourage, and one evening this spring he paid a visit to Funkmaster Flex with a few friends in tow. Flex was prerecording segments in a nondescript Chelsea office building; Fivio and friends were shown to a rather desolate hospitality room, which was full of Cîroc vodka decorations yet surprisingly bereft of the product itself. Someone procured a bottle of champagne, but Fivio was not particularly interested—he prides himself on professionalism, and, although he has rapped enthusiastically about intoxicants ranging from Hennessy to Percocet, he says that he is more focussed on success these days.
[Support The New Yorker’s award-winning journalism. Subscribe today »]
The spelling of “Fivio” is slightly misleading: the name derives from an old nickname, Fabio, bestowed by a friend who noticed that women found him charming, and so it is pronounced “Favio,” though people who know him tend to drop the last letter or two. He is more than six feet tall and lanky, and he was wearing a red nylon windbreaker by the French fashion house Celine, with matching jeans, and enough jewelry to make it clear which of the guys milling around was the star. Funkmaster Flex greeted him with a friendly scowl and then, before the interview began, delivered a brief update on “City of Gods.”
“It’s picking up in the club,” Flex said, conspiratorially, as if he were sharing classified information.
“That’s what we need,” Fivio replied. “We need that club.”
Fivio’s music can sound as if it were purpose-built for club sound systems: it is up-tempo, with tricky drum programming, bass lines that zoom unpredictably from note to note, and plenty of shouted interjections. But Fivio’s form of hip-hop is less closely associated with clubs than with the streets of Brooklyn, where he shot a number of his early videos, and with YouTube, where those videos often went viral. (“Viral” is one of his favorite words.) The style that made Fivio a star is known as drill music, which even more than other forms of hip-hop has been linked to gangs and violence. Pop Smoke and Fivio Foreign were on the same side in a kind of civil war that turned the dizzying patchwork of Brooklyn street gangs into a murderously simple rivalry between two confederations. Pop Smoke’s killing was apparently unrelated to this war; he was the victim of a botched robbery during a trip to Los Angeles. (It seems that the invaders found Pop by zooming in on an address label in a video that he posted, showing off a delivery from Amiri, which sells expensive jeans that are popular among New York rappers.) But his career was tightly connected to the war: the first Pop Smoke mixtape was called “Meet the Woo”—a reference to one of the two confederations. Similarly, Fivio’s breakthrough track was “Blixky Inna Box.” A “blicky” is a gun, but “Blixky”—the “x” is silent—is the name of a crew that was on the other side of the divide; the track functioned as an extended provocation.
Earlier this year, a pair of high-profile shootings focussed political attention on this world. In January, a rapper named Nas Blixky survived being shot in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Prospect-Lefferts Gardens. The next week, TDott Woo, who was known for his dance moves in videos by Pop Smoke and Fivio Foreign, was killed in Canarsie. Soon afterward, Mayor Eric Adams held a press conference in which he called drill music “alarming,” and suggested that certain violent music videos be removed from social media in the name of public safety, much as President Donald Trump had been removed from Twitter. Adams convened a summit with a number of the city’s leading rappers, including Fivio, who sat at the Mayor’s right elbow, and who apparently made no promises—he is obligated, he says, to do no more and no less than talk about his life. “Niggas always talking about what’s going on in the hood, or what they’re going through in their life,” Fivio told Flex, when asked about the summit. “That’s what’s gon’ happen, regardless.”
In recent years, many hip-hop hits have been druggy and escapist. (In the chorus of “Lemonade,” one of the most popular tracks of 2020, the rapper and singer Don Toliver howled about getting high and buying a convertible: “Off the juice, codeine got me trippin’ / Copped the coupe—woke up, roof is missin’.”) Fivio belongs to a less fanciful tradition, and his success may mean that the hip-hop pendulum is swinging back, as it periodically does, toward tougher, scrappier characters. In hip-hop, street credibility can be an important narrative asset—a way of convincing listeners that the stories they’re hearing aren’t just stories.
Like any successful rapper, though, Fivio is using hip-hop not just to chronicle his surroundings but also to change them. He has moved, with his three children, to an undisclosed location on the far side of the Hudson River, and his rhymes have grown a bit less bloodthirsty and a lot more ruminative. Earlier this month, he released his first proper album, “B.I.B.L.E.,” for which Ye served as the executive producer, and which aims to convert listeners who do not spend their free time trying to decode the intricacies of New York gang alliances. Pop Smoke was a gnomic figure with a rich, booming voice; Fivio is less enigmatic but more entertaining, a charismatic and sometimes witty host who wants to keep everyone happy. “This shit sound like growth,” he exclaims, near the beginning of the album, which strikes an effective balance between thoughtfulness and recklessness. “Don’t mistake me for a different nigga,” he raps. “If I tell ’em to work, they’ll clip a nigga / If I take me a Perc, I’ll forget the nigga.”
Twice in the past two years, Fivio’s rise has been interrupted by allegations of criminal behavior. In 2020, he was arrested for assault, after an altercation with a woman he was dating, who was pregnant with his third child. She later announced that she didn’t want Fivio to be prosecuted, and he claimed that the encounter was merely a loud argument. He still faces charges for an incident last year in New Jersey, when he was approached by police and fled. He was caught and, after a scuffle, arrested; police found a loaded gun with a defaced serial number. But he says that he has learned the importance of staying out of trouble: for someone like him, that means hiring professional security guards and steering clear of Brooklyn. “I don’t miss nothing from my old life,” he told me. But he can’t afford to stop rapping about it—not yet.
“I was raised the right way,” Fivio says. He grew up, as Maxie Ryles III, in a neighborhood known as the Nine: a slanted rectangle of blocks (including Ninety-first through Ninety-sixth Streets) affixed to the northeast corner of East Flatbush, dotted with Caribbean storefronts and neat little apartment buildings that are worth significantly more now than they were when Fivio was a boy. His father was a military veteran who remained married to his mother, a special-education aide, until her death, from a stroke, in 2016, which Fivio describes as the defining tragedy of his life. Despite his stable upbringing, he was intrigued by high-school classmates who disappeared for long stretches and then reappeared with better clothes than he could afford. And so he disappeared, too. (He eventually earned his diploma through a summer program.) “I was outside,” he says. “Making some money here and there.” As he remembers it, gang membership literally came with the territory. “It was no question of affiliation,” he says. “You’re from here? This is what it is.”
When Fivio says that he avoids Brooklyn, he means the Brooklyn where he grew up; he had no problem travelling, with his security detail, to an Episcopal church in Park Slope, six consequential stops on the 3 train from his old neighborhood. His record label, Columbia, had rented the church to shoot a promotional video for “B.I.B.L.E.” (Fivio’s family was Pentecostal, but he says that his album is Biblical only insofar as it offers stories—ostensibly true ones—that listeners can learn from.) At a long table in the sacristy, he posed with a chalice of cranberry juice, and then, after changing into Gucci track pants and a matching shirt, he found a place in the dusty church kitchen, where he was supplied with a legal pad and a pencil. Fivio adopted a thoughtful expression and, for the benefit of the cameras, did something he almost never does: he wrote down some of his lyrics. “I ain’t even realize I was in Brooklyn,” he said later.
When the shoot was over, Fivio’s ride—an S.U.V. with L.E.D. lights in the ceiling, which fans may recognize from his Instagram videos—was waiting outside, and he moved quickly to get in. Not quickly enough, though, to escape the attention of a woman in the next car, with multicolored fingernails and an embarrassed smile. “I love you, Fivio,” she told him.
As she recorded on her phone, Fivio leaned in through the window and asked her favorite song.
“Right now, it gotta be ‘Self Made,’ ” she said, naming a track that has more than ten million views on YouTube but has never been released to streaming services, let alone radio stations.
“Boom!” Fivio said, firing an imaginary gun at the phone. “Good choice.”
Once Fivio had left, the woman began to cry. “Oh, shit,” she said, covering her mouth with her hand and still recording. “Where the fuck he just came from?”
Fivio Foreign has many Brooklyn hip-hop forebears, none more important than the Notorious B.I.G. and Jay-Z, who enacted their own succession drama a quarter of a century ago. They were both from Bedford-Stuyvesant, friends and friendly rivals. After the 1997 murder of B.I.G., who was one of the most beloved rappers in New York’s history, Jay-Z replaced him as the biggest name in town, rapping, “I’m the focal point, like Biggie in his prime / On the low, though—shhh!—the city is mine.”
By the time Fivio got serious about rapping, in the twenty-tens, Atlanta was establishing itself as the new hip-hop capital, and New York rappers sometimes struggled to keep pace with Southern styles. New York’s hip-hop renaissance began, indirectly, in Chicago, where a generation of teen-age performers created a startlingly unfiltered subgenre that came to be known as drill music. Chief Keef was only sixteen when he released, in 2012, a transfixing video for a track called “I Don’t Like.” Keef and his friends crowded into an unfurnished apartment, waving guns in time to an ominous, chiming beat fit for a funeral procession. Chief Keef reeled off threats and complaints, sounding like a teen-ager with nothing to lose: “Playing both sides, shit that I don’t like / Wartime, spark broad day, all night.” The track was claustrophobic, but pleasurably so, and it became a sensation: Kanye West organized a remix, and major labels signed Keef and several other Chicago rappers. Something about the music captured the attention, too, of young people around the world. In the South London neighborhood of Brixton Hill, a crew of rappers called 67 began making low-budget drill videos of their own, livening up the Chicago template with skippy rhythms and sliding bass lines.
The pioneers of Brooklyn drill tended not to be scholars of British musical history: by all accounts, they typed “drill beats” into YouTube and rapped over whatever they found. A producer known as AXL was a teen-ager in London when he noticed that Brooklynites were using the work he posted, and sometimes drawing digital crowds. “It was a shock,” AXL told me. “I’m all the way in London, and they’re hopping on my beats!” Some of the rappers had no idea that AXL was British until they called to invite him to the studio.
One drill convert was a boyish, verbose Flatbush rapper named 22Gz, who turned one of AXL’s compositions into an incendiary track called “Suburban.” The title described not 22Gz’s surroundings but, rather, his preferred getaway vehicle: “Pull up in all-black Suburbans / If he ain’t dead, we reversin’ / Blixky gang, know we gon’ murk him.” Fivio, too, began using beats by AXL and other British drill producers. He had been rapping for a few years, releasing rather generic home-town hip-hop, to little notice, but the new beats made him sound somehow both more serious and more playful. AXL, working from across the Atlantic, has since produced some of Fivio’s best-known records.
Brooklyn drill, like hip-hop itself, was often mistaken for a passing fad, and some of the rough-and-tumble Brooklyn rappers who proliferated in the twenty-tens sought to assure listeners that they weren’t merely drill rappers. Pop Smoke took the opposite approach: encouraged by Steven Victor, the executive who signed him, he released two mixtapes filled with beats by 808 Melo, another U.K. drill producer, intending to make himself the face of the movement before branching out. Pop Smoke did not live long enough to see this plan to completion, but Fivio has adopted a similar strategy, becoming the obvious choice for musicians seeking an infusion of drill energy. He appears on recent releases by Drake and Mary J. Blige, and on a current single by Nicki Minaj, who did more than anyone else to boost New York hip-hop during the fallow years. After Ye heard some Fivio tracks that he liked, he texted Fivio to see if he could call, and then started rapping over the phone, asking Fivio his opinion. Fivio wasn’t sure what to think, but Ye followed up by sending a jet to bring him to Mercedes-Benz Stadium, in Atlanta, where he was finishing his 2021 album, “Donda.” (The resulting collaboration, “Off the Grid,” was one of the album’s highlights.) Fivio is convinced, not unreasonably, that the fearsome sound of drill is more versatile than people think it is: his new album includes a lighthearted drill love song based on a snippet of “Say My Name,” by Destiny’s Child. Instead of leaving drill behind on his journey toward mainstream success, Fivio is trying to take it with him.
Drill, in the hip-hop sense, is not just a genre name but also a verb. “Since a young’un, I been drillin’,” Pop Smoke announced, in “Welcome to the Party,” the 2019 track that made him a star, and you could almost picture him wielding his weapon like a power tool. A close association with violence has always been part of drill music’s appeal: like the so-called gangsta rappers of the nineteen-nineties, these performers offer listeners the thrill of immersion in a violent world, without promising to make things better—and frequently promising to make things worse.
It’s easy to forget how controversial gangsta rap once was. Snoop Dogg is now widely regarded as a lovable uncle, and many of the people who enjoyed his whimsical Olympic-highlights show with Kevin Hart were probably unaware that in 1993, shortly before the release of his début album, he was arrested for the murder of a man reputed to be a member of a rival gang. (He was later acquitted.) Snoop’s rhymes, full of sex and violence, inspired broad condemnation; C. DeLores Tucker, a civil-rights advocate, became a news fixture for leading protests against him and other objectionable rappers. But his threats were generally of the vague, “don’t make me have to grab my strap” variety, and in those early years he alluded only obliquely to his affiliation with a local Crip gang.
The drill generation tended to be more forthright, partly because social media enabled rappers to communicate more directly with both their allies and their enemies, whom they refer to as “opps.” Not long after “I Don’t Like” was released, a rapper named Lil JoJo posted a track insulting Chief Keef’s crew. A few months later, he was shot to death, and a sarcastic eulogy was posted on Keef’s Twitter: “Its Sad Cuz Dat Nigga Jojo Wanted To Be Jus Like Us #LMAO.” (Keef later claimed that he had been hacked, and no one has been charged in JoJo’s death.) In the years that followed, something like a dozen Chicago drill rappers were killed, a figure that reflected both the astonishing level of violence on the city’s streets and the democratizing nature of the music—it sometimes seemed as if every streetwise young person in Chicago were a rapper.
Fivio says that he wasn’t in a particularly angry frame of mind when he recorded “Blixky Inna Box.” He was just following the traditional logic of hip-hop. “They”—the Blixkys—“was dissing the hood, dissing people I know,” he said. So he responded the way any rapper would: “twice as hard, twice as disrespectful, twice as fire.” The video, shot by a drill auteur known as Flowtastic, shows Fivio and his allies in a spartan building lobby and on an empty playground; there are no visible guns but plenty of gang signs. The exuberant chorus puns on “Blixky,” pairing it with another synonym for a firearm: “Got a brand new chop / That’s a Blixky inna box.”
There were other, overlapping gang identifiers. Some of Fivio’s enemies were affiliated with the Gangster Disciples, who originated in Chicago and spread nationwide, so Fivio identified himself as “G.D.K.,” which stands for “Gangster Disciple killer.” And he mentioned, offhandedly, that he and his confederates were the “flyest Crips in the game, flag tied around the leg,” pointing to a blue bandanna above his left knee. As the video went viral, he thought that he saw an uptick in the number of young men in Brooklyn wearing the same bandanna in the same way.
Fivio has mixed feelings about the complicated role that gangs have played in his life. His new album includes “Left Side,” a coded oath of allegiance to the Crips, recorded with the like-minded Los Angeles rapper Blueface. But one day, sprawled on a couch in a Columbia Records conference room, surrounded by photographs of Billy Joel and Bruce Springsteen, he told me—using the kind of hypothetical language favored by people with reason to avoid unequivocal admissions—that the reality of gang life was often miserable. “Somebody might get in a situation, and you don’t know nothing about it, but you’ve got to deal with it,” he said. “It gives you no soul, almost. ’Cause you not fighting for nothing you believe in.” By the time “Blixky Inna Box” took off, in 2018, he had two daughters and no fixed address, and he is aware of the irony: the track that helped him escape old neighborhood beefs also made his name synonymous with neighborhood beefs. In the aftermath of the killings earlier this year, a Hot 97 host named DJ Drewski made an announcement on Instagram: “I will not support or play anymore Diss/Gang records on the radio! We r losing too many young men and women to the streets!” He later explained that he would continue to support drill music, just not tracks in which rappers taunted their opps.
This, more or less, is how the music industry responded to gangsta rap some thirty years ago. Radio stations, video networks, and record labels adopted a system of soft censorship: guns were blurred out of music videos, and soon omitted altogether; “radio versions” of songs were stripped of curse words and of the N-word, along with references to violence and drugs. This system is now so familiar that listeners barely seem to notice. The radio version of “Big Drip,” one of Fivio’s biggest tracks, features the line “Crip sh[obscured] / She wanna suck on a [obscured].”
But it’s hard to imagine that this sort of censorship makes much difference, especially since impressionable young listeners have so many options besides terrestrial radio. Censoring rappers on social media, as Mayor Adams suggested, would be difficult and controversial. After the killing of Fivio’s friend TDott Woo, a Brooklyn drill pioneer named Rowdy Rebel vowed, in a YouTube video, “I ain’t posting up no pictures of my bro TDott / ’Til a body drop—spin, go get your G-lock.” And 22Gz, who is on the other side of the great divide, released a track in which he celebrated the death of an unnamed foe: “Sniper Blixky, I’m a gremlin: get a rush, my opps die / He was dissin’ on the dead—now he the one on Fox 5.” But Fivio’s response has been notably restrained, and he suggested that revenge was not the best way to honor slain friends like TDott. He thought, “What would my dog want me to do? How would my dog want me living?”
By the time the Mayor called his summit, in February, Brooklyn drill had spawned a new variant: Bronx drill, in which the stars were younger, the rapping shoutier, and the filmed provocations more brazen. One of the most notorious figures is Kay Flock, eighteen, who last summer released a thrilling, raw-throated statement of purpose called “Is Ya Ready” (twenty-four million views and counting). Kay Flock was also known for videos in which he drove into enemy territory, daring the opps to confront him. He was arrested in December and charged with killing a man after a brief altercation on the sidewalk, but, after pleading not guilty at his arraignment in March, he is more popular than ever. He recently collaborated with the borough’s biggest hip-hop star, Cardi B, making her drill début—though she had to shoot the music video without him. Earlier this month, the Bronx District Attorney indicted the rapper Lee Drilly and nineteen others, on charges linked to a series of murders and assaults; the office noted that the defendants were “prominent in the Drill rap scene.”
The pastor Louis Straker is a member of the 67th Precinct Clergy Council, also known as the God Squad, which aims to quell gun violence in East Flatbush and the surrounding area. He is taken aback by what he calls the “spirit of lawlessness” in the neighborhood, and by the sanguinary music that it has produced, although he acknowledges that it is hard to establish correlation, let alone causation. (According to police statistics, the precinct’s homicide rate is less than half of what it was in the early nineties, even as the city’s total shootings have risen in the past few years.) No doubt, anyone who loves this music would happily give it up if that would end the killing. The tragedy of drill music is not that there is a market for it but that there is a context for it. In the meantime, perhaps it is possible to hear drill music as proof of the stubborn persistence not just of violence but of poetry, too. A half century after hip-hop was born, young people in some of the country’s roughest neighborhoods still feel moved to write and deliver rhymes about what’s on their minds.
One of Fivio’s managers is Jerry Reefer, a well-connected guy who spent his boyhood in Trinidad and in Jamaica, and who didn’t realize the significance of his surname until he arrived in Queens and people began to snicker. Reefer met Fivio through a friend who was locked up with a friend of Fivio’s, and he agreed to fund and guide Fivio’s career partly as a lark—hoping, he told me, to help Fivio earn a hundred thousand dollars. Now Reefer and his partner, known as Bless, are in charge of Fivio’s complicated evolution from local celebrity to actual celebrity. (A planned recent appearance at a strip club in Queens was cancelled, at the last minute, because police warned the club that Fivio might attract an unmanageable crowd.)
“What studio we going to?” Fivio asked Reefer one afternoon, as they set off in the S.U.V. to tweak his new album. When Reefer named a place in New Jersey, Fivio groaned. “I’m bigger than that,” he said.
Reefer just laughed. “You got kicked out of every studio in Manhattan,” he said.
The driver punched an address into his phone and took off, trailed by Fivio’s security detail. As the vehicle crossed into New Jersey, Fivio seemed to relax slightly. He told the driver to stop at Target, where he led an expedition to the menswear section, in pursuit of a white thermal top that he felt would improve his outfit. One of his friends, a rapper known as Ether da Connect, inspected a Tupac Shakur T-shirt. “Mad dead people got merch in Target,” Ether observed. “You can’t be alive and get a deal with them niggas!”
In the parking lot, Fivio was waylaid by a couple of Nigerian American doctors, who didn’t quite know who he was but knew that their kids would want a picture of him. Afterward, the group stopped at a Chinese restaurant and then a pizza restaurant, where Fivio tried with diminishing success to stick to a no-carb diet. In early interviews, Fivio seemed self-conscious about his advanced age. Asked how old he was when his mother died, he began a long nonanswer by saying, “What year is this now? 2020?” But his relative maturity surely enabled his rise to the top of the New York drill hierarchy, and he is known among fans for outworking the competition. (A comment posted below one of his recent tracks: “Fivio has definitely gotten better.”)
Fivio attended the Grammys this year, and he is about to embark on his first real tour, playing theatres. These are signs of success for a drill rapper, but not proof that he has conquered the music industry. The world of hip-hop can be frustratingly—or thrillingly—unpredictable. For all the star power of “City of Gods,” and despite a chorus, swiped from the pop duo the Chainsmokers, that seemed engineered for crossover appeal, the song has so far been only a modest hit. The year’s biggest drill success story is “To the Moon,” a dreamy track by a previously unknown British model turned rapper named Jnr Choi. He found the beat online, and his creation gathered momentum via TikTok, surpassing a hundred million plays on Spotify before anyone really knew who he was.
Fivio’s album, by contrast, leaves nothing to chance, being carefully divided between tough-guy tracks and ladies’-man tracks. Describing one of the more flirtatious efforts, he told me, “Bitches gon’ be getting dressed to this song.” Fivio is not generally regarded as a hip-hop virtuoso, but he has a fondness for good punch lines (as a boy, he loved watching rap battles) and an ability to keep the energy high without shouting, often rapping in cheerful dactyls. The first verse on “B.I.B.L.E.” begins “Still got my bitches from back in the day.” The primary theme is customer service, with collaborations designed to gratify a wide variety of tastes, and he even attempts to popularize a dubious new pickup line: “Baby, you viral.” But the secondary theme is regret, because he can’t quite decide whether he wants to celebrate his old life or disavow it:
Boy, I shoulda been careful
But I ain’t really care to
I was young, dumb and unfearful
Two, three drillers jumping in the vehicle
If the sirens loud enough, that scares you
If you talking to that gun, it hears you
Tell him to shoot and he didn’t come near you
You better do it, if them niggas dare you.
At the studio, Fivio asked an engineer to play a beat, and then, as a casual party continued outside, he disappeared into the unlit recording booth. Fivio doesn’t write his tracks so much as build them, coming up with couplets and adding them to what he’s already got. Having spent years developing his style, he finds that he can now crank out new lyrics efficiently. “I’m a make them niggas hear and feel me,” he rapped. Then he matched that plain line with a more ornate and unexpected one, alluding to a drug bust: “Undercovers want to paraphernal’ me.” He didn’t pause to celebrate. “Save that,” he told the engineer. The beat stopped for a second, and then resumed, so that Fivio could think of the next rhyme. ♦
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https://www.last.fm/music/Mary%2BJ.%2BBlige
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Mary J. Blige music, videos, stats, and photos
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Listen to music from Mary J. Blige like Family Affair, Mary Jane (All Night Long) & more. Find the latest tracks, albums, and images from Mary J. Blige.
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https://www.last.fm/music/Mary%2BJ.%2BBlige
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correct_birth_00056
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FactBench
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3
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https://www.famousafricanamericans.org/mary-j-blige
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en
|
Mary J. Blige
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Mary J. Blige Biography - Mary Jane Blige is an American singer, songwriter and actress who has been making hit records for almost 25 years. She was born on January 11, 1971 in the
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en
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https://www.famousafricanamericans.org/wp-content/themes/famousafricanamericans/images/favicon.ico
|
FAMOUS AFRICAN AMERICANS
|
https://www.famousafricanamericans.org/mary-j-blige
|
Mary Jane Blige is an American singer, songwriter and actress who has been making hit records for almost 25 years. She was born on January 11, 1971 in the Bronx, New York to Cora and Thomas Blige. She grew up in a very neglected and disastrous neighborhood and her childhood was marked by violence, abuse and drugs. Her mother was an alcoholic and her father suffered from severe post-traumatic stress disorder after serving in the Vietnam War. Thomas Blige would often beat his wife and left the family when Blige was 4, but reappeared sometimes and almost certainly abused his wife on those occasions. Blige and her mother moved to a public housing project to escape her father, but this turned out to be no better. Blige was sexually abused as a child by some friends that her mother trusted her with, but who took advantage of her when she was just 5 years old.
Mary J. Blige became a devout Christian from a young age and talked about the feeling of security she felt when she was at church. She joined the church choir and sang hymns to soothe herself. However, by the age of 16 she had succumbed to the negative influences in her environment and turned to sex, drugs and alcohol as a means of escape. During this time, one of her karaoke performances that had been recorded on tape reached Andre Harrell, the CEO of Uptown Records. He was instantly enthralled with Blige’s voice and signed her on to the label. She began singing backup at first, but soon started working with a talented young music producer named Sean “Puffy” Combs. She released her debut album in 1992, titled “What’s the 411?”. The album was a huge success with hit singles such as “You Remind Me” and “Real Love” and sold more than 3 million copies.
Her second album was released in 1994, and was titled “My Life”. Blige was involved in writing almost all of the songs on the album. The biggest hit on this album was the song “I’ll be There For You/You’re All I Need to Get By” which was a duet sung with the singer Method Man of the band Wu-Tang Clan. The song won her the first Grammy award for Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group. She released an album in 2001, titled “No More Drama” which was followed by her 2003 album “Love & Life”. Her most popular album to date, however, has been “The Breakthrough” which was released in 2005. The album sold more than 7 million copies globally and was nominated for 8 Grammy awards of which it won 3. This was followed by “Growing Pains” in 2007 and “Stronger with Each Tear” in 2009. Blige has also ventured into acting, such as the film “I Can Do Bad All By Myself” and “Betty & Coretta” as well as the musical “Rock of Ages”.
Blige had led an unhappy life and became deeply addicted to cocaine and alcohol. Her outlook on life changed when she fell in love with a music executive named Kendu Isaacs. Isaacs tried to steer her in the right direction and took her away from her life of addiction and depression. They were married in 2003 and Blige took charge of his 3 children from a previous relationship. In 2011, she released the album “My Life: Part II … The Journey Continues”. She also has her own record label by the name of “Matriarch Records” as well as her own perfume and a line of sunglasses. Mary J. Blige is a greatly talented and respected performer who is often titled the “Queen of Hip-hop Soul” for her contributions to the fusion of the two genres.
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correct_birth_00056
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FactBench
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3
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https://www.tiktok.com/%40missy..zee/video/7210874725722098949
|
en
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Make Your Day
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en
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correct_birth_00056
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FactBench
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0
| 91
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https://www.lyricslayers.com/mary-j-blige/
|
en
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Mary J. Blige
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Uncover the derpiest meanings in the songs of Mary J. Blige with Lyrics Layers. Dive deep into "Family Affair", "I Can Love You (feat. Lil' Kim)", "I'm Goin Down", "As (feat. George Michael)" and explore the heart of more songs!
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en
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//akamai.sscdn.co/letras/meaning/static/img/favicon-light.v6483b71e.ico
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LyricsLayers.com
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https://www.lyricslayers.com/mary-j-blige/
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Mary J. Blige, born on January 11, 1971, in The Bronx, New York, is an iconic American singer, songwriter, and actress. Often referred to as the 'Queen of Hip-Hop Soul,' she has won numerous awards, including nine Grammy Awards. Blige's career took off with her debut album 'What's the 411?' in 1992, and she has since released multiple chart-topping hits like 'Family Affair' and 'Real Love.'
Blige's music often delves into themes of enduring romantic love and strong relationship commitment. Her lyrics frequently explore the complexities of emotional bonds, loyalty, and trust, reflecting her personal experiences and struggles. Through her soulful voice and profound storytelling, she has become a voice of empowerment and resilience.
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correct_birth_00056
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FactBench
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0
| 2
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https://www.maryjblige.com/bio
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en
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Mary J Blige
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Iconic Grammy Award-winning singer, songwriter, actress and philanthropist, Mary J. Blige is a figure of inspiration, transformation and empowerment making her one of the defining voices of the contemporary music era. With a track record of eight multi-platinum albums, nine Grammy Awards (plus a staggering 32 nominations), a 2012 Golden Globe nomination, and five American Music Awards, Blige is a global superstar. In the ensuing years, the singer/songwriter has attracted an intensely loyal fan baseâresponsible for propelling worldwide sales of more than 50 million albums.
| null |
Born in the Bronx, New York, Blige began moving people with her soulful voice when at 18 she signed with Andre Harrellâs Uptown Records in 1989, becoming the MCA-distributed labelâs youngest and first female artist.
Influenced at an early age by the music of Aretha Franklin, Chaka Khan and Gladys Knight, Blige brought her own gritty, urban-rooted style â fusing hip-hop, soul and honest, frank lyrics â to the forefront on her 1992 debut album Whatâs the 411? The multi-platinum set, executive produced by Sean âDiddyâ Combs, quickly spun off several hits, including two No. R&B No. 1s: You Remind Me and Real Love.Â
Blige helped redefine R&B and began forging a unique niche for herself on the more personal second album, 1994âs My Life. Blige is an artist that uses her gift of song to lift spirits and touch lives while bringing her heart, soul, and truth to those who are willing to listen. She is loved for her passionate, chart-topping hits like âBe Without Youâ, âNo More Dramaâ and âFamily Affairâ all of which have made her a force in music.Â
Strength of a Woman
Blige most recently released her 14th studio album Strength of a Woman in 2017. The first single, âThick of It,â held the number 1 spot on the Urban AC Chart for 16 consecutive weeks after its release in November. Blige also scored her latest #1 single off this album with âU + Me (Love Lesson).âÂ
On the acting side, Blige starred as Florence Jackson in the 2017 Netflix breakout film MUDBOUND, to which she received critical acclaim including two Academy Award nominations for Best Support Actress and Best Original Song. She starred in the Netflix series âThe Umbrella Academy,â which premiered on the platform in February 2019.
On the producing side, Blige launched her production company, Blue Butterfly, and signed a first-look TV deal with Lionsgate. Blige also entered the fashion and beauty realm with her jewelry line âSister Loveâ with long-time friend Simone I. Smith, and her âLove Meâ lipstick line with MAC Cosmetics.Â
TVÂ & Film
This past April, Blige voiced âQueen Essenceâ in Dreamworksâ TROLLS WORLD TOUR movie. The star-studded cast included J Balvin, Ozzy Osbourne, Anderson.Paak, Anna Kendrick, Justin Timberlake, Kelly Clarkson and more. Blige also Executive Produced Lifetimeâs The Clark Sisters: First Ladies of Gospel. The biopic marked the highest-rated original movie for Lifetime since 2016.
Blige most recently starred in Paramountâs Body Cam, alongside Nat Wolff, that was released digitally this May. Blige also dropped a new single entitled âCanât Be Life,â an original song for Body Cam that speaks candidly to the current times. The song is available on Apple Music and Spotify and is featured over the end credits of the film.Â
Blige is currently filming STARZâs POWER BOOK II: GHOST, a new television series inspired by the original show, POWER.
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correct_birth_00056
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FactBench
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2
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https://www.aol.com/mary-j-blige-announces-good-154145315.html
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en
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Mary J. Blige Announces ‘Good Morning Gorgeous’ North American Tour
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"Greensboro",
"North Carolina",
"Mary J"
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[
"Larisha Paul",
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2022-06-15T15:41:45+00:00
|
Ella Mai and Queen Naija will join Mary J. Blige on select dates
|
en
|
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/mary-j-blige-good-morning-gorgeous-north-american-tour-1368724/
|
Mary J. Blige has announced a 23-city tour in support of her 14th studio album Good Morning Gorgeous. The veteran musician will be joined on select dates by “Boo’d Up” singer Ella Mai and rising R&B artist Queen Naija.
The Good Morning Gorgeous tour is scheduled to begin on Sept. 17 with a show at the Greensboro Coliseum in Greensboro, North Carolina. Blige will make stops in Charlotte, Philadelphia, Chicago, Atlanta, Oakland, Las Vegas, New Orleans, Memphis, Brooklyn, Newark, Cincinnati, and more before wrapping at Atlantic City, New Jersey’s Boardwalk Hall on Oct. 29.
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General sale for the tour begins on June 17 at 10 a.m. local time via Black Promoters Collective, the coalition partnering with Blige to present cultural experiences backed by black businesses.
“Mary J. Blige has been one of a select handful of artists at the top of our desired list to partner with since the initial construction of The BPC,” BPC co-founder and president Shelby Joyne shared in a statement. “Having her support in our mission so early in the process is a testament to the hard work we have put in to bring superior cultural experiences powered by black business to the masses. We firmly believe this is a match made in heaven and are honored to partner with the Queen.”
The Good Morning Gorgeous tour marks Blige’s first solo headlining trek since 2017’s Strength of a Woman tour. In 2019, she teamed up with Nas for a joint tour billed as The Royalty Tour.
Mary J. Blige 2022 Tour Dates
Sept 17 – Greensboro, NC @ Greensboro Coliseum
Sept 18 – Washington, DC @ Capital One Arena
Sept 21 – Charlotte, NC @ Spectrum Center
Sept 22 – Philadelphia, PA @ Wells Fargo Center
Sept 24 – Detroit, MI @ Little Caesars Arena (Not listed – Queen Naija)
Sept 25 – Chicago, IL @ United Center
Sept 28 – Birmingham, AL @ Legacy Center at BJCC
Sept 29 – Atlanta, GA @ State Farm Arena
Oct 1 – Houston, TX @ Toyota Center
Oct 2 – Fort Worth, TX @ Dickies Arena (Not listed – Ella Mai
Oct 6 – Oakland, CA @ Oakland Arena (Not listed — QN or EM)
Oct 8 – Las Vegas, NV @ Michelob Ultra Arena
Oct 9 – Los Angeles, CA @ Kia Forum (Not listed — QN)
Oct 12 – St. Louis, MO @ Enterprise Center
Oct 15 – New Orleans, LA @ Smoothie King Center
Oct 16 – Memphis, TN @ FedEx Forum
Oct 19 – Cleveland, OH @ Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse
Oct 20 – Brooklyn, NY @ Barclays Center
Oct 22 – Hampton, VA @ Hampton Coliseum
Oct 23 – Newark, NJ @ Prudential Center
Oct 26 – Nashville, TN @ Bridgestone Arena
Oct 27 – Cincinnati, OH @ Heritage Bank Center
Oct 29 – Atlantic City, NJ @ Boardwalk Hall
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|
||||
correct_birth_00056
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FactBench
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1
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https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/cash-cobain-profile-1234802484/
|
en
|
How Cash Cobain Plans on Taking Over the Rap World
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2023-08-08T16:39:27+00:00
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The in-demand New York-based producer says he has big things coming
|
en
|
Rolling Stone
|
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/cash-cobain-profile-1234802484/
|
Cash Cobain slides into Bed-Stuy’s Loudmouth Records alone, wearing a cream shirt, black jeans, and white forces. His publicist daps him up and asks if he drove from his home in Queens to Brooklyn by himself. He scoffs at the notion; at least two people are waiting outside. I agreed to conduct the interview at Loudmouth in hopes of chatting with the Bronx-born rapper-producer while he looked through some records, but Cash quickly plops down in a black chair at the front of the store.
The man rightfully revered as the “sample god” reveals that he’s never done any crate digging. I ask him if he’s ever felt self-conscious about violating the purist producer credo by ripping his samples from YouTube (which can result in lower audio quality). He replies, “I mean, yeah [that’s something people say]. But it’s like … I’m manipulating it anyway.” To great effect.
The 25-year-old Bronx-born rapper-producer has been steadily ascending over the past several years. He’s made his Slizzy movement a fixture in the tri-state area through his own catalog, work like “JHoliday,” and “Slizzy Talk” with his frequent collaborator Chow Lee, and outsourcing his beats to artists like Lil Yachty, Central Cee, and Lucki. “Big, big, big, big, big placements [are coming this year],” he says with emphasis. “I want y’all to hear my tag everywhere y’all go.”
He’s well on his way. Cash grew up in the South Bronx. “Fun” was the main adjective he ascribed to his childhood, hanging out with friends and cousins in their section of the city where everyone knew each other. He says his appreciation for school depended on who his teacher was, and he rattles off the teachers he did and didn’t like by grade. By junior high school, he recalls “school was just the hangout“ for him.
Some of his summers were spent in South Carolina with his grandmother, and he recalls being with her fondly — though he wasn’t a big fan of the slow vibes or the wilderness. “You can’t walk nowhere. You’re not getting nowhere,” he says. “I’m not the type to walk in the woods. I’m scared of animals.” Cash recalls that one night a bear lurked outside of his grandmother’s home (luckily, it was so late that they weren’t planning to step out anyway).
Editor’s picks
During this same period, he started exploring beatmaking. His mother had always bought him drum pads and keyboards, and he eventually began his own search for music production software. First, he found Virtual DJ (“they had the big old effects,” he recalls), then he discovered a copy of Fruity Loops 8. “I just knew that was the one,” he recalls. “I just stuck with it.” He says he learned the software mostly on his own. Once Cash found Fruity Loops 11 (which he still uses even though the software is up to FL 20), he hit a stride.
He soon found himself immersed in the Jersey club scene, and he began imbuing their charging drums and frenetic tempo into his craft. Music theory wasn’t his expertise, so he focused on sampling audio native to Fruity Loops as well as songs he’d encounter in everyday life. He says the first flip he remembers was a Whitney Houston sample, though he forgets the song. That’s no surprise with the amount of flips he’s done since then. He sampled Mary J. Blige on B-Lovee’s “Everything,” Tame Impala on Lil Yachty and Mak Sauce’s “Wocky My Lover,” and the theme to the Moesha show on “Hoesha” from his Nirvana album. He’s mastered how to find the juicy part of almost any song and flip it into something more danceable than the original composer ever fathomed. The Plain White T’s never pictured a room full of Baby’s Alright concertgoers getting sturdy to a “Hey There Delilah” sample as they did during Cash and Chow Lee’s September 2022 performance.
“Sometimes, it just comes to me,” he says of sample inspiration. “A car will be passing by playin’ shit. I could be at the mall, I could be out to eat, [and] pull out my phone and Shazam.” He says he “loves” finding a sample in the wild, laughingly recalling a recent trip to the Dominican Republic where he heard “mad Spanish songs” and decided to sample some of them.
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During the late 2010s infancy of New York drill, most producers emulated the eerie, synth-driven soundscapes of U.K.-based beatmakers like 808Melo and Axl Beats. Meanwhile, back in Queens, where his family had moved, Cash was devising his own formula with creative samples and frenetic, scrupulously crafted drum programming. He started getting placements with Queens-based MCs such as Dee Aura, Flee, and ShawnyBinLadin, whom he also rapped alongside on songs like 2017’s “Busy in the Coupe.” The song (which also features Four50) shows an early glimpse of what would come to be celebrated as the Slizzy sound: an enchanting loop and intense drums replete with Cash crooning, “she pull it out no warnin’/and she just started lickin’, and my dick started twitchin’.”
He succinctly told Pitchfork that “My music is about ho-ing; I just love being a ho.” That raunchy M.O. has permeated his output as a recording artist, from early albums to last year’s 2 Slizzy 2 Sexy with his frequent collaborator Chow Lee. Their sonic bond helped shake up the scene’s propensity for incendiary disses and fatalism and made a fun brand of New York drill. The scene’s beats have always been fun to dance to — but lyrics like Chow rhyming, “Got her OnlyFans off Reddit/That pussy good though girl I’ll give you your credit” on “Hate You Delilah” imbue the scene with genuine humor.
Their boldness isn’t a put-on. Cash’s publicist walks over to us with a pair of Nineties-era Playboy magazines from Loudmouth’s basement stash of old magazines. He gives Cash a quick primer on March 1992 cover girl Anna Nicole Smith, deeming her “the first City Girl” (before correcting himself and giving the nod to Cleopatra). Cash opens up the magazine and asks if one of the playmates is Smith; it’s another buxom blonde. ”Miss February. Hairy coochie. OK,” he says while looking over one of the playmates. Cash says “OK” with the ambiguous tone of a school principal mulling whether to suspend you or let you go back to class. But soon, the verdict is in: “Why they all hairy? I don’t like these …t hat’s not my type.” The Playboy magazines are promptly closed and placed on a nearby table in disapproval.
Cash completed a selection process of a more consequential magnitude in June when he announced his signing to Giant Records. In a statement, he noted, “The reason I wanted to sign is because I wanted to go to that next level — we went really far by ourselves, and we wanted to find someone to elevate our brand and take us to new heights.” When asked what those new heights included, he mentioned “putting me in a position to do something more for other people,” including those on his Neva Slippin records.
The first step in that journey with Giant is his upcoming Pretty Girls Love Slizzy. When asked what fans can expect from his latest album, he says exactly what one would anticipate: “It’s going to be very much Slizzy. I’m gonna take you on a Slizzy journey,” he says. “I’m going to slow it down for y’all one time. It’s a little bit of everything going on there.”
Cash sounds like he’s still genuinely passionate about making music. When I asked him what the past year has been like, I expected a reflection on his newfound fame. Instead, he mentioned working hard and “taking it day by day.” He also noted, “I’m enjoying all of this because I know once it’s over with, it’s over with.”
“I wanna be so much more than an artist,” he adds. “I just executive-produced two albums. That’s where I wanna be, behind the scenes. I’m gonna take this little run I got, and then I’m going to disappear.” He tells me he loves helping other artists hone their sound and laughingly recalls a recent session with Lucki: “I’m like, ‘Yo. This the beat for you,’ and I started rapping like him. I’m like, ‘This how you got to rap on it.’ He started laughing at me, like ‘Yo. Boy, you funny as hell ’cause you dead ass.’ I’m like, ‘I’m dead-ass serious.’” He jokingly says Lucki didn’t end up recording the song “because he’s crazy.”
Beyond music, Cash tells me that he’s ideating a clothing brand for women and wants to eventually make movies set “back in the day.” The first movie he’s thinking of is going to be about Bronx street gangs. “It’s going to be better than The Warriors, though. It’s going to make more sense,” he clarifies. Cash might also have a future in set design after telling me about an impromptu stage set idea he had after attending one of Drake’s July shows at the Barclays Center, where he sat near the Toronto superstar’s dad, Dennis Graham. (“He was just chillin’. He’s definitely a ladies man, though.”) He says he wants to have a circular set with a “hole in the middle. But the hole in the middle is going to have a [stage that comes] up out the floor, and it’s going to come higher than the original platforms.”
Trending
But even if he’s thinking about the future, he’s primarily focused on music these days. He tells me he has two laptops and a computer that he hasn’t used since 2021, and he’s looking forward to going back to those samples with the new techniques he’s learned. Since garnering more notoriety, he’s been invited to sessions with producers where they play and make beats, and he’s picked up “a trick or two” from those moments.
“I always try to push my sound forward. My sound always be changing. I always be coming up with different sauces, trying to come up with different swag, trying to sound different from everybody else type shit.”
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FactBench
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What Is Mary J. Blige’s Real Name?
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[
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2021-07-14T19:54:11+00:00
|
Mary J. Blige has been a star in the music industry for decades. The Grammy-winning singer has also made a name for herself as an actor
|
en
|
Showbiz Cheat Sheet
|
https://www.cheatsheet.com/entertainment/mary-j-bliges-real-name.html/
|
Over the past three decades, Mary J. Blige has risen to become a legend in the entertainment industry. The Grammy-winning singer, actor, and fashion icon redefined what it meant to be a woman in music when she first debuted, and continues to make a name for herself today.
Mary J. Blige’s childhood
Mary J. Blige grew up in the Schlobohm housing projects in Yonkers, New York at the height of the crack epidemic. As a result, she had to grow up very fast, and experienced abuse and addiction firsthand from an early age.
Blige reflected on her upbringing in her 2021 documentary Mary J. Blige’s My Life. She always looked up to her mother not just because of her resilience but her love of singing and dancing.
Blige’s mother’s passion led Blige to develop a love for singing herself. Still, she didn’t want to let those around her — especially her neighbors in her building — know that she dreamt of being a professional singer.
“It wasn’t like I was running around telling everybody I was going to be a singer,” Blige admitted. “I didn’t dream big or think for a moment that it was like, ‘OK, I’m going to be this big star,’ because our environment didn’t tell us that. Our environment told us that this was it.”
Mary J. Blige’s music
Blige caught the attention of Uptown Records CEO Andre Harrell in the late 1980s, and she quickly became a signed recording artist. Her debut album, What’s the 411?, was released in 1992 and made her the hottest new R&B singer on the block. Her second album, 1994’s My Life, cemented her spot as the Queen of Hip-Hop Soul and remains one of the most acclaimed R&B albums of all time.
Blige’s music made headlines in the 1990s because no woman in the industry had spoken about struggles such as abuse and addiction as openly as she did. She’s continued to release music since then, with over 50 million records sold worldwide and nine Grammy Awards to her name.
Blige has often said that she’s as real as it gets, including when it comes to how she introduces herself. Throughout her time in the spotlight, Blige has opted to use her government name — Mary Jane Blige — rather than a stage name.
Mary J. Blige’s acting
In addition to being a beloved singer, Blige has become a respected actor in recent years as well. In 2018, she was nominated for two Academy Awards for her role in the film Mudbound, and has since starred in popular TV shows such as The Umbrella Academy and Power Book II: Ghost.
Blige discussed why she loves acting in a 2020 interview with supermodel Naomi Campbell on her web series No Filter with Naomi. She told Campbell that acting is an “extremely” therapeutic release for her “because you get to give all of this energy to something on a piece of paper, and what makes it real is what you really feel.”
“I get to give anger or I get to give sadness or strength or whatever I’m feeling or wherever I can grab it from — my past, from something bad that happened, from something good that happened — and give it to this character and let them live,” she continues, “and that’s therapeutic for me because it gets it out of me — the things that I can’t deal with or do anymore, or won’t do, I have to give it to the character.”
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Sieh dir auf Facebook Beiträge, Fotos und vieles mehr an.
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FactBench
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https://www.thefamouspeople.com/profiles/mary-j-blige-9468.php
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en
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Mary J. Blige Biography
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A behind-the-scene look at the life of Mary J. Blige.
|
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//www.thefamouspeople.com/images/favicon_tfp.ico
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https://www.thefamouspeople.com/profiles/mary-j-blige-9468.php
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2006 R&B/Hip-Hop Artist of the Year Winner 2006 Female Artist of the Year Winner 2006 Video Clip of the Year Mary J. Blige: Be Without You (2005) 2006 Hot 100 Airplay of the Year Winner 2006 R&B/Hip-Hop Song Airplay of the Year Winner 2006 R&B/Hip-Hop Song of the Year Winner 2006 R&B/Hip-Hop Album of the Year Winner 2006 R&B/Hip-Hop Albums Artist of the Year Winner 2006 R&B/Hip-Hop Songs Artist of the Year Winner
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https://aaregistry.org/story/mary-j-blige-found-her-own-musical-voice/
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Mary J. Blige, Singer born
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2009-09-08T02:59:01+00:00
|
Mary J. Blige was born on this date in 1971. She is an African American singer. Blige was born in Savannah, GA, moving with her mother and older sister to the Schlobam housing projects in Yonkers, NY, as a young girl. Her rough life there produced more than a few scars, physical and otherwise. Blige dropped out of high school in her junior year, spending time doing her friends' hair in her mother's apartment and hanging out.
|
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https://aaregistry.org/wp-content/themes/aareg/images/favicon.ico
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African American Registry
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https://aaregistry.org/story/mary-j-blige-found-her-own-musical-voice/
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Mary J. Blige was born on this date in 1971. She is a Black singer.
As a young girl, she was born in Savannah, GA, 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. Blige dropped out of high school in her junior year, spending time doing her friends' hair in her mother's apartment and hanging out.
At a local mall in White Plains, NY, she recorded herself singing Anita Baker's "Caught Up in the Rapture" into a karaoke machine. Her stepfather passed the recording on to Uptown Records CEO Andre Harrell. He was impressed with Blige's voice and signed her to sing backup for local acts like Father MC. In 1991, Sean "Puffy" Combs took Blige under his wing and began working with her on her debut album, "What's the 411?" Combs and his stylish touches added to Blige's unique vocal style and created a stunning album that bridged the gap between R&B and rap in a way that no female singer had before.
Her 1995 follow-up, "My Life," again featured Combs' handiwork, stepping back from its urban roots and featuring less of a rap sound and making up for that with its subject matter. "My Life" was full of ghetto pathos and Blige's pain and rocky relationship with artist K-Ci Hailey, which 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. 1997's "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 1999, the fullness and elegance of her new sound appeared more developed, as Blige displayed a classic soul style aided by material from Elton John and Bernie Taupin, Stevie Wonder, and Lauryn Hill. She made it obvious that the ghetto and harsh aspects of her music were gone, while the sensitive power remained. That power also helped carry the more modern-sounding 2001 release, "No More Drama," a deeply personal collective effort musically with more of Blige's songwriting than before. "No More Drama" allowed listeners to see her musical path that produced an older, wiser, but still expressive artist.
Currently, Blige is touring and acting. She started her label, MJB Records. To many, Blige is more than the Queen of Hip-Hop Soul. Throughout her life, she was determined to find and maintain her musical voice. By doing so, she has become one of the most successful R&B/hip hop writers/performers in the country and has paved the way for many others who have followed her course.
In 2017, Mary J. Blige earned a Golden Globe nomination in the best-supporting actress category, and her song “Mighty River” was also nominated for Mudbound.
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Mary J. Blige
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2014-04-02T08:22:38
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Mary J. Blige has influenced a generation of artists with hits like 'Real Love' and 'Be Without You.' She has also had a successful acting career, including her Oscar-nominated performance in 'Mudbound.'
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Biography
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https://www.biography.com/musicians/mary-j-blige
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(1971-)
Who Is Mary J. Blige?
When a recording of 17-year-old Mary J. Blige singing at a karaoke booth came to the attention of Uptown Records, the company put her under contract immediately. She sang backup until the 1992 release of her first solo album, What's the 411?, a record that re-defined modern soul. Blige has had several No. 1 Billboard hits and has won nine Grammy Awards. She has also earned positive reviews for her acting in projects such as the 2013 TV movie Betty & Coretta and the 2017 World War II-era drama Mudbound.
Early Life
Born on January 11, 1971, in the Bronx, New York, Blige has won over millions of fans with her music. But before becoming a successful hip-hop singer, Blige endured a hellish childhood marred by violence, alcohol and drugs. Her mother, Cora Blige, was a nurse and an alcoholic; her father, Thomas Blige, was a jazz musician who played the bass guitar, as well as a Vietnam War veteran who suffered from severe post-traumatic stress disorder. "My mother went through awful abuse from my father," Blige once recalled. "He left us when I was 4, but he'd come back from time to time and abuse her some more."
Hoping to escape from her father, Blige and her mother moved to the Schlobohm Houses, a public housing project in Yonkers. The projects offered only more horror: "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. It was a dangerous place. No one wanted anyone else to get ahead. 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."
Blige found escape from the terrible world of her childhood in church and in music. "I loved being there because I wouldn't be hurt," she said about going to church. "I felt wanted and special, and when I was 12, I sang the hymn 'Lord, Help Me To Hold Out Until My Change Has Come.' I was praying as I sang it. I felt the Spirit." However, by the time she turned 16, she had dropped out of school, stopped going to church, and become addicted to drugs and sex. "I ended up becoming my environment," Blige said. "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."
Albums: '411' and 'My Life'
It was Blige's voice that rescued her from the tragic life into which she was quickly falling. "Everyone talked about the karaoke machine at the mall," she remembered. "So I went in and recorded Anita Baker's 'Caught Up in the Rapture' on a cassette tape. I didn't think it was anything big." After four years of sending out her demo tape to no avail, Blige managed to get the tape to Uptown Records CEO Andre Harrell, who was blown away by her beautiful, powerful and soulful voice. He signed Blige to a record contract in 1992 and assigned a young up-and-coming music producer named Sean "Diddy" Combs to work with her. Blige released her debut album, What's the 411? later that year, and it instantly became a huge success. The album sold more than 3 million copies, bolstered by the hit singles "You Remind Me" and "Real Love."
Two years later, Blige released a second album, My Life, on which she wrote or co-wrote nearly all of the songs. My Life proved another critical and popular success with singles such as "Be Happy," "Mary Jane (All Night Long)" and "You Bring Me Joy." In 1996, she won her first Grammy Award (best rap performance by a duo or group) for "I'll be There For You/You're All I Need to Get By," a duet with Method Man of the Wu-Tang Clan. Her third album, 1997's Share My World, reached No. 1 on the Billboard albums chart, and featured hits like "Love Is All We Need" and "Everything."
Personal Struggles
While her music was adored by fans and critics alike, behind her professional success Blige's personal life continued to spiral out of control. "I didn't know my own worth," she said. "I was ignorant. The people making money off me kept me blind: 'Mary likes cocaine? OK, let's make sure she keeps getting it. Alcohol? Get her that.'" Blige finally managed to turn her life around when she met and fell in love with a music executive named Kendu Isaacs. "After I met him, everything changed in my life," she said. "He was the first person to ever challenge what I did: 'Why are you drinking? Why do you hate yourself? You don't need to be around people who tear you down. You're beautiful, Mary.' He was the first man to ever tell me that." Blige and Isaacs married in 2003, and she became a stepmother to his three children. In 2016, it was reported that the couple has called it quits.
In 2001, Blige released an album fittingly titled No More Drama. The album features her most popular song to date, "Family Affair," which was one of the most popular songs of the decade and remains a classic of the hip-hop soul genre. After her 2003 album Love & Life earned only lukewarm reviews, Blige recorded her most popular and acclaimed album to date, The Breakthrough, in 2005. In addition to selling more than 7 million copies worldwide, The Breakthrough was nominated for eight Grammy Awards and won three, for best R&B album, best R&B song and best R&B female vocal performance (for the song "Be Without You"). Blige continued to put out new albums thereafter, including Growing Pains (2007) and Stronger with Each Tear (2009).
Soundtrack and 'London Sessions'
In 2011, Blige contributed a song, "The Living Proof," to the soundtrack of the hit film The Help. She also released the album My Life: Part II ... The Journey Continues, which became a Top 5 hit. The record featured the song "Mr. Wrong," a collaboration with rapper Drake. The following year, Blige celebrated the 25th anniversary of her breakthrough debut What's the 411? with a new edition of this classic album and also released the holiday collection A Mary Christmas.
2014 saw the songstress handling all of the tracks for the soundtrack to Think Like a Man Too. That same year, refusing to rest on her laurels, Blige expanded her musical palette geographically with the album The London Sessions, showcasing her time in the United Kingdom and featuring songwriting from Sam Smith, Emeli Sandé and Disclosure. Renowned as the Queen of Hip-Hop Soul, Blige is undeniably one of the great singers and artists of her generation. She has sold over 50 million albums and, as of 2015, has won nine Grammy Awards.
In addition to music, Blige has branched out into acting. She appeared in Tyler Perry's dramatic comedy I Can Do Bad All By Myself in 2009, and sang in the musical film Rock of Ages alongside Tom Cruise, Alec Baldwin and Russell Brand in 2012. Taking on a more dramatic role, in 2013, she appeared as Dr. Betty Shabazz, the widow of slain civil rights leader Malcolm X, in the TV movie Betty & Coretta. Angela Bassett co-starred as Coretta Scott King, the widow of Martin Luther King Jr., in the small-screen production, which explored the lives of these two women in the wake of their husbands' deaths.
In 2017, Blige pulled off a rare acting/singing double nomination from the Golden Globes, earning consideration for her supporting role in the period drama Mudbound and its song "Mighty River." (Barbra Streisand is the only performer to win Globes in both categories the same year, for her contributions to A Star Is Born in 1976.) Blige later earned Academy Award nominations for Supporting Actress and Original Song.
Early in 2018, it was announced that Blige was being honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, with Combs tapped to deliver the introduction for the January 11 ceremony.
Legal Woes
In May 2013, Blige was revealed to have a substantial outstanding tax bill. The Internal Revenue Service filed $3.4 million tax lien against her and her husband in New Jersey that February. This huge tab covered three years' worth of unpaid taxes. A spokesperson for Blige told the Associated Press that the singer is working "with her new team to resolve all these issues as quickly as possible."
QUICK FACTS
Name: Mary J. Blige
Birth Year: 1971
Birth date: January 11, 1971
Birth State: New York
Birth City: The Bronx
Birth Country: United States
Gender: Female
Best Known For: Mary J. Blige has influenced a generation of artists with hits like 'Real Love' and 'Be Without You.' She has also had a successful acting career, including her Oscar-nominated performance in 'Mudbound.'
Industries
Pop
Astrological Sign: Capricorn
Fact Check: We strive for accuracy and fairness. If you see something that doesn’t look right, contact us!
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_J._Blige
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Mary J. Blige
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2003-04-21T23:02:39+00:00
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_J._Blige
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American singer (born 1971)
Mary Jane Blige ( BLYZHE; born January 11, 1971)[5] is an American singer, songwriter, and actress. Often referred to as the "Queen of Hip-Hop Soul" and "Queen of R&B", Blige has won 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. She has been nominated for three Golden Globe Awards and two Academy Awards, including one for her supporting role in the film Mudbound (2017) and another for its original song "Mighty River", becoming the first person nominated for acting and songwriting in the same year.
Her career began in 1988 when she was signed to Uptown Records by its founder Andre Harrell. During this time, Blige performed background vocal work for other artists on the label such as Father MC and Jeff Redd.[1] 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.[6] Both What's the 411? and her 1994 album My Life are featured on the Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time list,[7] and the latter on Time magazine's All-Time 100 Albums.[8] Throughout her career, Blige went on to release 14 studio albums, including four Billboard 200 number-one albums. Her biggest hits include "Real Love", "You Remind Me", "I'm Goin' Down", "Not Gon' Cry", "Be Without You", "Just Fine" and the Billboard Hot 100 number-one single "Family Affair".
Blige has also made a successful transition to both the television and movie screen, with supporting roles in films such as Prison Song (2001), Rock of Ages (2012), Betty and Coretta (2013), Black Nativity (2013), her Oscar and Golden Globe-nominated breakthrough performance as Florence Jackson in Mudbound (2017), Trolls World Tour (2020), Body Cam (2020), The Violent Heart (2021) and co-starring as jazz singer Dinah Washington in the Aretha Franklin biopic Respect (2021). In 2019, Blige starred as Cha-Cha on the first season of the Netflix television series The Umbrella Academy. She currently stars as Monet Tejada in the spin-off of the highly-rated TV show drama Power in Power Book II: Ghost.
She received a Legends Award at the World Music Awards in 2006, and the Voice of Music Award from ASCAP in 2007.[9] Billboard ranked Blige as the most successful female R&B/Hip-Hop artist of the past 25 years.[10] In 2017, Billboard magazine named her 2006 song "Be Without You" as the most successful R&B/Hip-Hop song of all time, as it spent an unparalleled 15 weeks atop the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart and over 75 weeks on the chart.[11] VH1 ranked Blige as the 80th greatest artist of all time in 2011[12] and ninth in "The 100 Greatest Women in Music" list in 2012.[13] In 2023, Rolling Stone ranked her as the 25th greatest singer of all-time.[14] In 2024, Blige was selected for induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.[15][16]
Mary Jane Blige[1][17] was born on January 11, 1971, at Fordham Hospital in the Bronx, New York City, 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.[18][19]
She spent her early childhood in Richmond Hill, Georgia,[20][6] where she sang in a Pentecostal church.[21] She and her family later moved back to New York and resided in the Schlobohm Housing Projects, located in Yonkers.[22] The family subsisted on her mother's earnings as a nurse after her father left the family in the mid-1970s.[23] Her father was a Vietnam War veteran who suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder and alcoholism.[22]
At age five, she was molested by a family friend; as a teenager she endured years of sexual harassment from her peers.[24] She would eventually turn to alcohol, drugs and promiscuous sex to try and numb the pain.[25] Blige dropped out of high school in her junior year.[26]
Influenced by the music of Aretha Franklin, Chaka Khan and Gladys Knight,[27][28] 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.[18] Redd sent it to the president and CEO of the label, Andre Harrell. Harrell met with Blige, and in 1989 she was signed to the label as a backup vocalist for artists such as Father MC,[29] becoming the company's youngest and first female artist.[21]
After being signed to Uptown, Blige began working with record producer Sean Combs, also known as Puff Daddy.[30] He became the executive producer and produced a majority of her first album.[31] The title What's the 411?[32] was an indication by Blige of being the "real deal".[33] What's the 411? nevertheless established Blige as a dynamic storyteller whose performances of love narrative drew upon both her musical influences and her lived experiences as a hip-hop-generation woman.[34] The music was described as "revelatory on a frequent basis".[26] Blige was noted for having a "tough girl persona and streetwise lyrics".[35] On July 28, 1992, Uptown/MCA Records released What's the 411?, to positive reviews from critics.[36] What's the 411? peaked at number six on the Billboard 200 and topped the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart.[37] It also peaked at number 53 on the UK Albums Chart.[38] It was certified three times Platinum by the RIAA.[39] According to Entertainment Weekly's 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".[40] According to Dave McAleer, Blige became the most successful new female R&B artist of 1992 in the United States.[41]
What's the 411? earned her two Soul Train Music Awards in 1993: Best New R&B Artist and Best R&B Album, Female.[42] 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.[43] By August 2010, the album had sold 3,318,000 copies in the US.[44] What's the 411? has since been viewed by critics as one of the 1990s' most important records.[36] Blige's combination of vocals over a hip hop beat proved influential in contemporary R&B.[45] 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.[46] 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.[47][48] 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 Blender's list of the 100 greatest American albums of all time.[49] The following year, Rolling Stone placed it at number 279 on their 500 Greatest Albums of All Time,[50] and in 2006, the record was included in Time's 100 greatest albums of all-time list.[51]
Blige involved herself in several outside projects, recording a cover of Aretha Franklin's "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman" for the soundtrack to the FOX series New York Undercover, and "Everyday It Rains" (co-written by R&B singer Faith Evans) 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 (1996) 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 (1996) 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."[52]
On April 22, 1997, MCA Records (parent company to Uptown Records, which was in the process of being dismantled) released Blige's third album, Share My World. By then, she and Combs had dissolved their working relationship. In his place were the Trackmasters, who executive-produced the project along with Steve Stoute. Sharing production duties were producers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, R. Kelly, Babyface and Rodney Jerkins. The album was made at a time when Blige was trying to "get her life together", by trying to overcome drugs and alcohol, as well as the ending of her relationship with Hailey. After an encounter with a person who threatened her life the previous year, she tried to quit the unhealthy lifestyle and make more upbeat, happier music. As a result, songs such as "Love Is All We Need" and "Share My World" were made. Share My World debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 and spawned five hit singles: "Love Is All We Need" (featuring Nas), "I Can Love You" (featuring Lil' Kim), "Everything", "Missing You" (UK only) and "Seven Days" (featuring George Benson). In February 1997, Blige performed her hit at the time, "Not Gon' Cry", at the 1997 Grammy Awards, which gained her a third Grammy Award nomination, her first for Best Female R&B Vocal Performance, as Blige was recording the follow-up to My Life. In early 1998, Blige won an American Music Award for "Favorite Soul/R&B Album". That summer, she embarked on the Share My World Tour, which resulted in a Gold-certified live album released later that year, simply titled The Tour. The album spawned one single, "Misty Blue".
On August 17, 1999, Blige's fourth album, titled Mary was released. It marked a departure from her more familiar hip hop-oriented sound; this set featured a more earthy, whimsical, and adult contemporary-tinged collection of songs, reminiscent of the 1970s to early 1980s soul. She also appeared on In Concert: A Benefit for the Crossroads Centre at Antigua with Eric Clapton in 1999. On December 14, 1999, the album was re-released as a double-disc set. The second disc was enhanced with the music videos for the singles "All That I Can Say" and "Deep Inside" and included two bonus tracks: "Sincerity" (featuring Nas, Andy Hogan and DMX) and "Confrontation" (a collaboration with hip hop duo Funkmaster Flex & Big Kap originally from their 1999 album The Tunnel). The Mary album was critically praised, becoming her most nominated release to date, and was certified double platinum. It was not as commercially successful as Blige's prior releases, though all of the singles: "All That I Can Say", "Deep Inside", "Your Child", and "Give Me You" performed considerably on the radio. In the meantime, MCA used the album to expand Blige's demographic into the nightclub market, as club-friendly dance remixes of the Mary singles were released. The club remix of "Your Child" peaked at number-one on the Billboard's Hot Dance Club Play chart in October 2000. In 2001, a Japan-only compilation, Ballads, was released. The album featured covers of Stevie Wonder's "Overjoyed", and previous recordings of Aretha Franklin's "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman" and Dorothy Moore's "Misty Blue". In 1999, George Michael and Mary J. Blige covered the song 'As' written by Stevie Wonder, and worldwide outside of the United States, it was the second single from George Michael's greatest hits album Ladies & Gentlemen: The Best of George Michael. It became a top ten UK pop hit, reaching number four on the chart. It was not released on the U.S. version of the greatest hits collection or as a single in the U.S. Michael cited Blige's record company president for pulling the track in America after Michael's arrest for committing a lewd act.
In January 2001, Blige performed as a special guest in the Super Bowl XXXV halftime show.[53]
On August 28, 2001, MCA released Blige's fifth studio album, No More Drama. The first single in the album, "Family Affair" (produced by Dr. Dre) became her first and only number-one single on the Billboard Hot 100, where it remained for six consecutive weeks. It was followed by two further hit singles, the European-only single "Dance for Me" featuring Common with samples from "The Bed's Too Big Without You" by The Police, and the Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis-produced title track (originally recorded for the Mary album), which sampled "Nadia's Theme", the piano-driven theme song to the daytime drama The Young and the Restless. Though the album sold nearly two million copies in the U.S., MCA was underwhelmed by its sales, and subsequently repackaged and re-released the album on January 29, 2002. The No More Drama re-release featured a new album cover and deleted three of the songs from the original track listing, while adding two brand-new songs—one of which was the fourth single and top twenty Hot 100 hit "Rainy Dayz", (featuring Ja Rule), plus two remixes; one of the title track, serviced by Sean Combs/Puff Daddy and the single version of "Dance for Me" featuring Common. Blige won a Grammy for 'Best Female R&B Vocal Performance' for the song "He Think I Don't Know". In April 2002, Blige performed with Shakira with the song "Love Is a Battlefield" on VH1 Divas show live in Las Vegas, she also performed "No More Drama" and "Rainy Dayz" as a duet with the returning Whitney Houston.
On July 22, 2002, MCA released Dance for Me, a collection of club remixes of some of her past top hits including the Junior Vasquez remix of "Your Child", and the Thunderpuss mix of "No More Drama". This album was released in a limited edition double pack 12" vinyl for DJ-friendly play in nightclubs.
On August 26, 2003, Blige's sixth album Love & Life was released on Geffen Records (which had absorbed MCA Records.) Blige heavily collaborated with her one-time producer Sean Combs for this set. Due to the history between them on What's the 411? and My Life, which is generally regarded as their best work, and Blige having just come off of a successful fifth album, expectations were high for the reunion effort.
Despite the album debuting at number one on the Billboard 200 and becoming Blige's fourth consecutive UK top ten album, Love & Life's lead-off single, the Diddy-produced "Love @ 1st Sight", which featured Method Man, barely cracked the top ten on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs, while altogether missing the top twenty on the Hot 100 (although peaking inside the UK top twenty). The following singles, "Ooh!", "Not Today" featuring Eve, "Whenever I Say Your Name" featuring Sting on the international re-release, and "It's a Wrap" fared worse. Although the album was certified platinum, it became Blige's lowest-selling at the time. Critics and fans alike largely panned the disc, citing a lack of consistency and noticeable ploys to recapture the early Blige/Combs glory. Blige and Combs reportedly struggled and clashed during the making of this album, and again parted ways upon the completion of it.
The album became Blige's first album in six years to debut at number one on the Billboard 200, selling 285,298 copies in the first week.[54] Love & Life received mixed reviews from music critics.[55] AllMusic gave it 4 stars and said the album "beamed with joy" and Rolling Stone gave it three stars, saying "You may not always love Blige's music, but you will feel her". The album was eventually certified Platinum by the RIAA for shipping over 1,000,000 copies in the US.[39] The album was nominated for the Best Contemporary R&B Album at the 46th Grammy Awards.
Geffen Records released Blige's seventh studio album, The Breakthrough on December 20, 2005. For the album, Blige collaborated with J.U.S.T.I.C.E. League, Rodney Jerkins, will.i.am, Bryan-Michael Cox, 9th Wonder, Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, Raphael Saadiq, Cool and Dre, and Dre & Vidal. The cover art was photographed by Markus Klinko & Indrani. It debuted at number one on both the Billboard 200 and Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums charts. Selling 727,000 copies in its first week, it became the biggest first-week sales for an R&B solo female artist in SoundScan history,[56][57] the fifth largest first-week sales for a female artist, and the fourth largest debut of 2005.
The lead-off single, "Be Without You", peaked at number three on the Billboard Hot 100, while peaking at number one on the R&B chart for a record-setting fifteen consecutive weeks; it remained on the chart for over sixteen months. "Be Without You" found success in the UK (peaking in the lower end of the top forty) it became Blige's longest charting single on the UK Singles Chart. It is her second-longest charting single to date. The album produced three more singles including two more top-five R&B hits—"Enough Cryin'", which features Blige's alter ego Brook-Lynn (as whom she appeared on the remix to Busta Rhymes's "Touch It" in 2006); and "Take Me as I Am" (which samples Lonnie Liston Smith's "A Garden of Peace"). Blige's duet with U2 on the cover of their 1992 hit, "One" gave Blige her biggest hit to date in the UK, peaking at number two on the UK Singles Chart eventually being certified one of the forty highest-selling singles of 2006;[58] it was her longest charting UK single. The success of The Breakthrough won Blige nine Billboard Music Awards, two American Music Awards, two BET Awards, two NAACP Image Awards, and a Soul Train Award. She received eight Grammy Award nominations at the 2007 Grammy Awards, the most of any artist that year. "Be Without You" was nominated for both "Record of the Year" and "Song of the Year". Blige won three: "Best Female R&B Vocal Performance", "Best R&B Song" (both for "Be Without You"), and "Best R&B Album" for The Breakthrough.[59] Blige completed a season sweep of the "big three" major music awards, having won two American Music Awards in November 2006[60] and nine Billboard Music Awards in December 2006.[61]
In December 2006, a compilation called Reflections (A Retrospective) was released. It contained many of Blige's greatest hits and four new songs, including the worldwide lead single "We Ride (I See the Future)". In the UK, however, "MJB da MVP" (which appeared in a different, shorter form on The Breakthrough) was released as the lead single from the collection. The album peaked at number nine in the U.S, selling over 170,000 copies in its first week, while reaching number forty in the UK In 2006, Blige recorded a duet with rapper Ludacris, "Runaway Love", which is the third single on his fifth album, Release Therapy. It reached the top five on the Billboard Hot 100 and the R&B chart. Blige was featured with Aretha Franklin and the Harlem Boys Choir on the soundtrack to the 2006 motion picture Bobby, on the lead track "Never Gonna Break My Faith" written by Bryan Adams. The song was nominated for a Golden Globe and won the Grammy Award for Best Gospel Performance at the 50th Annual Grammy Awards.
Blige's eighth studio album, Growing Pains, was released on December 18, 2007, debuting at number two on the Billboard 200 and at number one on the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart. It sold 629,000 copies in its first week, marking the third time since Nielsen SoundScan began collecting data in 1991 that two albums sold more than 600,000 copies in a week in the United States. In its second week, the album climbed to number one, making it Blige's fourth number-one album. The lead single, "Just Fine", peaked at number twenty-two on the Billboard Hot 100 and at number three on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart. "Just Fine" was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Female R&B Vocal Performance, and Blige won Best R&B Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals for the Chaka Khan duet "Disrespectful" (featured on Khan's album Funk This) which Blige wrote.
Growing Pains was not released in the UK until February 2008, where it became Blige's fifth top ten and third-highest-charting album. "Just Fine" returned Blige to the UK singles chart top 20 after her previous two singles failed to chart highly. Subsequent singles from Growing Pains include "Work That", which accompanied Blige in an iTunes commercial, and "Stay Down".
Blige was featured on 50 Cent's 2007 album, Curtis, in the song "All of Me". In March 2008, she toured with Jay-Z on the Heart of the City Tour. Together, they released a song called "You're Welcome". In the same period, cable network BET aired a special on Blige titled The Evolution of Mary J. Blige, which showcased her career. Celebrities such as Method Man and Ashanti gave their opinions about Blige and her music. Blige is featured on singles by Big Boi, and Musiq Soulchild. Growing Pains was nominated for and won the Grammy Award for "Best Contemporary R&B Album", at the 51st Grammy Awards held on February 8, 2009, earning Blige her 27th Grammy nomination, in a mere decade. Blige went on the Growing Pains European Tour, her first tour there in two years. A tour of Australia and New Zealand was scheduled for June but was postponed due to "weariness from an overwhelming tour schedule"[62] and then eventually canceled entirely.[63]
On August 7, 2008, it was revealed Blige faced a US$2 million federal suit claiming Neff-U wrote the music for the song "Work That", but was owned by Dream Family Entertainment. The filing claimed that Dream Family never gave rights to use the song to Blige, Feemster or Geffen Records. Rights to the lyrics of the song used in an iPod commercial are not in question.[64]
Blige returned to performing in January 2009 by performing the song "Lean on Me" at the Presidential Inauguration Committee's, "We Are One: The Obama Inaugural Celebration at the Lincoln Memorial". Blige also performed her hit 2007 single, "Just Fine", with a new intro at the Neighborhood Inaugural Ball after Barack Obama was sworn in on January 20, 2009. Blige appeared as a marquee performer on the annual Christmas in Washington television special.
Blige's ninth studio album, Stronger with Each Tear, was released on December 21, 2009, debuting at number two on the Billboard 200 and at number one on the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart, selling 332,000 units in its first week of release. It became her fifth album not to take the top spot in the United States. Blige recorded "Stronger", as the lead single from the soundtrack to the basketball documentary "More than a Game" in August 2009. The second single from Stronger with Each Tear, "I Am", was released in December 2009 and reached number fifty-five on the Hot 100. The third international single from the album, "Each Tear", was remixed with different featured artists from different countries, then being released in February 2010. The single failed to chart anywhere except in the UK where it reached number one-hundred-eighty-three and in Italy where it reached number one. The album's third U.S. single, "We Got Hood Love" featuring Trey Songz, was released in March 2010 and reached number tw25 on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Singles chart though it failed to reach the Hot 100.[65] One of Blige's representatives reported to Us Weekly magazine that a tour in support of Stronger with Each Tear would begin in the fall of 2010.[66] In March 2010, Blige released Stronger with Each Tear in the United Kingdom, as well as in the European markets. The album performed modestly in the United Kingdom, debuting at number 33 on the UK Albums Chart and at number four on the UK R&B Chart. It reached the top 100 in other countries.
Blige was honored at the 2009 BET Honors Ceremony and was paid tribute by Anita Baker and Monica. On November 4, 2009, Blige sang The Star-Spangled Banner at Yankee Stadium before the New York Yankees and Philadelphia Phillies played the last game (game 6) of the World Series. Blige performed two songs from her ninth album as well as her previous hits, "No More Drama" and "Be Without You" along with the song "Color", which was featured on the Precious soundtrack. Blige appeared as a guest judge on the ninth season of American Idol on January 13, 2010.
On January 23, Blige released a track titled "Hard Times Come Again No More" with the Roots, performing it at the Hope for Haiti Now telethon. Blige also performed on BET's SOS Help For Haiti, singing "Gonna Make It" with Jazmine Sullivan and "One." At the 2010 Grammy Awards, Blige performed "Bridge over Troubled Water" with Andrea Bocelli. She also took part in February 2010's We Are the World 25 for Haiti, singing the solo originally sung by Tina Turner in the original 1985 We Are the World version. At the 41st NAACP Image Awards on February 26, Blige won Outstanding Female Artist and Outstanding Album for Stronger with Each Tear.[67] On November 18, 2010, Billboard revealed Mary J. Blige as the most successful female R&B/hip hop artist on the Top 50 R&B/Hip Hop Artists of the Past 25 Years list. She came in at number 2 overall.[68]
In January 2011, Hot 97 premiered Blige's teaser track "Someone to Love Me (Naked)" featuring vocals by Lil Wayne.[69] In July 2011, Blige released the song "The Living Proof" as the lead single to the soundtrack of the film The Help.[70] On July 24, VH1 premiered their third Behind the Music that profiled her personal and career life. In August 2011, Blige released her first single off the album, "25/8". Blige's tenth studio album, My Life II... The Journey Continues (Act 1), was released in November 2011.[71] The album, primarily recorded in Los Angeles and New York City, saw Blige looking toward the future while acknowledging the past. "From me to you, My Life II... Our journey together continues in this life", the singer explained. "It's a gift to be able to relate and identify with my fans at all times. This album is a reflection of the times and lives of people all around me." The album features production by Kanye West and the Underdogs.[72] The second single "Mr. Wrong" featuring Canadian rapper Drake was the most successful single from the album, peaking at number 10 on Billboard's R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart. The rest of the songs released, including lead single "25/8" achieved only moderate success, peaking within the top 40 on R&B/Hip-Hop Songs. The album itself debuted at No. 5 on the Billboard 200, selling 156,000 copies in the first week; it was eventually certified Gold in 2012 and has sold 763,000 in the US.[73]
On February 28, 2012, Blige performed "Star Spangled Banner" at the 2012 NBA All-Star Game. Blige appeared as guest mentor on American Idol on March 7, 2012, and performed "Why" on the results show the following night.[74] On September 23, 2012, Blige was a performer at the iHeartRadio Music Festival at the MGM Grand Las Vegas. Blige was featured on the song "Now or Never" from Kendrick Lamar's album Good Kid, M.A.A.D City, released on October 22, 2012.
In early 2013, reports surfaced that Blige was recording a Christmas album. The album, titled, A Mary Christmas was released on October 15, 2013, through Matriarch and Verve Records, her first release with the latter. The album includes collaborations with Barbra Streisand, the Clark Sisters, Marc Anthony and Jessie J. In early December, A Mary Christmas became Blige's 12th top ten album after it rose to No. 10 in its eight week.[75]
On October 23, 2013, Blige sang the national anthem before Game 1 of the 2013 World Series.[76]
On February 5, 2014, a remix of Disclosure's "F for You" featuring guest vocals from Mary was released.[77]
In May 2014 Blige was featured on Mariah Carey’s song It's a Wrap as part of Carey’s deluxe edition of her 2014 album Me. I Am Mariah... The Elusive Chanteuse.[78] It was announced May 30, 2014, that Think Like a Man Too (Music from and Inspired by the Film), released June 17 on Epic Records, would introduce new songs by Mary J. Blige, including the single "Suitcase".[79] Blige recorded a collection of music from and inspired by the film. In the United States, Think Like a Man Too debuted at number 30 on the Billboard 200, with 8,688 copies sold in its first week, becoming the lowest sales debut of any of her studio albums.[80] On Billboard's R&B/Hip-Hop chart, the soundtrack album charted at number six, marking Blige's 16th top ten entry on the chart, tying her with Mariah Carey for the second-most top tens by a female artist.[80]
June 2, 2014, saw Blige pairing up with another English musician with the release of a reworked version of Sam Smith's "Stay with Me". A live visual to the song was released on the same day.[81]
Following her concert date at the Essence Festival, on July 9, 2014, it was announced Blige would move to London to experiment with a new sound for her new album.[82] Blige spent a month in London recording her album in RAK Studios with a host of young British acts, including Disclosure, Naughty Boy, Emeli Sandé and Sam Smith. Ten new songs, co-written and recorded by the singer, were released on November 24, 2014, on an album titled The London Sessions.[83] That same month, she announced that she left Geffen and Interscope and signed with Capitol Records.
In August 2016, Blige was recruited to perform the new theme song for the ABC Daytime talk show The View for its twentieth season titled "World's Gone Crazy" written by Diane Warren. A music video was also shot for the new theme song with co-hosts Whoopi Goldberg, Joy Behar, Candace Cameron Bure, Raven-Symoné, Paula Faris, Sara Haines, Sunny Hostin and Jedediah Bila. Blige also appeared on The View alongside Maxwell during its premiere week on September 9, 2016, to discuss their joint tour and theme song.
On September 30, 2016, Blige premiered a new show, The 411, on Apple Music.[84] On its debut episode, she interviewed Hillary Clinton. A trailer was released online with Blige singing a cover of Bruce Springsteen's "American Skin" to a bewildered Clinton. The exchange received mixed and negative reaction on social media. Two weeks later, a studio version, this time featuring a verse from American rapper Kendrick Lamar was released online.
In October 2016, following her highly publicized divorce from Kendu Issacs, Blige released two songs: "Thick of It" and "U + Me (Love Lesson)". Her thirteenth studio album, Strength of a Woman, was released on April 28, 2017.[85] It peaked at number three on the Billboard 200, number two on the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart and topped the R&B Albums chart.[86] On July 12, 2018, Blige released the single "Only Love" on Republic Records, following her exit from Capitol Records.
On April 16, 2019, Blige announced that she is co-headlining a North American summer tour with Nas titled The Royalty Tour.[87] On May 8, Blige released the single "Thriving" featuring Nas.[88] During an interview with Ebro Darden on Beats 1 for the premiere of "Thriving", Blige announced that her next studio album would be released before July.[89] On June 23, at the 2019 BET Awards, she was honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award for her extraordinary contributions to the music industry.[90]
In June 2021, Blige celebrated the 25th anniversary of her album My Life with the release of the Amazon Studios documentary Mary J. Blige's My Life, directed by Vanessa Roth.[91][47] In December 2021, it was announced that Blige had formed her own label, Mary Jane Productions, in conjunction with 300 Entertainment. Along with the news came the release of two new singles, "Good Morning Gorgeous" and "Amazing" featuring DJ Khaled. In January 2022, Blige released "Rent Money" featuring Dave East.[92] The songs appear on Blige's fourteenth studio album, also titled Good Morning Gorgeous, which was released on February 11, 2022.[93]
On February 13, 2022, Blige performed at the Super Bowl LVI halftime show alongside fellow American rappers Dr. Dre, Eminem, Kendrick Lamar, Snoop Dogg, 50 Cent, and Anderson .Paak.[94] Days later, on February 17, Blige said on the radio show The Breakfast Club that she is working on an album entirely produced by Dr. Dre.[95] On March 7, Blige and Pepsi announced the inaugural Strength of a Woman Festival and Summit, a three-day festival in Atlanta, in partnership with Live Nation Urban.[96] In May 2022, Blige was listed as one of the 100 most influential people in the world by TIME.[97] In September 2022, she was awarded the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Variety Special (Live) for Super Bowl LVI halftime show.[98] In February 2023, Mariah Carey released an EP of her song It's a Wrap which featured Mary’s remix of the track.[99]
In October 2023, Blige released a deluxe version of A Mary Christmas, which included four additional tracks.[100][101] On October 27, 2023, Blige released the single "Still Believe In Love", which features rapper Vado.[102][103][104]
In 1998, Blige made her acting debut on the sitcom The Jamie Foxx Show, playing the apparently southern Ola Mae, a preacher's daughter who wanted to sing more than gospel music. Her father was portrayed by Ronald Isley of the Isley Brothers. In 2001, Blige starred opposite rapper Q-Tip in the independent film Prison Song. That same year, Blige made a cameo on the Lifetime network series, Strong Medicine; playing the role of Simone Fellows, the lead singer of a band who was sick, but would not seek treatment. In 2000, Blige was featured in a superhero web cartoon in junction with Stan Lee. Blige used the cartoon as part of her performance while on her 2000 Mary Show Tour. In 2004, Blige starred in an Off-Broadway play, The Exonerated, which chronicled the experiences of death row inmates. Blige portrayed Sunny Jacobs, a woman who spent 20 years in prison for a crime she did not commit. In late 2005, it was reported that Blige landed the starring role in the upcoming MTV Films biopic on American singer/pianist and civil rights activist, Nina Simone. By the spring of 2010, Blige was slated to star as Simone with British actor David Oyelowo portraying her manager Clifton Henderson. Blige later dropped out of the role due to financial issues and the role was subsequently recast with actress Zoe Saldana as Simone in Nina, released in 2016.
In February 2007, Blige guest-starred on Ghost Whisperer, in the episode "Mean Ghost", as the character Jackie Boyd, the school's cheerleader coach grieving for the death of her brother and affected by the ghost of a dead cheerleader. The episode features many of Blige's songs. In August 2007, Blige was a guest star on Entourage, in the role of herself, as a client of Ari Gold's agency. In October 2007, Blige was also a guest star on America's Next Top Model, as a creative director for a photoshoot by Matthew Rolston. In May 2009, Mary made a guest appearance on 30 Rock, as an artist recording a benefit song for a kidney. Blige also had a supporting role in Tyler Perry's movie I Can Do Bad All by Myself, which was released in September 2009.[105]
Blige starred alongside Tom Cruise, Julianne Hough, and Alec Baldwin in the 2012 film adaptation of the 1980s jukebox musical Rock of Ages. Blige played Justice Charlier, the owner of a Sunset Strip gentlemen's club. Production began in May 2011 and the film was released in June 2012.
Blige starred in the Lifetime movie Betty and Coretta alongside Angela Bassett, Malik Yoba and Lindsay Owen Pierre. She played Dr. Betty Shabazz, the widow of Malcolm X. The film premiered in February 2013. In December 2015, she portrayed Evillene, the Wicked Witch of the West in NBC's The Wiz Live!.[106] In October 2016, Blige guest-starred on ABC legal drama How to Get Away with Murder as an old acquaintance of Annalise Keating played by Viola Davis.[107]
In 2017, Blige starred in the period drama film Mudbound directed by Dee Rees. Playing Florence Jackson, the matriarch of her family,[108] she received praise such as Variety's review: "Mary J. Blige, as the mother of the Jackson family, gives a transformative performance that will elevate the acting career of the R&B star."[109] For her performance in Mudbound, Blige was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress,[110] the Critics' Choice Movie Award for Best Supporting Actress, the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role, and the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. As she was also nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song (with Taura Stinson and Raphael Saadiq), she became the first person nominated for an Academy Award for acting and original song in the same year.[111][112] Her nomination also made Dee Rees the first black woman to direct a film for which an actor was nominated for an Academy Award.[113][114]
Blige voiced Irene in the 2018 animated film Sherlock Gnomes, and in 2020 voiced Queen Essence in the animated musical film Trolls World Tour. In 2018, it was announced that Blige was cast as Sherry Elliot in Scream: Resurrection, the third season of the slasher television series Scream.[115] The season premiered on VH1 on July 8, 2019.[116] In 2019, Blige starred in the role of Cha-Cha, a main antagonist in the Netflix superhero series The Umbrella Academy.[117]
In 2020, Blige played a leading role in the horror film Body Cam.[118] She also starred in the independent drama film Pink Skies Ahead.[119][120] Blige currently stars as Monet Stewart Tejada in Power Book II: Ghost, the first spin-off for the highly rated Starz cable drama Power which premiered in September 2020.[121][122] Blige played singer Dinah Washington in the biographical drama film Respect about life and career of Aretha Franklin.[123] The film was released theatrically on August 13, 2021.
In 2023, Blige was cast in the drama film Rob Peace, a film adaptation of The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace, written and directed by Chiwetel Ejiofor.[124]
In the 1990s, Blige spent six years in a relationship with singer Cedric "K-Ci" Hailey of the R&B group Jodeci.[125] Their turbulent relationship inspired Blige's album My Life.[47] During a 1995 interview on the UK television show The Word, Blige confirmed the two were engaged; Hailey denied that they were going to get married.[126][127] Following her break-up with Hailey, Blige developed a relationship with singer Case,[128][129] which dwindled due to his involvement with other women.[130] She also briefly dated rapper Nas.[131]
Blige married her manager, Martin "Kendu" Isaacs, on December 7, 2003.[132] At the time, Isaacs had two children, Nas and Jordan, with his first wife, and an older daughter, Briana, from a teenage relationship.[133] In July 2016, Blige filed for divorce, citing "irreconcilable differences".[134] Blige and Isaacs' divorce was finalized on June 21, 2018.[135]
Blige is a Democrat and performed for Barack Obama at the 2012 Democratic National Convention.[136]
Blige has dealt with drug and alcohol addiction, and as of 2019, she had been sober for several years.[137] She is also a childfree person, proclaiming in a February 2022 interview with E! News, "I have nieces and nephews forever, and I'm always watching how people are scrambling around for babysitters. I don’t want to go through that. I like my freedom. I like being able to get up and go and move and do what I want to do."[138][139]
Blige is a close friend to Taraji P. Henson, Missy Elliott, Simone Smith (wife of rapper LL Cool J), and fashion stylists June Ambrose and Misa Hylton, as well as former radio personality Angie Martinez, whose son, Niko Ruffin, is Blige's godson.[140][141][142][143]
Blige has had endorsement contracts with Reebok, Air Jordan, Pepsi, Coca-Cola, Gap, Target, American Express, AT&T Inc., M·A·C, Apple Inc., Burger King and Chevrolet.[144] She has also been a spokesperson for Carol's Daughter beauty products and Citibank's Citi Card program (alongside Nickelback).[145]
In 2004, Blige launched her own record label, Matriarch Records, distributed through Interscope. In 2012, she discovered girl group Just'Us, making the group the first ladies of the label. At the time, Blige said, "These are my little Mary's; they each remind me of myself at different points in my life."[146] Blige was reportedly working with the group on their debut album, but it never materialized, and Just'Us has since disbanded.
In 2009, Blige's production company, along with William Morris Endeavor, was working on several TV and film projects.[147]
In July 2010, in partnership with the Home Shopping Network (HSN) and Carol's Daughter, Blige launched her first perfume, My Life (through Carol's Daughter), exclusively on HSN.[148] The fragrance broke HSN sales records in hours,[149][150] by selling 50,000 bottles during its premiere, and has been awarded two prestigious FIFI awards from the Fragrance Foundation, including the "Fragrance Sales Breakthrough" award.[151][152] In August 2011, another scent called My Life Blossom was launched exclusively to HSN.
In October 2010, Blige released "Melodies by MJB", a line of sunglasses. The first Melodies collection featured four styles with a total of 20 color options. Each style represented a specific facet of Blige's life. In the spring of 2011, Essence magazine reported that "Melodies by MJB" had extended their collection to offer more styles.[153][154]
In late 2020, Blige and her close friend, Simone Johnson-Smith, a cancer survivor and wife of rapper LL Cool J, co-founded Sister Love, a jewelry line for women.[155][156] Blige also announced the 2019 formation of a film and television production label, Blue Butterfly Productions. On December 16, 2022, the label signed a first-look lucrative deal with BET for scripted and non-scripted content;[157][158] its first under the partnership was Blige's talk show, The Wine Down with Mary J. Blige, which premiered in early 2023.[159]
She has founded two companies: Mary Jane Productions, which she co-founded with her former manager, Steve Stoute, in 1994,[160] and an independent record label, Beautiful Life Productions, in 2023. She signed Boyz II Men affiliate group, WanMor to the former in August 2023[161] and New York rapper Vado to the latter in May 2024.[162][163]
Called the "Queen of Hip-Hop Soul", Blige is credited with influencing the musical marriage of hip hop and R&B.[164] Ethan Brown of The New Yorker says that albums "What's the 411?" and "My Life", in hindsight, invented "the sample-heavy sound that reinvigorated urban radio and became a blueprint for nineties hip-hop and R&B".[165] Tom Horan of The Daily Telegraph comments that Blige, being an immensely influential figure in popular music, "invented what is now called R&B by successfully combining female vocals with muscular hip hop rhythm tracks. All over the world, that recipe dominates today's charts."[166] Called one of the "most explosive, coming-out displays of pure singing prowess"[167] and "one of the most important albums of the nineties",[168] What's the 411? saw Blige pioneer "the movement that would later become neo soul, generating gripping songs that were also massive radio hits".[169]
African American scholars have noted the implications of Blige's presentation and representation of black womanhood and femininity in the typically male-dominated and centric sphere of hip hop. Blending the vocal techniques of rapping in hip hop with aspirational messages in R&B, Blige is credited with articulating black women's experiences in a "more factual and objective"[170] manner than typical stereotypes and tropes of black women in the media. Using her personal experiences and struggles with her family as source material for her songs, Blige refutes notions of black female hypersexuality by "imploring women to love and empower themselves through both autonomy and intimacy."[171] This desire for love does more than connect to her audience members. With particular attention on her single "Real Love", critics note how the song is "a performative text, declaratively demand[ing] recognition of Blige's full humanity and, more broadly, that of hip-hop-generation women."[171]
Blige has received notable awards and achievements. In 2010, she was ranked 80th on VH1's list of the 100 Greatest Artist of All Time.[172] Blige was listed as one of the 50 most influential R&B singers by Essence.[173] In 2003, Rolling Stone magazine ranked My Life at number 279 on its list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.[50] The album was also included on Time's list of the 100 Greatest albums of All Time.[51] In 2020, both What's the 411? and My Life were featured in a rebooted list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, at 271 and 126 respectively.[7] Alternately called the "Queen of R&B" for her success in the realm of R&B, Blige has amassed ten number one albums on the R&B/Hip Hop Albums chart .[68] Blige is also the only artist to have won Grammys in the R&B, hip-hop, pop, and gospel fields.
Blige and her work have influenced several recording artists, including Beyoncé,[174] Adele,[175][176] Taylor Swift,[177] Layton Greene,[178] Cheryl,[179] Teyana Taylor,[180] Keke Palmer,[181] Jess Glynne,[182] Sam Smith,[183] Summer Walker,[184] K. Michelle,[185] Rihanna,[186] Keyshia Cole[187] and Alexandra Burke.[188]
As an actress, Blige received the Breakthrough Performance Award at the 2018 Palm Springs International Film Festival for her role in Mudbound.
In 2020, Kamala Harris, the first Black and South Asian female Vice President-elect on a major party, walked out to "Work That" at the 2020 Democratic National Convention, campaign events (including her own presidential campaign), and her victory speech.
Main article: Mary J. Blige discography
What's the 411? (1992)
My Life (1994)
Share My World (1997)
Mary (1999)
No More Drama (2001)
Love & Life (2003)
The Breakthrough (2005)
Growing Pains (2007)
Stronger with Each Tear (2009)
My Life II... The Journey Continues (Act 1) (2011)
A Mary Christmas (2013)
The London Sessions (2014)
Strength of a Woman (2017)
Good Morning Gorgeous (2022)
Share My World Tour (1997–98)
The Mary Show Tour (2000)
No More Drama Tour (2002)
Love & Life Tour (2004)
The Breakthrough Experience Tour (2006)
Growing Pains European Tour (2008)
Love Soul Tour (2008)
Music Saved My Life Tour (2010–11)
The London Sessions Tour (2015)
Strength of a Woman Tour (2017)
Good Morning Gorgeous Tour (2022)
Heart of the City Tour (with Jay-Z) (2007)
The Liberation Tour (with D'Angelo) (2012–13)
King and Queen of Hearts World Tour (with Maxwell) (2016)
The Royalty Tour (with Nas) (2019)
Humpin' Around the World Tour (with Bobby Brown) (1992–1993)[189]
Main article: Mary J. Blige videography
Year Title Role Notes 2001 Prison Song Mrs. Butler 2009 I Can Do Bad All by Myself Tanya 2010 Chico and Rita - (voice) 2012 Rock of Ages Justice Charlier 2013 Betty & Coretta Dr. Betty Shabazz TV movie Black Nativity Angel 2014 Champs Herself 2015 The Wiz Live! Evillene TV movie 2017 Mudbound Florence Jackson 2018 Sherlock Gnomes Irene (voice) [190] 2020 Trolls World Tour Queen Essence (voice) Body Cam Renee Lomito-Smith The Violent Heart Nina Pink Skies Ahead Doctor Monroe [191] 2021 Respect Dinah Washington 2024 Rob Peace Jackie Peace
Year Title Role Notes 1992 Soul Train Herself Episode: "Al Jarreau/Mary J. Blige/Pete Rock & C.L. Smooth" In Living Color Herself Episode: "Men on Cooking" Out All Night Herself Episode: "Smooth Operator" The Uptown Comedy Club Herself Episode: "Episode #1.11" 1992-01 Showtime at the Apollo Herself Recurring Guest 1993 MTV Unplugged Herself Episode: "Uptown Unplugged" 1993-06 Saturday Night Live Herself Recurring Guest 1995 New York Undercover Herself Guest Cast: Seasons 1-2 1997 All That Herself Episode: "Mary J. Blige" 1997-06 Top of the Pops Herself Recurring Guest 1998 The Jamie Foxx Show Ola Mae Episode: "Papa Don't Preach" 1999 Moesha Herself Episode: "Good Vibrations?" 2000 The Greatest Herself Episode: "100 Greatest Rock & Roll Moments on TV" 2001 Behind the Music Herself Episode: "Sean 'P. Diddy' Combs" Journeys in Black Herself Episode: "Patti LaBelle" Access Granted Herself Episode: "Mary J. Blige: Family Affair" Strong Medicine Simone Fellows Episode: "History" 2001-04 Intimate Portrait Herself Recurring Guest 2002 The Nick Cannon Show Herself Episode: "Nick Takes Over Music" 2005 Soul Deep: The Story of Black Popular Music Herself Episode: "From Ghetto to Fabulous" Access Granted Herself Episode: "Lil Kim: Lighters Up" 2006 The Life & Rhymes of... Herself Episode: "Mary J. Blige" Dancing with the Stars Herself Episode: "Final Results" 2006-08 One Life to Live Herself Recurring Cast 2006-12 American Idol Herself Recurring Guest 2007 Classic Albums Herself Episode: "Jay Z: Reasonable Doubt" America's Next Top Model Herself Episode: "The Girl Who Gets a Mango" Ghost Whisperer Jackie Boyd Episode: "Mean Ghost" Entourage Herself Episode: "Gary's Desk" 2008 Live from Abbey Road Herself Episode: "Episode #2.1" Dancing with the Stars Herself Episode: "Round 6: Results" Imagine Herself Episode: "Jay-Z: He Came, He Saw, He Conquered" 2009 Extreme Makeover: Home Edition Herself Episode: "Ward Family" So You Think You Can Dance Herself Episode: "Finale: Winner Announced" 30 Rock Herself Episode: "Kidney Now!" 2011 The Marriage Ref Herself Episode: "Episode #2.4" & "#2.5" 2011-13 The X Factor USA Herself Episode: "Episode #1.22" & "#3.26" 2012 Life After Herself Episode: "Andre Harrell" Tamar & Vince Herself Episode: "Meet the Herberts" Great Performances Herself Episode: "Rod Stewart: Merry Christmas, Baby" The Voice Herself/Adviser Recurring Adviser: Season 3 2013 The X Factor UK Herself Episode: "Episode #10.12" & "#10.26" 2015 Lip Sync Battle Herself Episode: "Terrence Howard vs. Taraji P. Henson, Part 1" The Voice Herself/Adviser Episode: "The Battles Premiere" Empire Angie Episode: "Sins of the Father" Black-ish Mirabelle Chalet Episode: "Pops' Pops' Pops" 2016 Inside the Label Herself Episode: "Uptown Records, Part I & II" How to Get Away with Murder Ro Guest Star: Season 3 2019 The Umbrella Academy Cha-Cha Main Cast: Season 1 [192] Scream: Resurrection Sherry Elliot Recurring Cast: Season 3 2020 Peace of Mind with Taraji Herself Episode: "Episode 3, Part 1: Holiday Blues with Mary J. Blige" 2020- Power Book II: Ghost Monet Stewart Tejada Main Cast 2021 The Badass Questionnaire Herself Episode: "Mary J. Blige" Celebrity IOU: Joyride Herself Episode: "Don't Go Ham" 2022 Earnin' It Herself Main Guest Lost Ollie Rosy (voice) Main Cast 2023 The Wine Down with Mary J. Blige Herself/Host Main Host
Year Title Notes 2001 It's Only Rock and Roll 2004 Urban Soul: The Making of Modern R&B Mary J. Blige: Queen of Hip Hop Soul Fade to Black 2005 All We Are Saying 2010 Teenage Paparazzo 2011 Beats, Rhymes & Life: The Travels of A Tribe Called Quest 2012 Be Inspired: The Life of Heavy D 2017 Can't Stop, Won't Stop: A Bad Boy Story Welcome to My Life [193] George Michael Freedom 2018 Quincy 2021 Mary J. Blige's My Life [194] 2023 Thriller 40
List of artists who reached number one in the United States
List of black Golden Globe Award winners and nominees
Honorific nicknames in popular music
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Mary Jane Blige (Script error: No such module "IPAc-en".; born January 11, 1971) is an American singer-songwriter, actress, and philanthropist. Her career began in 1991 when she signed to Uptown Records.[1] Furthermore, she went on to release 13 studio albums, eight of which have achieved...
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The JH Movie Collection's Official Wiki
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American singer-songwriterTemplate:SHORTDESC:American singer-songwriter
Mary Jane Blige (Script error: No such module "IPAc-en".; born January 11, 1971) is an American singer-songwriter, actress, and philanthropist. Her career began in 1991 when she signed to Uptown Records.[1] Furthermore, she went on to release 13 studio albums, eight of which have achieved multi-platinum worldwide sales. Blige has won nine Grammy Awards, four American Music Awards, twelve Billboard Music Awards and has also received three Golden Globe Award nominations, including one for her supporting role in the film Mudbound (2017) and another for its second original song "Mighty River" for Mudbound; she also received a nomination for the Academy Awards for Best Supporting Actress and Best Original Song, becoming the first person nominated for acting and songwriting in the same year. Since 2019, she stars in the Netflix superhero series The Umbrella Academy as Cha-Cha.
In 1992, Blige released her first album, What's the 411?.[4] Her 1994 album My Life is among Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time,[5] and Time magazine's All-Time 100 Albums.[6] She received a Legends Award at the World Music Awards in 2006, and the Voice of Music Award from ASCAP in 2007.[7] Billboard ranked Blige as the most successful female R&B/Hip-Hop artist of the past 25 years.[8] In 2017, Billboard magazine named her 2006 song "Be Without You" as the most successful R&B/Hip-Hop song of all time, as it spent an unparalleled 15 weeks atop the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart and over 75 weeks on the chart.[9] In 2011, VH1 ranked Blige as the 80th greatest artist of all time.[10] ln 2012, VH1 ranked Blige at number 9 in "The 100 Greatest Women in Music" list.[11]
Life and career[]
1971–1990: From early life to start of career[]
Blige was born on January 11, 1971 in New York, in the borough of The Bronx, but spent some time in Savannah, Georgia until she was 7. Afterwards she and her family moved back to New York and resided in the Schlobohm Housing Projects, located in Yonkers, New York.[12] She was born to mother Cora, a nurse, and father Thomas Blige, a Jazz musician. She is the second of three children. She has an older sister LaTonya Blige-DaCosta, and brother, Bruce Miller.[13][14] The family subsisted on her mother's earnings as a nurse after her father left the family in the mid-1970s,[15] a former alcoholic and the latter a Vietnam War veteran who suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder.[12] Blige spent her early years in Richmond Hill, Georgia, where she sang in a Pentecostal church.[16]
At the age of five, she was molested by a family friend, and as a teenager she endured years of sexual harassment from peers of both sexes. She briefly taught herself boxing in an effort to defend and protect herself.[17] She would eventually turn to alcohol, drugs and promiscuous sex to try and numb the pain.[18]
Blige later moved to Schlobohm Houses in Yonkers, New York, immediately north of New York City, where she lived with her mother and older sister.[19] Blige dropped out of high school in her junior year.[19]
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.[13] Redd sent it to the president and CEO of the label, Andre Harrell. Harrell met with Blige and in 1989 she was signed to the label as a backup vocalist for artists such as Father MC,[20] becoming the company's youngest and first female artist.[16]
1991–1996: What’s The 411? and My Life[]
After being signed to Uptown, Blige began working with record producer Sean Combs, also known as Puff Daddy.[21] He became the executive producer and produced a majority of the album.[22] The title, What's the 411?, derived from Blige's past occupation as a 4-1-1 operator;[23] it was also an indication by Blige of being the "real deal".[24] "What's the 411" nevertheless established Blige as a dynamic storyteller whose performances of love narrative drew upon both her musical influences and her lived experiences as a hip-hop-generation woman.[25] The music was described as "revelatory on a frequent basis".[19] Blige was noted for having a "tough girl persona and streetwise lyrics".[26] On July 28, 1992, Uptown/MCA Records released What's the 411?, to positive reviews from critics.[27] What's the 411? peaked at number six on the Billboard 200 and topped the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart.[28] It also peaked at number 53 on the UK Albums Chart.[29] It was certified three times Platinum by the RIAA.[30] According to Entertainment Weekly's 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".[31] According to Dave McAleer, Blige became the most successful new female R&B artist of 1992 in the United States.[32]
What's the 411? earned her two Soul Train Music Awards in 1993: Best New R&B Artist and Best R&B Album, Female.[33] 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.[34] By August 2010, the album had sold 3,318,000 copies in the US.[35] What's the 411? has since been viewed by critics as one of the 1990s' most important records.[27] Blige's combination of vocals over a hip hop beat proved influential in contemporary R&B.[36] 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.[37] 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,[38] which was reported in several tabloids. 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 Blender's list of the 100 greatest American albums of all time.[39] The following year, Rolling Stone placed it at number 279 on their 500 Greatest Albums of All Time,[40] and in 2006, the record was included in Time's 100 greatest albums of all-time list.[41]
Blige involved herself in several outside projects, recording a cover of Aretha Franklin's "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman" for the soundtrack to the FOX series New York Undercover, and "Everyday It Rains" (co-written by R&B singer Faith Evans) 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 Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group for her collaboration with Method Man. Shortly after, Blige was featured on Jay Z's breakthrough single, "Can't Knock the Hustle" from his debut Reasonable Doubt (1996) 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 (1996) including the US top 20 hit, "Touch Me, Tease Me", which also featured then up-and-coming rapper Foxy Brown.
1997–2001: Share My World and Mary[]
On April 22, 1997, MCA Records (parent company to Uptown Records, which was in the process of being dismantled) released Blige's third album, Share My World. By then, she and Combs had dissolved their working relationship. In his place were the Trackmasters, who executive-produced the project along with Steve Stoute. Sharing production duties were producers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, R. Kelly, Babyface and Rodney Jerkins. The album was made at a time when Blige was trying to "get her life together", by trying to overcome drugs and alcohol, as well as the ending of her relationship with Hailey. After an encounter with a person who threatened her life the previous year, she tried to quit the unhealthy lifestyle and make more upbeat, happier music. As a result, songs such as "Love Is All We Need" and "Share My World" were made. Share My World debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 and spawned five hit singles: "Love Is All We Need" (featuring Nas), "I Can Love You" (featuring Lil' Kim), "Everything", "Missing You" (UK only) and "Seven Days" (featuring George Benson). In February 1997, Blige performed her hit at the time, "Not Gon' Cry", at the 1997 Grammy Awards, which gained her a third Grammy Award nomination, her first for Best Female R&B Vocal Performance, as Blige was recording the follow-up to My Life. In early 1998, Blige won an American Music Award for "Favorite Soul/R&B Album". That summer, she embarked on the Share My World Tour, which resulted in a Gold-certified live album released later that year, simply titled The Tour. The album spawned one single, "Misty Blue".
On August 17, 1999, Blige's fourth album, titled Mary was released. It marked a departure from her more familiar hip hop-oriented sound; this set featured a more earthy, whimsical, and adult contemporary-tinged collection of songs, reminiscent of the 1970s to early 1980s soul. She also appeared on In Concert: A Benefit for the Crossroads Centre at Antigua with Eric Clapton in 1999. On December 14, 1999, the album was re-released as a double-disc set. The second disc was enhanced with the music videos for the singles "All That I Can Say" and "Deep Inside" and included two bonus tracks: "Sincerity" (featuring Nas, Andy Hogan and DMX) and "Confrontation" (a collaboration with hip hop duo Funkmaster Flex & Big Kap originally from their 1999 album The Tunnel). The Mary album was critically praised, becoming her most nominated release to date, and was certified double platinum. It was not as commercially successful as Blige's prior releases, though all of the singles: "All That I Can Say", "Deep Inside", "Your Child", and "Give Me You" performed considerably on the radio. In the meantime, MCA used the album to expand Blige's demographic into the nightclub market, as club-friendly dance remixes of the Mary singles were released. The club remix of "Your Child" peaked at number-one on the Billboard's Hot Dance Club Play chart in October 2000. In 2001, a Japan-only compilation, Ballads, was released. The album featured covers of Stevie Wonder's "Overjoyed", and previous recordings of Aretha Franklin's "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman" and Dorothy Moore's "Misty Blue". In 1999, George Michael and Mary J. Blige covered the song 'As' written by Stevie Wonder, and worldwide outside of the United States, it was the second single from George Michael's greatest hits album Ladies & Gentlemen: The Best of George Michael. It became a top ten UK pop hit, reaching number four on the chart. It was not released on the U.S. version of the greatest hits collection or as a single in the U.S. Michael cited Blige's record company president for pulling the track in America after Michael's arrest for committing a lewd act
2002–2004: No More Drama and Love & Life[]
On August 28, 2001, MCA released Blige's fifth studio album, No More Drama. The album's first single, "Family Affair" (produced by Dr. Dre) became her first number-one single on the Billboard Hot 100, where it remained for six consecutive weeks. It was followed by two further hit singles, the European only single "Dance for Me" featuring Common with samples from "The Bed's Too Big Without You" by The Police, and the Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis-produced title track (originally recorded for the Mary album), which sampled "Nadia's Theme", the piano-driven theme song to the daytime drama The Young and the Restless. Though the album sold nearly two million copies in the U.S., MCA was underwhelmed by its sales, and subsequently repackaged and re-released the album on January 29, 2002. The No More Drama re-release featured a new album cover, deleted three of the songs from the original tracklisting, while adding two brand-new songs—one of which was the fourth single and top twenty Hot 100 hit "Rainy Dayz", (featuring Ja Rule), plus two remixes; one of the title track, serviced by Sean Combs/Puff Daddy and the single version of "Dance for Me" featuring Common. Blige won a Grammy for 'Best Female R&B Vocal Performance' for the song "He Think I Don't Know." In April 2002, Blige performed with Shakira with the song "Love Is a Battlefield" on VH1 Divas show live in Las Vegas, she also performed "No More Drama" and "Rainy Dayz" as a duet with the returning Whitney Houston.
On July 22, 2002, MCA released Dance for Me, a collection of club remixes of some of her past top hits including the Junior Vasquez remix of "Your Child", and the Thunderpuss mix of "No More Drama." This album was released in a limited edition double pack 12" vinyl for DJ-friendly play in nightclubs.
On August 26, 2003, Blige's sixth album Love & Life was released on Geffen Records (which had absorbed MCA Records.) Blige heavily collaborated with her one-time producer Sean Combs for this set. Due to the history between them on What's the 411? and My Life, which is generally regarded as their best work, and Blige having just come off of a successful fifth album, expectations were high for the reunion effort.
Despite the album debuting at number one on the Billboard 200 and becoming Blige's fourth consecutive UK top ten album, Love & Life's lead-off single, the Diddy-produced "Love @ 1st Sight", which featured Method Man, barely cracked the top ten on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs, while altogether missing the top twenty on the Hot 100 (although peaking inside the UK top twenty). The following singles, "Ooh!", "Not Today" featuring Eve, "Whenever I Say Your Name" featuring Sting on the international re-release, and "It's a Wrap" fared worse. Although the album was certified platinum, it became Blige's lowest-selling to date. Critics and fans alike largely panned the disc, citing a lack of consistency and noticeable ploys to recapture the early Blige/Combs glory. Blige and Combs reportedly struggled and clashed during the making of this album, and again parted ways upon the completion of it.
The album became Blige's first album in six years to debut at number one on the Billboard 200, selling 285,298 copies in first week.[42] Love & Life received mixed reviews from music critics.[43] AllMusic gave it 4 stars and said the album "beamed with joy" and Rolling Stone gave it three stars, saying "You may not always love Blige's music, but you will feel her". The album was eventually certified Platinum by the RIAA. To date the album has sold over 1,000,000 copies in the US[44] and over 2,000,000 copies worldwide.[45] The album was nominated for the Best Contemporary R&B Album at the 46th Grammy Awards.
2005–2010: The Breakthrough, Growing Pains, Stronger & Each Tear[]
Geffen Records released Blige's seventh studio album, The Breakthrough on December 20, 2005. For the album, Blige collaborated with J.U.S.T.I.C.E. League, Rodney Jerkins, will.i.am, Bryan-Michael Cox, 9th Wonder, Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, Raphael Saadiq, Cool and Dre, and Dre & Vidal. The cover art was photographed by Markus Klinko & Indrani. It debuted at number one on both the Billboard 200 and Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums charts. Selling 727,000 copies in its first week, it became the biggest first-week sales for an R&B solo female artist in SoundScan history,[46][47] the fifth largest first-week sales for a female artist, and the fourth largest debut of 2005.
The lead-off single, "Be Without You", peaked at number three on the Billboard Hot 100, while peaking at number one on the R&B chart for a record-setting fifteen consecutive weeks; it remained on the chart for over sixteen months. "Be Without You" found success in the UK (peaking in the lower end of the top forty) it became Blige's longest charting single on the UK Singles Chart. It is her second longest charting single to date. The album produced three more singles including two more top-five R&B hits—"Enough Cryin'", which features Blige's alter ego Brook-Lynn (as whom she appeared on the remix to Busta Rhymes's "Touch It" in 2006); and "Take Me as I Am" (which samples Lonnie Liston Smith's "A Garden of Peace"). Blige's duet with U2 on the cover of their 1992 hit, "One" gave Blige her biggest hit to date in the UK, peaking at number two on the UK Singles Chart eventually being certified one of the forty highest-selling singles of 2006;[48] it was her longest charting UK single. The success of The Breakthrough won Blige nine Billboard Music Awards, two American Music Awards, two BET Awards, two NAACP Image Awards, and a Soul Train Award. She received eight Grammy Award nominations at the 2007 Grammy Awards, the most of any artist that year. "Be Without You" was nominated for both "Record of the Year" and "Song of the Year". Blige won three: "Best Female R&B Vocal Performance", "Best R&B Song" (both for "Be Without You"), and "Best R&B Album" for The Breakthrough.[49] Blige completed a season sweep of the "big three" major music awards, having won two American Music Awards in November 2006[50] and nine Billboard Music Awards in December 2006.[51]
In December 2006, a compilation called Reflections (A Retrospective) was released. It contained many of Blige's greatest hits and four new songs, including the worldwide lead single "We Ride (I See the Future)". In the UK, however, "MJB da MVP" (which appeared in a different, shorter form on The Breakthrough) was released as the lead single from the collection. The album peaked at number nine in the U.S, selling over 170,000 copies in its first week, while reaching number forty in the UK In 2006, Blige recorded a duet with rapper Ludacris, "Runaway Love", which is the third single on his fifth album, Release Therapy. It reached the top five on the Billboard Hot 100 and the R&B chart. Blige was featured with Aretha Franklin and the Harlem Boys Choir on the soundtrack to the 2006 motion picture Bobby, on the lead track "Never Gonna Break My Faith" written by Bryan Adams. The song was nominated for a Golden Globe and won the Grammy Award for Best Gospel Performance at the 50th Annual Grammy Awards.
Blige's eighth studio album, Growing Pains, was released on December 18, 2007, debuting at number two on the Billboard 200 and at number one on the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart. It sold 629,000 copies in its first week, marking the third time since Nielsen SoundScan began collecting data in 1991 that two albums sold more than 600,000 copies in a week in the United States. In its second week, the album climbed to number one, making it Blige's fourth number-one album. The lead single, "Just Fine", peaked at number twenty-two on the Billboard Hot 100 and at number three on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart. "Just Fine" was nominated for the Grammy Award for "Best Female R&B Vocal Performance", and Blige won "Best R&B Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals" for the Chaka Khan duet "Disrespectful" (featured on Khan's album Funk This) which Blige wrote.
Growing Pains was not released in the UK until February 2008, where it became Blige's fifth top ten and third-highest charting album.The Breakthrough and Reflections (A Retrospective) were released in the Christmas rush and therefore settled for lower peaks, although both selling more than her top five album Mary.[citation needed] "Just Fine" returned Blige to the UK singles chart top 20 after her previous two singles failed to chart highly. Subsequent singles from Growing Pains include "Work That", which accompanied Blige in an iTunes commercial, and "Stay Down".
Blige was featured on 50 Cent's 2007 album, Curtis, in the song "All of Me". In March 2008, she toured with Jay-Z in the Heart of the City Tour. They released a song called "You're Welcome". In the same period, cable network BET aired a special on Blige entitled The Evolution of Mary J. Blige, which showcased her career. Celebrities such as Method Man and Ashanti gave their opinions about Blige and her music. Blige is featured on singles by Big Boi, and Musiq Soulchild. Growing Pains was nominated for and won the Grammy Award for "Best Contemporary R&B Album", at the 51st Grammy Awards held on February 8, 2009, earning Blige her 27th Grammy nomination, in a mere decade. Blige went on the Growing Pains European Tour, her first tour there in two years. A tour of Australia and New Zealand was scheduled for June but was postponed due to "weariness from an overwhelming tour schedule"[52] and then eventually canceled entirely.[53]
On August 7, 2008, it was revealed Blige faced a US$2 million federal suit claiming Neff-U wrote the music for the song "Work That", but was owned by Dream Family Entertainment. The filing claimed that Dream Family never gave rights to use the song to Blige, Feemster or Geffen Records. Rights to the lyrics of the song used in an iPod commercial are not in question.[54]
Blige returned to performing in January 2009 by performing the song "Lean on Me" at the Presidential Inauguration Committee's, "We Are One: The Obama Inaugural Celebration at the Lincoln Memorial". Blige also performed her hit 2007 single, "Just Fine", with a new intro at the Neighborhood Inaugural Ball after Barack Obama was sworn in on January 20, 2009. Blige appeared as a marquee performer on the annual Christmas in Washington television special.
Blige's ninth studio album, Stronger with Each Tear, was released on December 21, 2009, debuting at number two on the Billboard 200 and at number one on the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart, selling 332,000 units in its first week of release. It became her fifth album not to take the top spot in the United States. The lead single, "The One", which features Canadian rapper Drake,[55] was released for airplay in June 2009, and was officially and digitally released in July 2009, peaking at number 63 on the Hot 100. Blige recorded "Stronger", as the lead single from the soundtrack to the basketball documentary "More than a Game" in August 2009. The second single from Stronger with Each Tear, "I Am", was released in December 2009 and reached number fifty-five on the Hot 100. The third international single from the album, "Each Tear", was remixed with different featured artists from different countries, then being released in February 2010. The single failed to chart anywhere except in the UK where it reached number one-hundred-eighty-three and in Italy where it reached number one. The album's third U.S. single, "We Got Hood Love" featuring Trey Songz, was released in March 2010 and reached number tw25 on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Singles chart though it failed to reach the Hot 100.[56] One of Blige's representatives reported to Us Weekly magazine that a tour in support of Stronger with Each Tear would begin in the fall of 2010.[57] In March 2010, Blige released Stronger with Each Tear in the United Kingdom, as well as in the European markets. The album performed modestly in the United Kingdom, debuting at number 33 on the UK Albums Chart and at number four on the UK R&B Chart. It reached the top 100 in other countries.
Blige was honored at the 2009 BET Honors Ceremony and was paid tribute by Anita Baker and Monica. On November 4, 2009, Blige sang The Star-Spangled Banner at Yankee Stadium before the New York Yankees and Philadelphia Phillies played the last game (game 6) of the World Series. Blige performed two songs from her ninth album as well as her previous hits, "No More Drama" and "Be Without You" along with the song "Color", which was featured on the Precious soundtrack. Blige appeared as a guest judge on the ninth season of American Idol on January 13, 2010.
On January 23, 2010, Blige released a track "Hard Times Come Again No More" with the Roots as well as performing it at the Hope for Haiti Now telethon. At the 2010 Grammy Awards, Blige and Andrea Bocelli performed" Bridge over Troubled Water". Blige also performed on BET's SOS Help For Haiti, singing "Gonna Make It" with Jazmine Sullivan and "One." Blige also took part in February 2010's We Are the World 25 for Haiti, singing the solo originally sung by Tina Turner in the original 1985 We Are the World version. At the 41st NAACP Image Awards Blige won Outstanding Female Artist and Outstanding Album for Stronger with Each Tear.[58] On November 18, 2010, Billboard revealed Mary J. Blige as the most successful female R&B/hip hop artist on the Top 50 R&B/Hip Hop Artists of the Past 25 Years list. She came in at number 2 overall.[59]
2011–2013: My Life II... The Journey Continues (Act 1) & A Mary Christmas[]
In January 2011, Hot 97 premiered Blige's teaser track "Someone to Love Me (Naked)" featuring vocals by Lil Wayne.[60] In July 2011, Blige released the song "The Living Proof" as the lead single to the soundtrack of the film The Help.[61] On July 24, VH1 premiered their third Behind the Music that profiled her personal and career life. In August 2011, Blige released her first single off the album, "25/8". Blige's tenth studio album, My Life II... The Journey Continues (Act 1), was released in November 2011.[62] The album, primarily recorded in Los Angeles and New York City, saw Blige looking toward the future while acknowledging the past. "From me to you, My Life II... Our journey together continues in this life," the singer explained. "It's a gift to be able to relate and identify with my fans at all times. This album is a reflection of the times and lives of people all around me." The album features production by Kanye West and the Underdogs.[63] The second single "Mr. Wrong" featuring Canadian rapper Drake was the most successful single from the album, peaking at number 10 on Billboard's R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart. The rest of the songs released, including lead single "25/8" achieved only moderate success, peaking within the top 40 on R&B/Hip-Hop Songs. The album itself debuted at #5 on the Billboard 200, selling 156,000 copies in the first week; it was eventually certified Gold in 2012 and has sold 763,000 in the US.[64]
On February 28, 2012, Blige performed "Star Spangled Banner" at the 2012 NBA All-Star Game. Blige appeared as guest mentor on American Idol on March 7, 2012, and performed "Why" on the results show the following night.[65] On September 23, 2012, Blige was a performer at the iHeartRadio Music Festival at the MGM Grand Las Vegas. Blige was featured on the song "Now or Never" from Kendrick Lamar's album Good Kid, M.A.A.D City, released on October 22, 2012.
In early 2013, reports surfaced that Blige was recording a Christmas album. The album, titled, A Mary Christmas was released on October 15, 2013, through Matriarch and Verve Records, her first release with the latter. The album includes collaborations with Barbra Streisand, the Clark Sisters, Marc Anthony and Jessie J. In early December, A Mary Christmas became Blige's 12th top ten album after it rose to #10 in its eight week.[66]
On October 23, 2013, Blige sang the national anthem before Game 1 of the 2013 World Series.[67]
2014–present: The London Sessions and Strength of a Woman[]
On February 5, 2014, a remix of Disclosure's "F for You" featuring guest vocals from Mary was released.[68]
It was announced May 30, 2014, that Think Like a Man Too (Music from and Inspired by the Film), released June 17 on Epic Records, would introduce new songs by Mary J. Blige, including the single "Suitcase".[69] Blige recorded a collection of music from and inspired by the film. In the United States, Think Like a Man Too debuted at number 30 on the Billboard 200, with 8,688 copies sold in its first week, becoming the lowest sales debut of any of her studio albums.[70] On Billboard's R&B/Hip-Hop chart, the soundtrack album charted at number six, marking Blige's 16th top ten entry on the chart, tying her with Mariah Carey for the second-most top tens by a female artist.[70]
June 2, 2014 saw Blige pairing up with another English musician with the release of a re-worked version of Sam Smith's "Stay with Me". A live visual to the song was released on the same day.[71]
Following her concert date at the Essence Festival, on July 9, 2014, it was announced Blige would move to London to experiment with a new sound for her new album.[72] Blige spent a month in London recording her album in RAK Studios with a host of young British acts, including Disclosure, Naughty Boy, Emeli Sandé and Sam Smith. Ten new songs, co-written and recorded by the singer, were released on November 24, 2014 on an album entitled The London Sessions.[73] That same month, she announced that she left Geffen and Interscope and signed with Capitol Records.
In August 2016, Blige was recruited to perform the new theme song for the ABC Daytime talk show The View for its twentieth season titled "World's Gone Crazy" written by Diane Warren. A music video was also shot for the new theme song with co-hosts Whoopi Goldberg, Joy Behar, Candace Cameron Bure, Raven-Symoné, Paula Faris, Sara Haines, Sunny Hostin and Jedediah Bila. Blige also appeared on The View alongside Maxwell during its premiere week on September 9, 2016 to discuss their joint tour and theme song.
On September 30, 2016, Blige premiered a new show, The 411, on Apple Music.[74] On its debut episode, she interviewed Hillary Clinton. A trailer was released online with Blige singing a cover of Bruce Springsteen's "American Skin" to a bewildered Clinton. The exchange received mixed and negative reaction on social media. Two weeks later, a studio version, this time featuring a verse from American rapper Kendrick Lamar was released online.
Following her highly publicized divorce from Kendu Issacs, Blige released two songs within October, "Thick of It" and "U + Me (Love Lesson)". On April 28, 2017, her thirteenth studio album, Strength of a Woman, was released.[75] It peaked at number three on the Billboard 200, number two on the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart and topped the R&B Albums chart.[76]
On July 12, 2018, Blige released the single "Only Love" on Republic Records, following her exit from Capitol Records.
On April 16, 2019, Blige announced that she is co-headlining a North American summer tour with Nas titled The Royalty Tour.[77]
On May 8, 2019, Blige released the single "Thriving" featuring Nas.[78] During an interview with Ebro Darden on Beats 1 for the premiere of "Thriving", Blige announced that her next studio album will be released before July.[79]
On June 23, 2019 at the BET Awards 2019, she was honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award for her extraordinary contributions to music industry.[80]
On June 25, 2019, The New York Times Magazine listed Mary J. Blige among hundreds of artists whose material was reportedly destroyed in the 2008 Universal fire.[81]
Acting career[]
1998—2016: Early works[]
In 1998, Blige made her acting debut on the sitcom The Jamie Foxx Show, playing the apparently southern Ola Mae, a preacher's daughter who wanted to sing more than gospel music. Her father was portrayed by Ronald Isley of the Isley Brothers. In 2001, Blige starred opposite rapper Q-Tip in the independent film Prison Song. That same year, Blige made a cameo on the Lifetime network series, Strong Medicine; playing the role of Simone Fellows. Blige's character was the lead singer of a band who was sick, but would not seek treatment. In 2000, Blige was featured in a superhero web cartoon in junction with Stan Lee. Blige used the cartoon as part of her performance while on her 2000 Mary Show Tour. In 2004, Blige starred in an Off-Broadway play, The Exonerated. The play chronicled the experiences of death row inmates. Blige portrayed Sunny Jacobs, a woman who spent 20 years in prison for a crime she did not commit. In late 2005, it was reported that Blige landed the starring role in the upcoming MTV Films biopic on American singer/pianist and civil rights activist, Nina Simone. By spring of 2010, Blige was slated to star as Simone with British actor David Oyelowo portraying her manager Clifton Henderson. Blige later dropped out of the role due to financial issues and the role was subsequently recast with Dominican American actress Zoe Saldana as Simone in Nina, released in 2016.
In February 2007, Blige guest-starred on Ghost Whisperer, in an episode called "Mean Ghost", as the character Jackie Boyd, the school's cheerleader coach grieving for the death of her brother and affected by the ghost of a dead cheerleader. The episode features many of Blige's songs. In August 2007, Blige was a guest star on Entourage, in the role of herself, as a client of Ari Gold's agency. In October 2007, Blige was also a guest star on America's Next Top Model, as a creative director for a photoshoot by Matthew Rolston. In May 2009, Mary made a guest appearance on 30 Rock, as an artist recording a benefit song for a kidney. Blige also had a supporting role in Tyler Perry's movie I Can Do Bad All by Myself, which was released in September 2009.[82]
Blige starred alongside Tom Cruise, Julianne Hough, and Alec Baldwin in the film adaptation of the 1980s jukebox hit musical Rock of Ages. Blige played Justice Charlier, the owner of a Sunset Strip gentlemen's club. Production began in May 2011 and the film was released in June 2012.
Blige starred in the Lifetime movie Betty and Coretta alongside Angela Bassett, Malik Yoba and Lindsay Owen Pierre. She played Dr. Betty Shabazz, the widow of Malcolm X. The film premiered in February 2013. In December 2015, she portrayed Evillene, the Wicked Witch of the West in NBC's The Wiz Live!.[83] In October 2016, Blige guest-starred on ABC legal drama How to Get Away with Murder as an old acquaintance of Annalise Keating played by Viola Davis.[84]
2017—present[]
In 2017, Blige starred in the period drama film Mudbound directed by Dee Rees. Playing Florence Jackson, the matriarch of her family,[85] she received praise such as Variety's review: "Mary J. Blige, as the mother of the Jackson family, gives a transformative performance that will elevate the acting career of the R&B star."[86] For her performance in Mudbound, Blige was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress,[87] the Critics' Choice Movie Award for Best Supporting Actress, the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role, and the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. As she was also nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song (with Taura Stinson and Raphael Saadiq), she became the first person nominated for an Academy Award for acting and original song in the same year.[88][89] Her nomination also made Dee Rees the first black woman to direct a film for which an actor was nominated for an Academy Award.[90][91]
Blige voiced Irene Adler in the 2018 animated film Sherlock Gnomes, and in 2020 voiced Queen Essence in the animated musical film Trolls World Tour. In 2018, it was announced that Blige was cast as Sherry Elliot in the third season of the slasher television series Scream.[92] The season premiered on VH1 on July 8, 2019.[93] In 2019, Blige starred in the role of Cha-Cha, a main antagonist in the Netflix superhero series The Umbrella Academy.[94]
Blige played a leading role in the upcoming horror film Body Cam.[95] She starred in the independent drama film Pink Skies Ahead that will premiere at the 2020 South by Southwest film festival.[96][97] She played singer Dinah Washington in the biographical drama film Respect about life and career of Aretha Franklin.[98] The film is scheduled to be released theatrically on October 9, 2020. In late 2019, Blige began production on an untitled documentary about her life and career directed by Vanessa Roth.[99] Blige will star as Monet in Power Book II: Ghost, the first spin-off for the highly-rated Starz cable drama Power.[100][101]
Personal life[]
Blige married her manager, Martin "Kendu" Isaacs, on December 7, 2003.[102] At the time, Isaacs had two children, Nas and Jordan, with his first wife, and an older daughter, Briana, from a teenage relationship.[103] In July 2016, Blige filed for divorce, citing "irreconcilable differences".[104] Blige and Isaacs' divorce was finalized on June 21, 2018.[105]
A Democrat, Blige performed for Barack Obama at the 2012 Democratic National Convention.[106]
Other ventures[]
In 2004, Blige launched her own record label, Matriarch Records, distributed through Interscope, and in mid-2012, discovered girl group Just'Us, making the group the first ladies of the label. Blige says "These are my little Mary's; they each remind me of myself at different points in my life." Blige has been reported to be working with Just'Us on their debut album.[107]
In July 2010, Blige launched her first perfume, My Life (through Carol's Daughter), exclusively on HSN.[108] The fragrance's success broke sales records in hours[109] and has been awarded two prestigious FIFI awards from the Fragrance Foundation.[110] The newest fragrance, My Life Blossom launched in August 2011 exclusively to HSN.
In October 2010, Blige released a line of sunglasses called "Melodies by MJB". The first Melodies collection featured four styles with a total of 20 color options. Each style represented a specific facet of Blige's life. Essence magazine reported that in the spring of 2011, "Melodies by MJB" extended their collection to offer more styles.[111][112]
Blige's production company, along with William Morris Endeavor, is also working on several TV and film projects.[113]
In partnership with the Home Shopping Network (HSN) and Carol's Daughter, Blige released her "My Life" perfume. The perfume broke HSN records by selling 65,000 bottles during its premiere.[114] The scent went on to win two FiFi Awards, including the "Fragrance Sales Breakthrough" award.[115]
Blige has had endorsement contracts with Reebok, Air Jordan, Pepsi, Coca-Cola, Gap, Target, American Express, AT&T Inc., M·A·C, Apple Inc., Burger King and Chevrolet.[116] She has also been a spokesperson with Carol's Daughter beauty products and Citibank's with Nickelback program.[citation needed]
Legacy[]
Main article(s): List of awards and nominations received by Mary J. Blige
Called the "Queen of Hip-Hop Soul", Blige is credited with influencing the musical marriage of hip hop and R&B.[117] Ethan Brown of The New Yorker says that albums "What's the 411?" and "My Life", in hindsight, invented "the sample-heavy sound that reinvigorated urban radio and became a blueprint for nineties hip-hop and R&B".[118] Brown further concludes that Mary's "duets with the Wu-Tang Clan's Method Man and Ghostface Killah set the trend for collaborations between rappers and R&B songbirds like Mariah Carey".[118] Tom Horan of The Daily Telegraph comments that Blige, being a hugely influential figure in popular music, "invented what is now called R&B by successfully combining female vocals with muscular hip hop rhythm tracks. All over the world, that recipe dominates today's charts."[119] Called one of the "most explosive, coming-out displays of pure singing prowess"[120] and "one of the most important albums of the nineties",[121] What's the 411? saw Blige pioneer "the movement that would later become neo soul, generating gripping songs that were also massive radio hits".[122]
African American scholars have noted the implications of Blige's presentation and representation of black womanhood and femininity in the typically male-dominated and centric sphere of hip hop. Blending the vocal techniques of rapping in hip hop with aspirational messages in R&B, Blige is credited to articulating black women's experiences in a "more factual and objective"[123] manner than typical stereotypes and tropes of black women in the media. Using her personal experiences and struggles with her family as source material for her songs, Blige refutes notions of black female hypersexuality by "imploring women to love and empower themselves through both autonomy and intimacy."[124] This desire for love does more than connect to her audience members. With particular attention on her single "Real Love," critics note how the song is "a performative text, declaratively demand[ing] recognition of Blige's full humanity and, more broadly, that of hip-hop-generation women."[124]
Blige has received notable awards and achievements. In 2010, she was ranked 80th on VH1's list of the 100 Greatest Artist of All Time.[125] Blige was listed as one of the 50 most influential R&B singers by Essence.[126] Rolling Stone magazine ranked My Life at number 279 on its list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.[40] The album was also included on Time's list of the 100 Greatest albums of All Time.[41] Alternately called the "Queen of R&B" for her success in the realm of R&B, Blige has amassed ten number one albums on the R&B/Hip Hop Albums chart .[59] Blige is also the only artist to have won Grammys in the R&B, hip hop, pop, and gospel fields.
As an actress, Blige received the Breakthrough Performance Award at the 2018 Palm Springs International Film Festival for her role in Mudbound.
Discography[]
Main article(s): Mary J. Blige discography
What's the 411? (1992)
My Life (1994)
Share My World (1997)
Mary (1999)
No More Drama (2001)
Love & Life (2003)
The Breakthrough (2005)
Growing Pains (2007)
Stronger with Each Tear (2009)
My Life II... The Journey Continues (Act 1) (2011)
A Mary Christmas (2013)
The London Sessions (2014)
Strength of a Woman (2017)
Tours[]
Headlining[]
Share My World Tour (1997–98)
The Mary Show Tour (2000)
No More Drama Tour (2002)
Love & Life Tour (2004)
The Breakthrough Experience Tour (2006)
Growing Pains European Tour (2008)
Love Soul Tour (2008)
Music Saved My Life Tour (2010–11)
The London Sessions Tour (2015)
Strength of a Woman Tour (2017)
Co-headlining[]
Heart of the City Tour (with Jay-Z) (2008)
The Liberation Tour (with D'Angelo) (2012–13)
King and Queen of Hearts World Tour (with Maxwell) (2016)
The Royalty Tour (with Nas) (2019)
Supporting[]
Humpin' Around the World Tour (with Bobby Brown) (1992-1993)[127]
Filmography[]
Main article(s): Mary J. Blige videography
Film[]
Year Title Role Notes 2001 Prison Song Mrs. Butler Film debut 2009 I Can Do Bad All By Myself Tanya 2012 Rock of Ages Justice Charlier 2013 Black Nativity Platinum Fro Nominated — American Black Film Festival Award for Best Ensemble Cast 2014 Champs Herself 2017 Mudbound Florence Jackson Gotham Special Jury Award for Best Ensemble Performance
New York Film Critics Online for Best Ensemble Cast
IndieWire Critic's Poll Award for Best Breakthrough Performance (Film)[128]
Hollywood Film Awards – Breakout Actress Award
Hollywood Film Awards – Breakout Ensemble Award[129]
Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award for Best Supporting Actress (Runner-up)[130]
Nominated — Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress
Nominated — Academy Award for Best Original Song
Nominated — Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role[131]
Nominated — Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture
Nominated — Critics' Choice Movie Award for Best Supporting Actress
Nominated — Critics' Choice Movie Award for Best Acting Ensemble
Nominated — Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress – Motion Picture
Nominated — Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song
Nominated — Gotham Independent Film Award for Breakthrough Actor
Nominated — Satellite Award for Best Supporting Actress - Motion Picture
Nominated — Washington D.C. Area Film Critics Association Award for Best Supporting Actress
Nominated — Washington D.C. Area Film Critics Association Award for Best Ensemble 2018 Sherlock Gnomes[132] Irene (voice) 2020 Pink Skies Ahead[133] Doctor Monroe 2020 Trolls World Tour Queen Essence (voice) Post-production 2020 The Violent Heart Nina Post-production 2020 Respect Dinah Washington Post-production TBA Body Cam Renee Post-production TBA Untitled Mary J. Blige Documentary[99] Herself Also producer
Television[]
Year Title Role Notes 1992 Out All Night Herself "Smooth Operator" (episode 9, season 1) 1993 Saturday Night Live Herself - Musical Guest John Goodman/Mary J. Blige (episode 15, season 18) 1994 8th Annual Soul Train Music Awards Herself - Presenter 1995 New York Undercover Herself "Private Enemy No. 1" (episode 14, season 1), "Tag You're Dead" (episode 2, season 2) [music performance] 1998 The Jamie Foxx Show Ola Mae "Papa Don't Preach" (episode 14, season 2) 1999 Moesha Herself "Good Vibrations?" (episode 1, season 5) 2001 Strong Medicine Simone Fellows "History" (episode 4, season 2) 2007 Ghost Whisperer Jackie Boyd "Mean Ghost" (episode 15, season 2) Entourage Herself "Gary's Desk" (episode 8, season 4) 2009 30 Rock Herself "Kidney Now!" (episode 22, season 3) 2010 & 2012 American Idol Guest judge/Herself 2010: Auditions were held in Atlanta, Georgia at the Georgia Dome when Blige guest judged. 2012: Mentor for the Top 13 Whitney Houston & Stevie Wonder Week 2012 The Voice Herself Mentor of Team Adam (season 3) 2013 Betty & Coretta Dr. Betty Shabazz Television film
Nominated — Women's Image Network Award for OutstandingOutstanding Actress Made for Television Movie / Mini-Series The X Factor Guest judge/herself Blige assisted Nicole Scherzinger at her judge's house in Antigua 2015 Empire Angie "Sins of the Father" (episode 10, season 1) The Wiz Live! Evillene, The Wicked Witch of the West TV special
Nominated — Critics' Choice Television Award for Best Supporting Actress in a Movie/Miniseries
Nominated — Black Reel Award for Best Supporting Actress: Television Movie/Cable Black-ish Mirabelle Chalet Guest appearance in Season 1, episode 24 2016 How To Get Away With Murder Ro TV Series (2 episodes) 2019–present The Umbrella Academy Cha-Cha Main role 2019 Scream Sherry Elliot Recurring role 2020 Power Book 2: Ghost Monet Filming
See also[]
Template:Wikipedia books
List of artists who reached number one in the United States
List of black Golden Globe Award winners and nominees
Honorific nicknames in popular music
References[]
[]
Official website
Mary J. Blige on IMDb
Mary J. Blige on Instagram
Template:Mary J. Blige Template:Mary J. Blige singles Template:Grammy Award for Best Urban Contemporany Album
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Here's How Mary J. Blige Is Spending Her Reported $20 Million Net Worth
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2024-05-29T00:00:00+00:00
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First able to become a star during the early-90s, it is amazing to think that during the early days of Mary J. Bliges career, many of her fans were sporting pixie cuts or crimped hair. During all the years of Bliges career, she has proven time and time again that she is a supremely talented
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Highlights
Mary J. Blige has proven herself to be a supremely talented singer, beginning her profession within the early '90s and charming lovers with her tough storytelling and strength-infused track.
Blige has achieved luck in both her song and performing careers, earning thousands and thousands from hit albums like "What's the 411?" and landing roles in acclaimed TV presentations like "The Umbrella Academy" and "Power Book II: Ghost."
While Blige has faced monetary challenges because of a contentious divorce, she has made major purchases in the past, together with an 18,000-square-foot mansion with luxurious amenities and a 2nd New Jersey home with stunning perspectives and a couple of bedrooms.
First in a position to become a star all the way through the early-â90s, it is superb to assume that all through the early days of Mary J. Bligeâs career, many of her fanatics had been wearing pixie cuts or crimped hair. During all the years of Bligeâs career, she has proven time and time once more that she is a supremely proficient human being. With that in mind, it makes highest sense that she has controlled to amass a $20 million fortune.
As is the case with most people whoâve made some huge cash, Blige has purchased some actually fantastic things with her fortune. Of direction, each and every famous person has their very own unique style, as is evidenced by means of the fact that Kim Basinger once bought an entire town.
With that in mind, it is very attention-grabbing to look at the issues Mary J. Blige spent her money on up to now.
RELATED: Who Actually Discovered Mary J. Blige?
Updated September 2023: Mary J. Blige could have been a force within the entertainment trade for nearly 30 years but that does not mean that she is ready to sit down back on her laurels and retire. Instead, Blige is still appearing presentations around the nation for her legions of fans and making good cash doing so.
However, it was once on account of the nasty divorce lawsuits that Blige used to be forced to go back to work. She had little to her title, properties had been in foreclosure, and he or she used to be ordered to pay ex-husband, Kendu Isaacs $30,000 per month in temporary spousal reinforce.
It was once throughout this time from 2018 forward that Blige shined in both her music and acting careers. She proved that with arduous work, she could get everything again. And with a current net worth of $20 million, Blige did that during spades.
Mary J. Blige Is A Supremely Talented Singer
Born in the Bronx all over the early-â70s, Blige started to exhibit her impressive making a song abilities when she started singing in her church at an overly young age. Continuing to accomplish all the way through her early life, Bligeâs career took off after she recorded a canopy of Anita Bakerâs Caught Up in the Rapture on a lark. Thankfully for her, the boyfriend of Bligeâs mom at the time controlled to play her recording for the singer Jeff Redd. Redd then handed it directly to the president and CEO of Uptown Records.
Initially employed as a backup singer, Blige caught the eye of Sean Combs, aka Puff Daddy at the time, and he produced most of her debut album.
Released in 1992, Bligeâs first album, What's the 411? proved that she used to be a drive to be reckoned with. Excellent at telling stories in her songs and able to imbue her music with unbelievable energy, Bligeâs debut album made positive her fans have been desperate for more from her.
RELATED: Does Versace Pay Mary J. Blige For Her Numerous Instagram Posts Sporting The High-End Brand?
Mary J. Blige's Top Earnings
Continuing to paintings constantly on new tune ever for the reason that unlock of her first report, Mary J. Blige has put out 13 albums in general all through her occupation, most of which sold very well. On best of all the ones albums, it must also be noted that Blige has written several songs for other singers, which is one thing that only a few superstar performers have executed. In addition to her track, Blige is also making some decent earnings in shows like Umbrella Academy and Power Book II.
What's the 411 (Album)
Earnings: $3.6 Million (estimated)
My Life (Album)
Earnings: $3.2 Million (estimated)
No More Drama (Album)
Earnings: $7 Million (estimated)
Music Saved My Life (2010 Tour)
Earnings: $2.7 Million (estimated)
Power Book II (TV)
Earnings: $400,000 in keeping with episode
Largely remembered for songs like No More Drama, Your Child, Family Affair, and Love No Limit among many others, Bligeâs tune has intended the world to her fanatics. On top of the entire love Blige has won from the folk, she has gained Grammys, MTV Video Music Awards, and has also made huge profits from her tours.
Of course, many of Blige's different incomes values don't seem to be available.
Mary J. Blige's Other Career
In recent years, there were an increasing number of examples of singers whoâve crossed over into the appearing international. That mentioned, lots of the resulting performances had been awful. For instance, well-liked singers like Madonna, Sting, Britney Spears, Jon Bon Jovi, and Mariah Carey have all been notoriously terrible in movies over time.
Thankfully, some singers have proven to be superb actors and Blige no doubt is an example of that. Able to seek out tv success in 2019, Blige starred in Netflix's The Umbrella Academy and more not too long ago in Power Book II: Ghost.
Far from her most effective notable TV roles, Blige has also guest starred in sequence like The Jamie Foxx Show, Moesha, 30 Rock, Empire, Black-ish, and Scream.
RELATED: Mary J. Blige Went Completely Broke After Being Ordered To Pay $30,000 A Month In Alimony To Her Ex-Husband
Also embraced by means of Hollywood, Blige had notable roles in motion pictures like Rock of Ages, Sherlock Gnomes, and Trolls World Tour. That said, Bligeâs most celebrated appearing paintings so far is her efficiency in 2017's Mudbound. Truly superb in that movie, Blige deservedly gained a number of awards for her work within the film and she or he even were given nominated on the Golden Globes and the SAG Awards. More than that, Bligeâs Mudbound performance netted her an Academy Award nomination, and the tune she sang for that movieâs soundtrack was nominated for an Original Song Oscar.
Mary J. Blige's Major Purchases
Unfortunately for Blige, in recent times she took phase in a extremely contentious divorce and since then, she has submit much of her previous property for sale. Still, given the truth that it kind of feels likely that she is promoting her properties because of her new monetary image, it is interesting to take a look at the issues she used to possess.
A major belongings owner previously, up till 2019, Mary J. Blige's larger home was an 18,000-square-foot New Jersey French Country-style mansion. In that massive space, Blige got to experience some in reality impressive amenities together with a massive pool, a home theater, a six-car garage, an elevator, and a basketball court. On top of all that, the house had 8 bedrooms and 13 bathrooms and that is to mention nothing of the one-bedroom, one-bathroom visitor space that she owned on the identical property.
Amazingly sufficient, at one point Blige bought a second New Jersey home, which she additionally put available on the market in 2021. Also, an impressive home, Bligeâs second area sits on a lush property that includes many tall timber and it has an attractive deck that gives an awesome view of her pool and the encompassing woods. On the interior, the house incorporated six bedrooms, eight toilets, and two half-baths along with the fitness center and guest quarters.
When it involves the automobiles that Blige has owned over the years, it is recognized that her husband took the coupleâs two Mercedes all through their divorce. According to reports, at that time Blige used to be willing to let her ex-husband have their SL550 if she were given to walk away with their C300.
Despite these bumps in the road of her personal lifestyles, Blige was nonetheless ready to walk away from her marriage with a lot of cash in her pocket. As such, she will have the ability to buy real estate and automobiles for herself that mirror her tastes when able.
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Top 6 NYC Music Artists
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2021-08-27T10:30:00+00:00
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New York City is a mecca for creative artists. With concert venues like Madison Square Garden, Radio City Music Hall, Carnegie Hall, Barclays Center, and the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, enjoying live music is definitely one of the top things to do in NYC. Check out our blog on our Top 6 NYC music artists!
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New York City is a mecca for creative artists. With concert venues like Madison Square Garden, Radio City Music Hall, Carnegie Hall, Barclays Center, and the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, enjoying live music is definitely one of the top things to do in NYC. While nearly all big artists come through New York, many got their start here. Here are some of the most famous artists to come out of NYC.
Lady GaGa
The illustrious musician Lady GaGa was born Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta at Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan. She was raised on Manhattan's Upper West Side and attended the Convent of the Sacred Heart from the age of 11. She studied method acting at the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute, performed in plays at Regis High School, and played open mics throughout the city. At just 17 years old, she gained early admission into music school at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts.
Much of her early music development took place in New York City, though she relocated to Los Angeles in 2008 to complete work on her debut album, "The Fame". Lady Gaga won her first Academy Award for Best Original Song with "Shallow" in 2019. She's also won 12 Grammys, 3 American Music Awards, and hundreds of others. As of 2020, her primary residence is a 10,270-square-foot beachfront property in Malibu, California.
Mary J. Blige
Mary J. Blige was born at Fordham Hospital in the Bronx. She lived in Savannah and Richmond Hill, Georgia for a time during her childhood, but her family later returned to New York, living in the Schlobohm Housing Projects in Yonkers. In 1988, Blige sang a cover of Anita Baker's "Caught Up in the Rapture" in a mall recording booth. Uptown Records, based in New York City, listened to the recording and signed her as a backup vocalist.
At Uptown, Blige started working with Sean Combs (AKA Puff Daddy), who produced most of her first album, released in 1992. In 1996, Mary J. Blige won her first Grammy for Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group for "I'll Be There for You/You're All I Need to Get By." She has since won 8 more Grammys and 4 American Music Awards, among many others. Blige lives in an eight-bedroom home in Saddle River, New Jersey.
Christina Aguilera
Born on Staten Island, Christina Aguilera moved numerous times throughout her childhood due to her father's work in the United States Army. After her parents' divorce, Aguilera and her younger sister moved in with their grandmother in a Pittsburgh suburb. Christina was a cast member on "The Mickey Mouse Club" and got her musical break when she was selected to sing the song "Reflection" for Disney's animated film, "Mulan". Shortly after, she was signed by RCA and released her debut album in 1999.
Aguilera made a notable return to New York in 2008 for a two-day Rolling Stones concert at the Beacon Theater where she performed alongside Mick Jagger in "Live with Me." The concert was featured in Martin Scorsese's documentary "Shine a Light". Christina Aguilera has won 221 awards including four Grammys. Christina lives in an 11,107-square-foot Beverly Hills mansion.
Billy Joel
One of the best-selling music artists of all time, Billy Joel was born in the Bronx and grew up in the Hicksville suburb of Long Island. Joel attended Hicksville High School but didn't graduate, as he missed an essential English exam after playing late at a piano bar the night before. In 1972, he signed a recording contract with Columbia and moved to Los Angeles where he recorded his first two albums. In 1975, he moved back to New York City and there recorded the album "Turnstiles" which features one of his most famous songs, "New York State of Mind."
In 1999, Billy Joel performed at Madison Square Garden in what he then believed would be his last tour and perhaps his last concert. However, he did go on to perform future tours including a 2006 tour that featured 12 sold-out concerts at Madison Square Garden. Joel has won numerous awards including five Grammys. His primary residence is in Long Island.
Diddy
Diddy, also known as Sean Combs, was born in Manhattan's Harlem and raised in Mount Vernon, New York. He graduated from Mount Saint Michael Academy, a Roman Catholic high school in the Bronx. Combs interned at Uptown Records in New York City and later became a talent director for the label. In 1993, he was fired from Uptown and started his own label, Bad Boy Entertainment.
Using the name Puff Daddy, Combs recorded his first single as a rapper in 1997. His debut album was released later that year. In 2003, Sean raised $2 million for New York's educational system by running in the New York City Marathon. He's also donated computers and books to the city's school system. He's won several awards including three Grammys. He owned a three-bedroom apartment in New York from 2005 to 2017 and now lives in a 17,000-square-foot Beverly Hills mansion.
Barry Manilow
Barry Manilow was born as Barry Alan Pincus in Brooklyn. He grew up in Brooklyn's Williamsburg neighborhood and graduated from Eastern District High School. Manilow studied at the City College of New York, New York College of Music, and Juilliard. Through the 1960s, he worked as a commercial jingle writer. He also performed a two-season run with Jeanne Lucas at the Upstairs at the Downstairs Club in New York.
Manilow signed his first recording contract in 1969 and released his first album in 1973. Though his popularity peaked in the 1970s, his 2006 cover album, "Greatest Songs of the Fifties" still hit number one, and the 2014 "Night Songs" album peaked at number 4. Manilow won two Emmys and one Grammy as well as other awards. He now lives in a Palm Springs mansion.
Did we include your favorite artists on our list? If we missed a great NYC musician you want to see featured, contact our team at Martin Busch Jewelers and let us know.
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https://www.caknowledge.org/mary-j-blige-net-worth-assets/
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Mary J. Blige Net Worth: Assets, Biography, Career and Education
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2024-06-27T12:27:05+00:00
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American singer and actress, Mary J. Blige's Net Worth is estimated to be $22 million. This wealth comes from her long career in music.
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CA knowledge
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https://www.caknowledge.org/mary-j-blige-net-worth-assets/
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American singer and actress, Mary J. Blige’s Net Worth is estimated to be $22 million. This wealth comes from her long and successful career in music, acting, and producing. Mary Jane Blige is a massive name as far as the music industry is concerned. She is a living legend in R&B Hip Hop Music, and she is often referred to as the queen of Hip Hop music.
Blige has done numerous good works in her long and illustrious career. She has released plenty of albums so far and has also won numerous awards and accolades. Blige has won many Grammy awards, Billboard Music Awards, and many more.
She is a famous television personality as well, who has worked in many films and shows. She has also received many awards including an Academy Award for her amazing work in Mudbound (2017). Blige is known as the most successful musician, who has been ranked as the most successful female R&B/Hip Hop artist of the last 25 years. You may also like Tisha Campbell’s Net Worth.
What is Mary J. Blige’s Net Worth?
American singer, Mary J. Blige’s Net Worth is estimated to be $22 million as of 2024. Mary j. Blige is a phenomenal woman, whose achievements are simply unbelievable. She has managed to achieve almost everything, which one could imagine. Blige made her first album in 1992, and since then, she has released many different albums, songs, and singles, which have made her almighty. She has a net worth of $22 million, which is quite decent. She has also done movies and shows.
Mary J. Blige Assets
Home – Mary J. Blige is a very successful Personality, who owns plenty of assets, which include real estate Properties is well. She has plenty of properties In America, which include a massive mansion in Beverly Hills, and a very beautiful house in New York. She has a very beautiful villa in Manhattan as well.
Car collection – Blige owns quite a handful of cars. She has a very beautiful and luxurious collection of cars, which she often drives too. She owns a Tesla Roadster, BMW X5, Audi Q5, Range Rover, and a few more cars. Blige is known for her lavish lifestyle, which includes her cars too.
Mary J. Blige Net Worth Growth
Mary J. Blige Biography
Mary Jane Blige is a very successful woman, however, her childhood was a little difficult as compared to her later life. She was born in The Bronx, New York, United States, on 11 January 1971. Mary was born in Fordham Hospital, which was situated in the neighborhood of The Bronx. Her mother was a nurse and her father was a jazz singer. She has had some difficult times in her childhood.
She was molested at a very young age and was sexually harassed continuously by her peers. She later became addicted to drugs, alcohol, and sex, which caused her a very difficult time. She also got dropped from her school because of that. However, her interest in music pulled her back, and she started working on it with her friends. You must read Mariah Carey’s Net Worth.
Mary J. Blige Career and Awards
Mary J. Blige is a very famous American personality from America, who is known for her singing and acting skills. She is a phenomenal singer, songwriter, and actress, who has achieved numerous milestones. She made her debut in singing, and songwriting in 1988, with a Yonkers music band. She spent some time with the band, and later in 1992, she released her first album, What’s The 411?
She recorded the album under Uptown Records. In 1993, she released the remix of the album, which became successful. Her later work, My Life (1994), also became a massive hit. Their first two albums of Mary were listed in the Rolling Stones 500 Greatest Hits of all time. Mary Jane has won numerous awards and accolades in her career. She has been honored with plenty of Grammy awards, Academy Awards, Billboard Music Awards, and many more.
Mary J. Blige Social media Accounts
Education
Mary J. Blige hasn’t had a lot of good memories as far as education is concerned. She had a very difficult childhood because of her addiction to alcohol and drugs. She got dropped from her school, Roosevelt High School, and later, she started her singing career. There isn’t a lot available about her education. Also, check Camila Cabello’s Net Worth.
Conclusion
Mary J. Blige is a phenomenal personality, who has done some amazing work in her career. She has achieved numerous milestones in her career, which include many honors and individual awards. Her albums and songs are inducted in the Hall of Fame and are included in Rolling Stone’s list of greatest of all time.
She is an idol for many and an iconic figure. Despite having a very difficult childhood, she managed to escape from all hell. She is a true warrior, whose works are simply outstanding.
FAQs
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Mary J. Blige information: Biography, Picture, TV Appearances, Trivia, Quotes, News and more...
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Angela Bassett set to play Coretta Scott King in Lifetime biopic Aug/23/2012
All news
Trivia
Her sister, LaTonya Blige DaCosta is also a singer and was her former manager before 2003.
Mary won Best Rap Performance By a Duo or Group from her single "I'll Be There For You/You're All I Need" w/ Method Man(1996)
Mary J. Blige Quotes
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Mary J. Blige sold her $12M N.J. mansion at a huge loss. What about her other N.J. home?
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2024-04-10T11:57:16.990000+00:00
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R&B singer Mary J. Blige finally sold her Saddle River mansion bcak in 2020. But did you know she has another N.J. property for sale?
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https://mosaic.nj.com/news/2024/04/mary-j-blige-sold-her-12m-nj-mansion-at-a-huge-loss-what-about-her-other-nj-home.html
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Over a decade ago, R&B legend Mary J. Blige purchased a mega-mansion in Saddle River, New Jersey, for $12.3 million.
Surrounded by famous neighbors and measuring at 18,250-square-foot, Blige ultimately placed the estate back on the market for $13.9 million in 2011. But, the house didn’t sell.
The nine-time Grammy winner had money troubles after her divorce from her manager Kendu Isaacs, including a $900,000 tax lien from the state of New Jersey, since cleared up, and a $3.4 million federal tax lien, which was still unpaid in 2013.
Don’t miss an issue of our FREE Mosaic newsletter! Get it delivered each Tuesday right into your inbox.
By 2015, the asking price for the 4-acre estate was knocked down slightly to $13 million. However, the price decreased even further to $6.8 million, in 2019.
Ultimately, the 25-room property didn’t secure a buyer until 2020. The mansion was sold for $5.5 million, roughly a $7 million loss.
The property includes eight bedrooms, 10 full bathrooms and tons of amenities including but not exclusive to a gym, sauna and gorgeous in-ground pool.
Blige also owns another New Jersey home in Cresskill that she has also been trying to sell since 2019. Initially, the property’s sale price was $2.25 million, but the estate was last listed at $2.75 million, according to realtor.com.
She bought her Cresskill property in 2001 for $1.95 million. The spacious house features six bedrooms, eight full bathrooms, and two half-bathrooms.
On 7,000 square feet, the huge home on 1.1 acres offers a gym, guest quarters, an office, and three fireplaces. In addition, the floor plan includes a finished basement, as well as an attached garage, according to realtor.com.
So far, Blige’s Cresskill house has not been sold.
Here are more related stories:
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J. Cole releases surprise album. So why are fans tying N.J. earthquake to ongoing rap beef?
Lizzo clarifies what she meant when she said ‘I quit.’ Instagram users react.
Mosaic staff writer Vashti Harris can be reached at vharris@njadvancemedia.com.
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Mary J. Blige [1]1971— Singer, songwriter "Mary J. Blige [2] has been called the inventor of New Jill Swing," Ron Givens wrote in Stereo Review in 1993.
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Mary J. Blige 1971–
Singer, songwriter
Early Life Shaped Her
Ushered in New Jill Swing
Attitude Turned Off Fans
Shared Her World
More Mature Mary
Selected discography
Sources
“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.” But more than anything else, the music media has crowned her the Queen of Hip Hop Soul.
Early Life Shaped Her
Part of the fuel for Blige’s rocket to hip-hop stardom was her “street cred.” She was born on January 11, 1971 in Yonkers, and grew up in the Schlobohm Housing Projects—or “Slow Bomb” projects as its residents called it. 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 shit 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 the Source. “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 Pente
At a Glance…
Born Mary Jane Blige, January 11, 1971, in Yon-kers, NY; daughter of Cora (a nurse) and a jazz musician.
Career: Worked various part-time jobs in late teens. Released albums, What’s the 4111 1992; What’s the 41U-The Remix, 1993; My Ufe, 1994; Share My World, 1996; The Tour, 1998; Mary, 1999; No More Drama, 2001; appeared on The Jamie Foxx Show, 1998; film, Prison Song, 2000; performed in VM’s Divas Live concerts, 1999, 2001, 2002.
Awards: Soul Train Music Award, 1993; New York Music Award; NAACP Image Award; double-platinum album award for Whatfs the 411Ì; Grammy nomination for Best R&B Album, 1995, 1999, 2002; Grammy award, Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group, with Method Man, 1996; American Music Award, 1998; Soul Train Lady of Soul awards, 1997, 1998; celebrity spokesperson, MAC AIDS Fund, 2001, 2002.
Addresses: Record company— MCA Records, c/o Maria Kleinman, National Director of Publicity, 70 universal City Plaza, Universal City, CA, 91608; Web-she— www.mjblige.com.
costal 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 became the young singer’s mentor when the company began preparing her album.
Ushered in 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 over 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.” The Source 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 the Source 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.”
Attitude Turned Off Fans
The accolades was marred, however, by 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 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.”
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 Essence 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 exacerbated, 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.
Shared Her World
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 producer and mentor, Sean 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 magazine, “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 Weekly 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.
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.
1998 saw Blige headlining her own tour. During the summer she released The Tour, a live album. “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 has also jump-started an acting career with an appearance on The Jamie Foxx Show.
More Mature Mary
Blige’s next album, simply entitled Mari; 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 nineties 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 new found 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.”
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 “Rainy Dayz,” “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. 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.”
In addition to makiing 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 Weekly, ” I didn’t like being on the set all day and doing scenes over and over.… I like performing more than gettin up in the morning.” Blige has lent her name and celebrity to support causes she believed in. She has appeared in ads for cosmetic company MAC’s Viva Gla, lipstick, which raised money for the MAC AIDS fund. Blige has performed at three VHl’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.
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 that’s 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.”
Selected discography
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.
Sources
Periodicals
Atlanta Journal, November 29, 1994.
Billboard, January 16, 1993; July 25, 1998.
Boston Globe, December 15, 1994.
Dallas Morning News, April 4, 2002.
Ebony, January 1999; June 2000; January 1998.
Entertainment Weekly, August 7, 1992; November 20, 1992; December 3, 1993; November 25, 1994.
Essence, March 1995; November 2001.
Evening Sun, (Baltimore, MD), December 2, 1994.
Jet, November 29, 1999; August 28, 2000; September 18, 2000; October 1, 2001.
Newsweek, May 5, 1997.
People, December 5, 1994; May 19, 1997; July 17, 2000.
Rolling Stone, April 15, 1993.
Source, January 1995.
Stereo Review, April 1993.
Time, April 28, 1997.
Vibe, February 1995.
Washington Post, November 27, 1994.
On-line
All Music Guide, www.allmusic.com
www.mjblige.com
Rock On The Net, www.rockonthenet.com
Other
Additional information for this sketch was obtained from Uptown Records.
—Ondine E. LeBlanc, Ashyia N. Henderson, and Ralph Zerbonia
Mary J. Blige
Singer, songwriter
For the Record …
What’s the 411? Spurred R&B Revival
Learned to Manage Fame
“Major Voice of Her Generation”
Selected discography
Sources
In a 1993 article in Stereo Review, Ron Givens wrote, “Mary J. Blige has been called the inventor of New Jill Swing.” When the vocalist came to the public’s attention the previous year, she was 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.” But more than anything else, the music media has crowned her the Queen of Hip Hop Soul.
Part of the fuel for Blige’s rocket to hip-hop stardom was her “street cred.” Her youth in one of New York’s poorer neighborhoods—the Slowbam Projects in Yonkers, where she was born on November 1 in the early 1970s—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.”
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 sisters 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. Before she dropped out of school in the eleventh grade, around 1987, she also participated in shows there.
While she enjoyed singing, Blige didn’t expect to make her living at it and, like most teenagers in her position, helped bring in money with several part-time jobs. Her
For the Record…
Born Mary Jane Blige on November 1, c. 1971, in Yonkers, NY; daughter of Cora (a nurse) and a jazz musician.
Sang with mother and sister in House of Prayer Pentecostal Church choir; appeared in local and school talent shows; worked various part-time jobs in late teens; signed by Uptown Records, released debut album, What’s the 411?, 1992; headline tours in 1998 and 2000; released No More Drama, 2001.
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.
Addresses: Record company —Universal Music Group, 2220 Colorado Ave, Santa Monica, CA 90404; MCA Records, 2220 Colorado Ave, Santa Monica, CA 90404. Website— Mary J. Blige Official Website: http://www.mjblige.com.
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 “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 became the young singer’s mentor when the company began preparing her album.
What’s the 411? Spurred R&B Revival
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 over two million copies in a short time. Its appeal crossed over from the R&B charts and entered the top ten on Billboards 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. 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 applause was dimmed, 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.”
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 hadn’t 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 exacerbated, 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 moved out of Uptown and in 1993 started his own company, Bad Boy Entertainment, where Blige took her management business while still recording with Uptown.
Learned to Manage Fame
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 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. One note sounded very consistently from the first album to the second, and that was Blige’s renown for being “real.” As Combs explained to Strange in the Source, Blige “represents all the honeys in the urban communities in Detroit, Harlem, Chicago and Los Angeles that’s growing up and going through regular every day things that are a part of hip-hop culture. This album shows the real of just how strong Black women have become.”
“Major Voice of Her Generation”
Geoffrey Himes, among others, paid particular tribute to Blige’s new take on R&B on My Life; “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, writing for Baltimore’s Evening Sun, greeted the album by noting 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.”
Blige’s subsequent albums, Share My World in 1997, The Tour in 1998, Mary in 1999, and No More Drama in 2001, brought new recognition for the steadfast singer. She earned a Grammy Award in 1996 for her rap performance with Method Man followed by nominations in 1997, 1998, 2000, and 2001. She received Soul Train Lady of Soul awards for two years in succession—in 1997 and 1998—and in 1998 received an American Music Award. Additionally, she toured as a headline act in 1998 and again in 2000.
As the 1990s drew to a close, Blige’s self-generated strength reflected clearly in her subsequent projects, and she developed a new sense of social commitment, melding her career with worthy causes that concerned her deeply. The proceeds from her 2000 tour, The Mary Show, went to benefit One Hundred Black Men, Inc., of New York City, and in her capacity as spokesperson for MAC Cosmetics’ Viva Glam III line, she was invited to appear at the United Nations General Assembly Hall for the Race Against Poverty Awards in 2000 and 2001.
Selected discography
What’s the 411? (includes “Real Love” and “You Remind Me”), Uptown/MCA, 1992.
My Life (includes “I’m Going Down” and “You Bring Me Joy”), Uptown/MCA, 1994.
Share My World (includes “Everything,” “Not Goin’ Cry” and “I Can Love You”), MCA, 1997.
The Tour (live), MCA, 1998.
Mary, MCA, 1999.
No More Drama (includes “Family Affair”), MCA, 2001.
Ballads (includes “Overjoyed”; compilation), Polygram, 2001.
Sources
Atlanta Journal, November 29, 1994.
Billboard, January 16, 1993.
Boston Globe, December 15, 1994.
Entertainment Weekly, August 7, 1992; November 20, 1992; December 3, 1993; November 25, 1994.
Essence, March 1995; April 2001.
Evening Sun (Baltimore, MD), December 2, 1994.
Jet, July 3, 2000; October 16, 2000; December 25, 2000.
People, December 5, 1994.
PR Newswire, October 12, 2000; February 12, 2001; March 13, 2001; April 10, 2001.
Rolling Stone, April 15, 1993.
Source, January 1995.
Stereo Review, April 1993.
Vibe, February 1995.
Washington Post, November 27, 1994.
Additional information for this profile was obtained from Uptown Records publicity materials.
—Ondine E. Le Blanc
Mary J. Blige
Singer, songwriter
Early Musical Influences
Hip-hop Role Model Stumbled
Redefined with My Life
Selected discography
Sources
In a 1993 article in Stereo Review, Ron Givens wrote, “Mary J. Blige has been called the inventor of New Jill Swing.” 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.” But more than anything else, the music media has crowned her the Queen of Hip Hop Soul.
Part of the fuel for Blige’s rocket to hip-hop stardom was her “street cred.” Her youth in one of New York City’s poor neighborhoods— the Slowbam Projects in Yonkers, where she was born on January 11, 1971— 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.”
Early Musical Influences
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 sisters 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. Before she dropped out of school in the eleventh grade, around 1987, she also participated in shows there.
While she enjoyed singing, Blige didn’t expect to make her living at it and, like most teenagers in her position,
For the Record …
Born Mary Jane Blige on January 11, 1971, in Yonkers, NY; daughter of Cora (a nurse) and a jazz musician.
Sang with mother and sister in House of Prayer Pentecostal Church choir; appeared in local and school talent shows; worked various part-time jobs in late teens. Signed by Uptown Records and released debut album, What’s the 411?, 1992.
Awards: Soul Train Music Award, 1993; New York Music Award; National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) Image Award; doubleplatinum album award for What’s the 411?
Addresses: Record company —Uptown Records, 729 Seventh Avenue, 12th Floor, New York, NY 10019.
helped bring in money with several part-time jobs. 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 “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 became the young singer’s mentor when the company began preparing her album.
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 over 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.
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.”
Hip-hop Role Model Stumbled
The applause was 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.”
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 hadn’t 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 exacerbated, 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 moved out of 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.
Redefined with My Life
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.
Geoffrey Himes, among others, paid particular tribute to Blige’s new take on R&B; “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, writing for Baltimore’s Evening Sun, greeted the album by noting 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.”
One note sounded very consistently from the first album to the second, and that was Blige’s renown for being “real.” As Combs explained to Strange in the Source, Blige “represents all the honeys in the urban communities in Detroit, Harlem, Chicago and Los Angeles that’s growing up and going through regular every day things that are a part of hip-hop culture. This album shows the real of just how strong Black women have become.”
Selected discography
What’s the 411? (includes “Real Love”), Uptown/MCA, 1992.
What’s the 411? Remix, Uptown/MCA, 1993.
My Life, Uptown/MCA, 1994.
Sources
Atlanta Journal, November 29, 1994.
Billboard, January 16, 1993.
Boston Globe, December 15, 1994.
Entertainment Weekly, August 7, 1992; November 20, 1992; December 3, 1993; November 25, 1994.
Essence, March 1995.
Evening Sun (Baltimore, MD), December 2, 1994.
People, December 5, 1994.
Rolling Stone, April 15, 1993.
Source, January 1995.
Stereo Review, April 1993.
Vibe, February 1995.
Washington Post, November 27, 1994.
Additional information for this profile was obtained from Uptown Records publicity materials.
—Ondine E. Le Blanc
Mary J. Blige 1971–
Singer, songwriter
Early Life Shaped Her
Ushered in New Jill Swing
Attitude Turned Off Fans
Shared Her World
Selected discography
Sources
“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.” But more than anything else, the music media has crowned her the Queen of Hip Hop Soul.
Early Life Shaped Her
Part of the fuel for Blige’s rocket to hip-hop stardom was her “street cred.” She was born on November 11, 1971 in Yonkers, and grew up in the Schlobohm Housing Projects—or “Slow Bomb” projects as its residents called it. 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 shit 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
At a Glance…
Bom Mary Jane Blige, November 11, 1971, in Yonkers, NY; daughter of Cora (a nurse) and a jazz musician.
Career: Worked various part-time jobs in late teens. Released albums, What’s the 411? 1992; What’s the 411? -The Remix, 1993; My Life, 1994; Share My World, 1996; The Tour, 1998. Appeared on The Jamie Foxx Show, 1998.
Awards: Soul Train Music Award, 1993; New York Music Award; NAACP Image Award; double-platinum album award for What’s the 411Ì; Grammy nomination for Best R & B Album, 1995; Grammy award, Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group, with Method Man, 1996; American Music Award, 1998; Soul Train Lady of Soul awards, 1997, 1998.
Addresses: Record company—MCA Records, c/o Maria Kleinrnan, National Director of Publicity, 70 Universal City Plaza, Universal City, CA, 91608.
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 became the young singer’s mentor when the company began preparing her album.
Ushered in 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 over 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.”
Attitude Turned Off Fans
The accolades was 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.”
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 exacerbated, 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 Eller-bee, 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 for the first time, introducing her, for example, to a novel by Zora Neale Hurst on 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.
Shared Her World
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 producer and mentor, Sean 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 magazine, “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 Weekly 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.
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
1998 saw Blige headlining her own tour. During the summer she released The Tour, a live album. “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 has also jump-started an acting career with an appearance on The Jamie Foxx Show.
The positive reviews on Blige are endless. 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.”
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 that’s 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.”
Selected discography
What’s the 411?, Uptown/MCA, 1992.
My Life, Uptown/MCA, 1994.
Share My World, MCA, 1996.
The Tour, MCA, 1998.
Sources
Periodicals
Atlanta Journal, November 29, 1994.
Billboard, January 16, 1993; July 25, 1998.
Boston Globe, December 15, 1994.
Ebony, January 1998.
Entertainment Weekly, August 7, 1992; November 20, 1992; December 3, 1993; November 25, 1994.
Essence, March 1995.
Evening Sun (Baltimore, MD), December 2, 1994.
Newsweek, May 5, 1997.
People, December 5, 1994; May 19, 1997.
Rolling Stone, April 15, 1993.
Source, January 1995.
Stereo Review, April 1993.
Time, April 28, 1997.
Vibe, February 1995.
Washington Post, November 27, 1994.
Other
Additional information for this sketch was obtained from Uptown Records.
—Ondine E. LeBlanc and Ashyia N. Henderson
Mary J. Blige
1971—
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" 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."
At a Glance …
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.
Career:
Singer, 1992-; actress, 1998-.
Awards:
Soul Train Music Award, 1993; New York Music Award; NAACP Image Award; double-platinum album award for What's the 411?; Grammy Award, for Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group (with Method Man), 1995; American Music Award, 1998; Soul Train Lady of Soul awards, 1997, 1998; celebrity spokesperson, MAC AIDS Fund, 2001, 2002; Grammy Award, for Best Female R&B Vocal Performance, 2002; Grammy Award, for Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals (with Sting), 2003; Grammy Award, for Best R&B Album, for Best R&B Song, and for Best R&B Female Vocal Performance, all 2006.
Addresses:
Web—www.mjblige.com.
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.
Selected discography
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.
Sources
Books
Brown, Terrell, Mary J. Blige, Mason Crest, 2007.
Torres, Jennifer, Mary J. Blige, Mitchell Lane, 2007.
Periodicals
Atlanta Journal, November 29, 1994.
Billboard, January 16, 1993; July 25, 1998.
Boston Globe, December 15, 1994.
Dallas Morning News, April 4, 2002.
Ebony, January 1998; January 1999; June 2000.
Entertainment Weekly, August 7, 1992; November 20, 1992; December 3, 1993; November 25, 1994.
Essence, March 1995; November 2001.
Evening Sun, (Baltimore, MD), December 2, 1994.
Jet, November 29, 1999; August 28, 2000; September 18, 2000; October 1, 2001; January 29, 2007, p. 60.
Newsweek, May 5, 1997.
People, December 5, 1994; May 19, 1997; July 17, 2000; January 8, 2007, p. 42.
Philadelphia Tribune, August 6, 2006, p. 18.
Rolling Stone, April 15, 1993; January 25, 2007; February 8, 2007.
Source, January 1995.
Stereo Review, April 1993.
Time, April 28, 1997.
Us Weekly, February 12, 2007, p. 48.
Vibe, February 1995.
Washington Post, November 27, 1994; February 11, 2007, p. Y5.
On-line
All Music Guide, www.allmusic.com (January 5, 2005).
"Mary J. Blige," MTV.com, www.mtv.com/bands/az/blige_mary_j/bio.jhtml (January 7, 2005).
Mary J. Blige, www.mjblige.com (January 5, 2005).
"Mary J. Blige, Making ‘The Breakthrough,’" National Public Radio, www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5165863 (April 3, 2007).
Rock On The Net, www.rockonthenet.com (January 5, 2005).
Other
Additional information for this sketch was obtained from Uptown Records.
—Ondine E. LeBlanc, Ashyia N. Henderson, Ralph Zerbonia, and Sara Pendergast
Mary J. Blige
Singer, songwriter
At a time when the mainstream music industry seems to be crumbling, Mary J. Blige has proven to be one of the music industry's few bankable stars. Enduringly popular, the sultry Bronx-born R&B singer-songwriter continues to make a difference with her music and as a leader in her community.
Stereo Review's Ron Givens wrote, "Mary J. Blige has been called the inventor of New Jill Swing." In his Washington Post review of Blige's second album, Geoffrey Himes called her "the premier soul diva of the hip-hop generation." But more than anything else, the music media has crowned her the Queen of Hip-Hop Soul. Blige's youth in one of New York's poorer neighborhoods—the Slowbam Projects in Yonkers—where she was born on January 11, 1971, provided her with the "credentials" demanded by audiences who also grew up on the city streets. Her 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 Adario Strange in Source. "Watching my mother struggle to raise us and feed us made me want to be a stronger woman."
Blige's environment also provided the sound and encouragement that 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. Blige sang regularly with her mother and sisters in the choir at the House of Prayer Pentecostal Church, honing vocal skills and imbibing gospel. By the time Blige was a teenager, she had solo spots in the choir and she made the rounds of local talent shows. Before she dropped out of school in the eleventh grade in about 1987, she had also participated in school shows.
While she enjoyed singing, Blige didn't expect to make her living at it, and like most teenagers in her position, she helped bring in money with several part-time jobs. However, a cover she made of Anita Baker's "Rapture" found its way to Andre Harrell, an executive with Uptown Records. On Harrell's initiative, Blige was brought onto Uptown's growing roster of young R&B talents. Sean "Puffy" Combs (later P. Diddy) became the young singer's mentor when the company began preparing her album.
What's the 411? Spurred R&B Revival
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," the album reached double-platinum status after it sold more than two mil- lion copies in a short time. It crossed over from the R&B charts and entered the top ten on Billboard's pop chart. When Havelock Nelson praised the album 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.
Blige would become known as the initiator of a new female incarnation of hip-hop. 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."
The applause was dimmed, however, by bad publicity, including at the 1993 Soul Train Music Awards, where Blige accepted her award not in the expected glittering evening gown, but wearing jeans and a shirt, causing an outcry of disapproval from fans. There were other less public reports of bad behavior. Emil Wilbekin of Vibe mentioned "stories of tardiness, cancellations, and general lack of professionalism," as well as drinking during interviews and performances. Blige herself admitted that she had not been prepared for the spotlight of celebrity status. She also felt there were problems with her management, and she took steps to make changes before recording her second album. Combs had moved out of Uptown and in 1993 started his own company, Bad Boy Entertainment, and Blige took her management business there 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 a public reputation. She worked extensively with the company's president, Angelo Ellerbee, whom she later credited with helping her change her life more broadly. She told Wilbekin that Ellerbee "gave me a totally new kind of life." Ellerbee even sparked her interest in books for the first time, introducing her, for example, to a novel by Zora Neale Hurston titled Their Eyes Were Watching God.
For the Record …
Born Mary Jane Blige on January 11, 1971, in Yonkers, NY; daughter of Cora (a nurse) and a jazz musician. Married Kendu Isaacs (works in the music industry), December 7, 2003.
Sang with mother and sister in House of Prayer Pentecostal Church choir; signed by Uptown Records, released debut album, What's the 411?, 1992; headlined tours in 1998 and 2000; released No More Drama, 2001; appeared as singer on numerous television programs including Late Show with David Letterman, Oprah Winfrey, Saturday Night Live, Entourage, and The Tonight Show with Jay Leno; appeared as actress on television programs such as Strong Medicine and Ghost Whisperer; released albums Love & Life, 2003, The Breakthrough, 2005, Growing Pains, 2007; co-founded Mary J. Blige and Steve Stout Foundation for the Advancement of Women Now, Inc., 2008.
Awards: Soul Train Music Awards, 1993, 2000; 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; 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, R&B/Hip-Hop Artist of the Year, 2006; Grammy Awards, Best Female R&B Vocal Performance; Best R&B Song for "Be Without You" Best R&B album, for The Breakthrough, 2007; BET Award for Best Collaboration, for "Runaway Love" (with Ludacris), 2007; Grammy Awards, Best R&B Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals, for "Disrespectful" (with Chaka Khan); Best Gospel Performance for "Never Gonna Break My Faith" (with Aretha Franklin, tied with the Clark Sisters), 2008.
Addresses: Record company—Universal Music Group, 2220 Colorado Ave., Santa Monica, CA 90404; MCA Records, 2220 Colorado Ave, Santa Monica, CA 90404. Web site—Mary J. Blige Official Web site: http://www.mjblige.com.
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 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.
"Major Voice of Her Generation"
Geoffrey Himes, among others, paid particular tribute to Blige's new take on R&B in My Life: "Blige may be a gospel-trained siren like older soul divas," he remarked in the Washington Post, "but these arrangements sound like no record ever made by Aretha Franklin, Diana Ross or Patti LaBelle. All the gooey orchestrations … are gone, leaving a skeletal rhythm track and a spectacular voice freed from all superfluous sentiment and ornamentation." J.D. Considine, writing for Baltimore's Evening Sun, wrote 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."
Blige's subsequent albums, Share My World (1997), The Tour (1998), and Mary (1999), brought new recognition for the singer. She earned a Grammy Award in 1996 for her rap performance with Method Man, followed by nominations in 1997 and 1998. She received Soul Train Lady of Soul awards in 1997 and 1998, and in 1998 received an American Music Award. Additionally, she toured as a headline act in 1998.
As the 1990s closed, Blige's self-generated strength reflected clearly in her subsequent projects, and she developed a new sense of social commitment, melding her career with worthy causes that concerned her deeply. The proceeds from her 2000 tour, The Mary Show, went to benefit One Hundred Black Men, Inc., of New York City, and in her capacity as spokesperson for MAC Cosmetics' Viva Glam III line, she was invited to appear at the United Nations General Assembly Hall for the Race Against Poverty Awards in 2000 and 2001.
Blige's career continued to see a resurgence during the early 2000s. Her first album of the decade, No More Drama (2001), featured tracks produced by Dr. Dre, Jimmy Jam, and Terry Lewis, among others, and she showed growth in her life and vocals with a more feel-good, upbeat message. A more straightforward R&B album, No More Drama included cover songs that paid tribute to her parents. The single "Family Affair," produced by Dre, was a major hit, and the album itself went triple platinum, selling nearly two million copies within six months of its release. A reworked "special edition" version of the album, released under the same name in 2002, sold an additional 1.1 million copies.
She reunited with Sean "P. Diddy" Combs for love & life in 2003, another upbeat release, which featured guest appearances by Jay-Z, 50 Cent, and Method Man, although critics gave it only mixed reviews. The album only sold about 944,000 copies, making it her lowest selling studio release. Blige's professional life continued to evolve, however, and her personal life saw growth as well, with a deep embracing of faith and a December 2003 marriage to Kendu Isaacs, a music industry insider who became her manager.
The Breakthrough Won Multiple Awards
In February of 2004 she shared the Grammy for Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals, for "Whenever I Say Your Name" with Sting. She received more honors for her next album, 2005's The Breakthrough, which employed 13 different producers. Another uplifting, self-assured album, it lived up to its title, immediately connecting with listeners. It sold about 727,000 copies in its debut week, helped by the strong hit single "Be Without You," which rode the R&B charts for an incredible 16 months. It was her first number one single on Billboard's Adult R&B chart in ten years. Clarence Waldron of Jet claimed that "The Breakthrough is the real Mary, and her fans can hear it." For the album, Blige won multiple BET Awards, American Music Awards, and Billboard Music Awards, as well as eight Grammy Award nominations.
Explaining Blige's appeal, Kevin Chappell of Ebony claimed that "Blige infatuates … an increasing number of people. Men adore her. Women respect her. Little girls want to be her. Singers want to sing like her. Her music has achieved legitimate crossover success. One of the few Black women in music to prove that she has staying power, Blige has moved to diva status, a level of superstardom that few ever achieve."
Also a Humanitarian
Continually working and refining her craft, Blige released Growing Pains in early 2008. Another number one album, it prompted Robert Christgau of Rolling Stone to comment: "Growing Pains is an edgier record than The Breakthrough, but Blige has definitely lost or just outgrown the brassy urgency of her twenties. Then, her confessions had the feel of painful late-night outbursts: these days, they sound more like she's had a lot of therapy."
Therapy or no, Blige has worked obsessively to stay on top of her profession and to provide service to the less fortunate. When she isn't touring with the likes of Jay Z, Alicia Keyes, and others, the superstar/ businesswoman acts as spokesperson for Carol's Daughter beauty products (her mother's company) and is the co-founder and spokesperson for the Mary J. Blige and Steve Stoute Foundation for the Advancement of Women Now, Inc. On FFAWN's Web site, former project-kid-turned-superstar Blige said that she and Stoute created the organization "because I believe every young woman, if given encouragement and a helping hand (a hand filled with resources), can reach her greatest potential. It is my hope that FFAWN will be a vehicle to help other women reach greater heights despite their environment, despite low self-esteem, despite their immediate circumstances."
Selected discography
What's the 411?, Uptown/MCA, 1992.
My Life, Uptown/MCA, 1994.
Share My World, MCA, 1997.
The Tour (live), MCA, 1998.
Mary, MCA, 1999.
No More Drama, MCA, 2001.
Ballads, Polygram, 2001.
No More Drama (special edition), MCA, 2002.
Dance for Me, MCA, 2002.
love & life, Geffen, 2003.
The Breakthrough, Geffen, 2005.
Reflections (A Retrospective), Geffen, 2006.
Growing Pains, Geffen, 2007.
Soul is Forever: The Remix Album, RGS, 2008.
Sources
Periodicals
Atlanta Journal, November 29, 1994.
Billboard, January 16, 1993; August 9, 2003; January 7, 2006; February 4, 2006; December 16, 2006.
Boston Globe, December 15, 1994.
Ebony, August 2002; March 2004.
Entertainment Weekly, August 7, 1992; November 20, 1992; December 3, 1993; November 25, 1994.
Essence, March 1995; April 2001.
Evening Sun (Baltimore, MD), December 2, 1994.
Hollywood Reporter, February 7, 2002.
Interview, September 2001, p. 164.
Jet, July 3, 2000; October 16, 2000; December 25, 2000; October 1, 2001; September 1, 2003; January 23, 2006; July 17, 2006; December 11, 2006; December 25, 2006.
Music Week, December 16, 2006.
Newsweek, August 25, 2003.
People, December 5, 1994.
PR Newswire, October 12, 2000; February 12, 2001; March 13, 2001; April 10, 2001.
Rolling Stone, April 15, 1993.
Source, January 1995.
Stereo Review, April 1993.
Vibe, February 1995.
Washington Post, November 27, 1994.
WWD, December 12, 2005.
Online
"The Continuing Drama of Mary J. Blige," Rolling Stone.com,http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/9447919/the_continuing_drama_of_mary_j_blige (March 10, 2006).
E! Online, http://www.eonline.com (November 26, 2003).
"Growing Pains review," Rolling Stone.com,http://www.rollingstone.com (December 13, 2007).
"Mary J. Blige," All Music Guide,http://www.allmusic.com (June 16, 2008).
"Mary J. Blige," Internet Movie Database,http://www.imdb.com (June 16, 2008).
"Mary J. Blige," Mary J. Blige and Steve Stoute Foundation for the Advancement of Women Now,http://www.ffawn.org (June 22, 2008).
"Q&A: Mary J. Blige," Rolling Stone.com,http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/13153301/qa_mary_j_blige (January 25, 2007).
Additional information for this profile was obtained from Uptown Records publicity materials.
—Ondine E. Le Blanc and Ken Burke
MARY J. BLIGE
Born: Bronx, New York, 11 January 1971
Genre: R&B, Hip-Hop
Best-selling album since 1990: Share My World (1997)
Hit songs since 1990: "You Remind Me," "Real Love," "Not Gon' Cry"
During the 1990s Mary J. Blige helped usher rhythm and blues music into the hip-hop era, becoming known as "The Queen of Hip-Hop Soul." Blige's longevity was due in part to producers who crafted complex, distinctive, and likable rhythms behind her vocals, but a more important key to her success was the personal artistic current that ran through her work. While her contemporaries such as Whitney Houston and Toni Braxton largely confined their work to love ballads, Blige used music to explore the travails of her life, bringi
|
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| 84
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https://www.inquirer.com/philly/entertainment/mary-j-blige-delights-a-drenched-philly-crowd-20170705.html
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Mary J. Blige delights a drenched Philly crowd
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[
"Dan DeLuca"
] |
2017-07-04T22:40:27-04:00
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After a rain delay, Blige delivers a long and impassioned show for fans.
|
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https://www.inquirer.com
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https://www.inquirer.com/philly/entertainment/mary-j-blige-delights-a-drenched-philly-crowd-20170705.html
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After a rain delay, Blige delivers a long and impassioned show for fans.
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https://www.tiktok.com/%40inspirable_thoughts/video/7280499998070934827
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Make Your Day
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|
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php%3Ffbid%3D10153738507398996%26id%3D5243588995%26set%3Da.443854518995
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en
|
Facebook
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https://static.xx.fbcdn.net/rsrc.php/yv/r/B8BxsscfVBr.ico
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https://static.xx.fbcdn.net/rsrc.php/yv/r/B8BxsscfVBr.ico
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[
"https://facebook.com/security/hsts-pixel.gif?c=3.2.5"
] |
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""
] | null |
[] | null |
Sieh dir auf Facebook Beiträge, Fotos und vieles mehr an.
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de
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https://static.xx.fbcdn.net/rsrc.php/yv/r/B8BxsscfVBr.ico
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https://www.facebook.com/login/
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FactBench
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1
| 12
|
http://westchester.news12.com/mary-j-bliges-road-to-the-rock-roll-hall-of-fame-started-in-yonkers-public-housing
|
en
|
Mary J. Blige’s Road to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame started in Yonkers public housing
|
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The Yonkers community is celebrating as it was announced that singer, songwriter, and actress, Mary J. Blige, will be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
|
en
|
News 12 - Westchester
|
http://westchester.news12.com/mary-j-bliges-road-to-the-rock-roll-hall-of-fame-started-in-yonkers-public-housing
|
The Yonkers community is celebrating as it was announced that singer, songwriter, and actress, Mary J. Blige, will be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Jessica McMullen
•
Apr 23, 2024, 1:08 AM
•
Updated 88 days ago
Share:
The Yonkers community is celebrating a momentous day as it was announced that singer, songwriter, and actress, Mary J. Blige, will be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
The Hall of Fame credits her with singlehandedly starting the ‘hip-hop soul’ genre. With 37 Grammy nominations and nine wins, Blige has spearheaded the genre and has often been referred to as the “Queen of Hip-Hop Soul” and “Queen of R&B.”
The 53-year-old’s career began in 1998 when she was signed to Uptown Records. Blige made a name for herself by becoming both Uptown Records’ youngest and first female artist.
News 12’s Carol Wilkinson went to Blige’s former home and spoke with friends who knew she would make it big.
|
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correct_birth_00056
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FactBench
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2
| 47
|
https://www.instagram.com/mathi.nicole/p/C6-B89loRnE/
|
en
|
This is New-York 🗽 Mary J. Blige, Pepsi ®, Live Nation Urban, and MVD Inc presented the third annual Strength of a Woman Summit, last...
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742 likes, 117 comments - mathi.nicole on May 14, 2024: "This is New-York 🗽
Mary J. Blige, Pepsi ®, Live Nation Urban, and MVD Inc presented the third annual Strength of a Woman Summit, last Saturday, May 11th at 📍The Glasshouse in New York City.
Key speakers included Taraji P Henson, Tasha Smith, Angie Martinez, Jess Hilarious, Claire Sulmers, Misa Hylton, Marsai Martin, Larenz Tate, Method Man, Mary J. Blige, and more!
A beautiful moment and so much wisdom in their words 🙏💞 (Mary J !!!😍🔥😍🔥😍)
A panel about empowerment, elevation, education wellness, entrepreneurship, beauty, style, culture, financial freedom, and health equity.
A big Thank you to @mvdinc @soawfestival @livenationurban and and all the sponsors @Pepsi, Verizon, The American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP), Mielle Organics, and @STARZ
We got so many goodies 😍 🌸
(flowers, hair products and jewelry)
With my sista @lyapouleyy
Stay tuned for more events ⬆️
-
Folow @mathi.nicole for NYC content.
-
Hold on, who’s a Mary J fan??🙋♀️".
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Instagram
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https://www.instagram.com/p/C6-B89loRnE/?img_index=mathi.nicole
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correct_birth_00056
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FactBench
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| 7
|
https://www.aol.com/yonkers-legend-mary-j-blige-171223564.html
|
en
|
Yonkers legend Mary J. Blige among 2024 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductees
|
https://s.yimg.com/ny/api/res/1.2/vZ01OjQP..k7N9K5yu8XsA--/YXBwaWQ9aGlnaGxhbmRlcjt3PTEyMDA7aD04MDA-/https://media.zenfs.com/en/aol_gannett_aggregated_707/09e17524bc052006016f62b35b355dc0
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[
"Rock & Roll Hall of Fame",
"Yonkers",
"Ryan Seacrest",
"Lionel Richie",
"Rock ‘n’ roll",
"Fame honoree",
"Ozzy Osbourne"
] | null |
[
"Alexandra Rivera, Rockland/Westchester Journal News",
"AOL Staff"
] |
2024-04-23T17:12:23+00:00
|
The Yonkers native will be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland on Oct. 19.
|
en
|
https://www.lohud.com/story/news/local/westchester/yonkers/2024/04/23/yonkers-ny-native-mary-j-blige-chosen-for-rock-and-roll-hall-of-fame/73423417007/
|
Yonkers hip-hop and R&B legend Mary J. Blige will be one of the newest performers inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame this October.
American Idol host Ryan Seacrest and 2022 Hall of Fame honoree Lionel Richie announced the inductees live on ABC Sunday during a "Rock & Roll Hall of Fame" episode of the show.
Blige, 53, is joined in this class by other notable inductees, including Cher, A Tribe Called Quest, Peter Frampton, Ozzy Osbourne and the Dave Matthews Band.
“Rock ‘n’ roll is an ever-evolving amalgam of sounds that impacts culture and moves generations,” Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Foundation chairman John Sykes said in a release. “This diverse group of inductees each broke down musical barriers and influenced countless artists that followed in their footsteps.”
In order to be nominated, a music artist or act must have released its first commercial song at least 25 years before the nomination year. Blige was first nominated for the Hall of Fame in 2021.
The Westchester native took to Instagram Sunday evening to express her gratitude for the nomination, which coincides with the 30th anniversary of her second album My Life, released in 1994.
Raised in Yonkers; recorded demo at Galleria
Blige was born in the Bronx and raised in Yonkers' William A. Schlobohm housing projects, now known as Palisade Towers after its renovation in 2019.
In the 2021 documentary, "My Life," she spoke about her childhood in Yonkers and her experiences with trauma, and with drug and alcohol use in her teen years, before her rise to stardom.
Blige signed with Uptown Records in 1989 after recording artist Jeff Redd heard a demo of her singing Anita Baker's "Caught Up in the Rapture," which she recorded at an empty recording booth at the former Galleria Mall in White Plains. She became the label's youngest and first female artist.
She released her debut album, "What's the 411?", in 1992. It peaked at number 6 on the Billboard Hot 200 album chart and gave Blige her first top 10 radio hit with "Real Love," which peaked at number 7 on the Hot 100 charts.
"Her debut singlehandedly kick-started the hip-hop soul genre," the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame said. "Her image – oversized jerseys, backwards baseball hats, and combat boots – introduced a new look to R&B music, and her lyrics embraced an authenticity that resonated with fans – especially women."
Since then, Blige has gone on to release 15 studio albums, eight of which went multi-platinum, win nine Grammy Awards and sell over 50 million albums.
Her most recent album, Good Morning Gorgeous, was released in February 2022, just days before she performed at the Super Bowl LVI halftime show in Los Angeles with Eminem, Dr. Dre and 50 Cent. The halftime show earned her her first Emmy award.
Locally, September 17 was designated Mary J. Blige Day in 2020 by Yonkers Mayor Mike Spano. She was also honored with a star on the Apollo Walk of Fame in Harlem in 2021.
"Blige’s music echoes our experiences with love and life. She helps us move on, move out, and move up," the Hall of Fame said. "She’s the much-needed soundtrack to our heartache, vulnerability, and courage to refuse to accept anything less than we deserve."
This year's Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony will be held on Oct. 19 at the Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse in Cleveland. The ceremony will be streamed live on Disney Plus.
|
||||
correct_birth_00056
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| 51
|
http://bronx.news12.com/mary-j-blige-produces-2-new-movies-set-to-premiere-on-lifetime
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en
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Mary J. Blige produces 2 new movies set to premiere on Lifetime
|
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Her new movies "Real Love" and "Strength of a Woman" are premiering on Lifetime on June 10 and continuing June 17.
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News 12 - The Bronx
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http://bronx.news12.com/mary-j-blige-produces-2-new-movies-set-to-premiere-on-lifetime
|
Her new movies "Real Love" and "Strength of a Woman" are premiering on Lifetime on June 10 and continuing June 17.
News 12 Staff
•
Jun 10, 2023, 2:26 AM
•
Updated 411 days ago
Share:
Mary J. Blige is adding a new title to the top of her resume alongside hip-hop trailblazer and R&B artist – executive movie producer.
Her new movies "Real Love" and "Strength of a Woman" are premiering on Lifetime on June 10 and continuing June 17. Blige says the movies are based off of two of her biggest hits.
"From the time I wrote 'Real Love,' until now, I have evolved into a very strong woman that cares about herself and loves herself. And this movie represents this,” said Blige.
News 12’s Jordan Kissane sits down one-on-one with the iconic artist about her transition into movie production and the meaning behind her films.
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https://ru.pinterest.com/pin/570549846527213938/
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https://academickids.com/encyclopedia/index.php/Mary_J._Blige
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en
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Mary J. Blige
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Mary Jane Blige (born January 11, 1971) is a popular African-American R&B and soul singer, songwriter and producer. She was born in The Bronx, New York but grew up in the housing projects of Yonkers, eventually dropping out of school before graduating.
Blige's musical career began after she recorded "Caught Up in the Rapture" (Anita Baker) with a mall karaoke machine in 1989. The tape found its way to Uptown Records, who signed her as a back-up singer. Up-and-coming producer Sean "Puffy" Combs took an interest, however, and helped her with her critically acclaimed debut, What's the 411?, released in 1992. The album's blend of of hip hop and soul music created a new genre of music for female artists and earned Blige the distinction as the "Queen of Hip Hop Soul".
The follow-up, My Life, while less commercially successful than its predecessor, was an artist renaissance. My Life became one of the most influential R&B albums of the 90's and would pave the groundwork for some of today's female R&B singers. After Uptown folded in 1994, Mary remained an artist for MCA Records throughout the 90s. In 1996 Blige scored a #2 hit with "Not Gon' Cry," a song she contributed to the soundtrack for the movie Waiting To Exhale. With Share My World, released in 1997, Blige began working with Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis; the album was a commercial success, though reviews were mixed. After two years, Blige released her fourth and most critically-acclaimed album, Mary in 1999. The album sold over two million copies.
In 2001, Blige's fifth album, No More Drama was released. The first single, "Family Affair," shot straight to number one on Billboard's pop charts in the fall of 2001, becoming Blige's biggest hit single to date. The title track and "Rainy Dayz" featuring Ja Rule, a popular rapper at the time, also became two of Blige's biggest pop hits to date in 2002. The title song on this album borrowed the piano melody from the theme song to the soap opera The Young and the Restless.
At the Grammy Awards in early 2002, Blige created one of the best performances of the award show's history by going into an emotional version of No More Drama where she was seen crying at the end. After signing with Geffen after MCA folded in 2003, Blige released her sixth studio release, Love & Life. The album, featuring the Top 40 hit, "Love at First Sight" was certified Platinum.
Mary J. Blige is a 3-time Grammy award winner. One of which was her first for Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group with rapper Method Man on their cover of the classic Marvin Gaye & Tammi Terrell single "You're All I Need to Get By", retitled "I'll Be There For You/You're All I Need", in 1996. Blige is also an American Music Award and Soul Train Music award winner and won her first MTV Video Music Award for the video for "No More Drama" in 2002.
Blige is currently working on a new record, scheduled for a 2005 release.
Discography
Albums
What's the 411? (1992) US: #6 3x Platinum
What's the 411?: The Remix Album (1993) US: #118 Gold
My Life (1994) US: #7 3x Platinum
Share My World (1997) US: #1 UK: #8 3x Platinum
The Tour (1998) US: #21 Gold
Mary (1999) US: #2 UK: #5 2x Platinum
No More Drama (2001) US: #2 UK: #20 2x Platinum
No More Drama (Re-Release) (2002) US: #3 UK: #4
Dance for Me (2002) US: #76
Love & Life (2003) US: #1 UK: #8 Platinum
Singles
"You Remind Me" (1992) R&B: #1 US: #29
"Real Love" (1992) R&B: #1 US: #7 UK: #26
"Reminisce" (1992) R&B: #6 US: #57 UK: #31
"Sweet Thing" (1993) R&B: #11 US: #28
"I Don't Want to Do Anything" (1993) R&B: #86
"Love No Limit" (1993) R&B: #5 US: #44
"You Don't Have to Worry" (1994) R&B: #11 US: #63 UK: #36
"Be Happy" (1994) R&B: #6 US: #29 UK: #30
"My Love" (1994) R&B: #23 UK: #29
"I'm Going Down" (1995) R&B: #13 US: #22 UK: #12
"Mary Jane (All Night Long)" (1995) UK: #17 $
"You Bring Me Joy" (1995) R&B: #29
"I Love You" (1995) US: #57
"(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman" (1995) R&B: #39 US: #95 UK: #23
"Not Gon' Cry" (1996) R&B: #1 US: #2 UK: #39
"I Can Love You" (1997) R&B: #2 US: #28
"Everything" (1997) R&B: #5 US: #24 UK: #6
"Love Is All We Need" (1997) UK: #15
"Missing You" (1997) UK: #19 $
"Seven Days" (1998) UK: #22 $
"All That I Can Say" (1999) R&B: #6 US: #44 UK: #29
"Deep Inside" (1999) R&B: #9 US: #51
"Your Child" (1999) R&B: #23
"Give Me You" (2000) R&B: #21 US: #68 UK: #19
"Family Affair" (2001) R&B: #1 US: #1 UK: #8
Dance for Me (2002) UK: #13 $
"No More Drama" (2002) R&B: #16 US: #15 UK: #9
"Rainy Dayz" (2002) R&B: #8 US: #12 UK: #17
"He Don't Think I Know" (2002) %
"Love @ 1st Sight" (2003) R&B: #10 US: #22 UK: #18
"Ooh!" (2003) R&B: #14 US: #29
"Not Today" (2004) R&B: #21 US: #41 UK: #40
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correct_birth_00056
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2019-01-11T23:35:16+00:00
|
Iconic GRAMMY Award-winning singer, songwriter, actress and philanthropist, Mary J. Blige—a.k.a. the “Queen of R&B”—is a figure of inspiration, transformation, and empowerment, making her one of the defining voices of the contemporary music era. With 13 total albums including eight multi-platinum albums, nine GRAMMY Awards, Golden Globe nominations, and five American Music Awards, Blige is a global superstar. […]
|
en
|
UMe | Official Website
|
https://www.umgcatalog.com/artist/mary-j-blige/
|
Mary J. Blige
Biography
Iconic GRAMMY Award-winning singer, songwriter, actress and philanthropist, Mary J. Blige—a.k.a. the “Queen of R&B”—is a figure of inspiration, transformation, and empowerment, making her one of the defining voices of the contemporary music era. With 13 total albums including eight multi-platinum albums, nine GRAMMY Awards, Golden Globe nominations, and five American Music Awards, Blige is a global superstar. The Bronx singer/songwriter started out as a backing singer signed to Uptown Records. Her debut studio album, What’s The 411?, dropped in 1992. Over the last 25 years, Blige has gained an intensely loyal fan base—responsible for propelling worldwide sales of more than 50 million albums—and become a true icon in every sense of the word. She’s been recognized as the best performing R&B artist to date, with over 33 of her singles hitting the Billboard Hot 100. With over 30 GRAMMY nominations and two Academy Award nominations just this year, Blige is keeping her legacy alive for years to come.
Releases
Mudbound (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
Strength Of A Woman
Strength Of A Woman
The London Sessions
Think Like a Man Too (Music from and Inspired by the Film)
A Mary Christmas
My Life II...The Journey Continues (Act 1)
My Life II...The Journey Continues (Act 1) [Deluxe Version]
Stronger withEach Tear
Growing Pains
Reflections - A Retrospective
The Breakthrough
The Breakthrough
The Breakthrough
Love & Life
Dance For Me
No More Drama
No More Drama
Mary (Limited Edition Bonus Pack)
Mary
The Tour
Share My World
My Life
What's The 411?
What's The 411?
Only Love
Love Yourself (Remix)
U + Me (Love Lesson)
Thick Of It
World’s Gone Crazy (The View Theme Song: Season 20)
Right Now (Remix)
A Night to Remember
Moment of Love
Suitcase
I Am (Remixes)
Love No Limit (Remixes)
Stairway To Heaven
I Can See In Color
The One
Just Fine (Treat 'Em Right Remix featuring Lil Wayne)
Be Without You (Moto Blanco Vocal Mix)
The Best Of My Love (Gap Holiday Version)
Love @ 1st Sight
Love @ 1st Sight
Family Affair (Remixes)
Be Happy (Remixes)
Real Love (Remixes)
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correct_birth_00056
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FactBench
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https://www.8notes.com/biographies/blige.asp
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Mary J Blige biography
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Mary J Blige Biography - 8notes.com
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Mary Jane Blige (born January 11, 1971) is an American R&B and soul singer, songwriter and producer. She was born in The Bronx, New York but grew up in the housing projects of Yonkers, eventually dropping out of school before graduating.
Blige's musical career began after she recorded 'Caught Up in the Rapture' (Anita Baker) with a mall karaoke machine in 1989. The tape found its way to Uptown Records, who signed her as a back-up singer. Up-and-coming producer Sean 'Puffy' Combs took an interest, however, and helped her with her critically acclaimed debut, What's the 411?, released in 1992. The album's mix of hip hop and soul music is sometimes called the beginning of nu soul.
The follow-up, My Life, while less successful than its predecessor, became an influential R&B album and would pave the groundwork for some of today's female R&B singers. After Uptown folded in 1994, Mary remained an artist for MCA Records throughout the 90s. In 1996 Blige scored a #2 hit with 'Not Gon' Cry,' a song she contributed to the soundtrack for the movie Waiting To Exhale. With Share My World, released in 1997, Blige began working with Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis; the album was a commercial success, though reviews were mixed. After two years, Blige released her fourth and most critically-acclaimed album, Mary in 1999. The album sold over two million copies.
In 2001, Blige's fifth album, No More Drama was released. The first single, 'Family Affair,' shot straight to number one on Billboard's pop charts in the fall of 2001, becoming Blige's biggest hit single to date. The title track and 'Rainy Dayz' featuring Ja Rule, one of the most popular rappers of the time, also became two of Blige's biggest pop hits to date in 2002. The title song on this album borrowed the piano melody from the theme song to the soap opera The Young and the Restless.
At the Grammy Awards in early 2002, Blige created one of the best performances of the award show's history by going into an emotional version of No More Drama where she was seen crying at the end. After signing with Geffen after MCA folded in 2003, Blige released her sixth studio release, Love & Life. The album, featuring the Top 40 hit, Love at First Sight was certified Platinum.
Mary J. Blige is a 3-time Grammy award winner. One of which was her first for Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group with rapper Method Man on their remake of the classic Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell single, You're All I Need to Get By, retitled I'll Be There For You/You're All I Need, in 1996. Blige is also an American Music Award and Soul Train Music award winner and won her first MTV Video Music Award for the video for No More Drama in 2002.
Blige is currently working on a new record, scheduled for a 2005 release.
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correct_birth_00056
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FactBench
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https://thesource.com/2024/05/14/mary-j-bliges-strength-of-a-woman-festival-takes-new-york-city-by-storm/
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Mary J. Blige’s Strength of a Woman Festival Takes New York City by Storm
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2024-05-14T00:00:00
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Over the weekend, the third annual Strength of a Woman Festival and Summit took New York City by storm, thanks to the collaborative efforts of GRAMMY and Emmy Award-winning artist Mary J. Blige, PEPSI®, Live Nation Urban, and MVD Inc. From May 10th to May 12th, the vibrant city was swept up in a whirlwind
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The Source - The Magazine of Hip Hop Music,Culture and Politics
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https://thesource.com/2024/05/14/mary-j-bliges-strength-of-a-woman-festival-takes-new-york-city-by-storm/
|
Over the weekend, the third annual Strength of a Woman Festival and Summit took New York City by storm, thanks to the collaborative efforts of GRAMMY and Emmy Award-winning artist Mary J. Blige, PEPSI®, Live Nation Urban, and MVD Inc. From May 10th to May 12th, the vibrant city was swept up in a whirlwind of music, empowerment sessions, industry speakers, and heartfelt testimonials, all under the banner of female empowerment. The event-filled weekend included appearances by Taraji P. Henson, 50 Cent, Funk Flex, Jill Scott, Tasha Smith, Method Man, Marsai Martin, Larenz Tate, Angie Martinez, Pinky Cole, Robert Glasper, Crystal Hayslett, Jess Hilarious, The Lox, Misa Hylton, Bevy Smith, Claire Sulmers, Michael Rainey Jr., The Clark Sisters, and many more!
The festival, created and curated by Mary J. Blige herself, marked a significant milestone for the iconic American sports franchise, the New York Giants. It celebrated a century of gridiron greatness through a bespoke apparel collection developed in collaboration with Starter, one of the most esteemed sports apparel companies globally.
Mary J. Blige, reflecting on the electrifying weekend, remarked, “This past weekend was a whirlwind in the best way possible. Getting to bring this home to NYC is something I won’t forget. Thank you to everyone who came out, to all my family who participated, and to everyone involved, including my partners at Pepsi, who made this dream come to life. Until next year!”
The festival kicked off with an intimate welcome party hosted by Mary J. Blige at Corner Social in Harlem, followed by sold-out jazz shows headlined by 5x GRAMMY-winning artist Robert Glasper at the legendary Blue Note in Greenwich Village. The evening culminated in a soulful performance by Mary J. Blige herself, alongside Glasper, leaving the audience with an inspiring mantra: “Each one, teach one, help one.”
Saturday saw the commencement of the highly-anticipated Strength of a Woman Summit at The Glasshouse, drawing over 4,000 attendees. The star-studded panels, including “Girl Talk with MJB” and “Our Men Honor the Strength of a Woman,” celebrated the magical bond of Black women’s friendships and delved into dynamic discussions led by industry luminaries.
The Summit also featured activations including a tooth gem station by Get Gem’d and a build-your-own bouquet bar. Attendees immersed themselves in “Mary’s Living Room,” featuring Sun Goddess wine and Sister Love’s jewelry designs. Pepsi Dig In Village showcased dishes from five female-owned restaurants, spotlighting the diverse flavors of the city.
The grand finale at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn saw Mary J. Blige and an ensemble of music icons, including 50 Cent, Jill Scott, Fat Joe, and Jadakiss, delivering electrifying performances. The evening celebrated the essence of Hip Hop, with surprise appearances and heartfelt tributes to “Hip Hop Moms.”
The festival concluded with a sold-out Mother’s Day Brunch Experience held at Brooklyn Chop House in Times Square. Hosted by Mary J. Blige, followed by an uplifting gospel concert presented by Femme It Forward, featuring The Clark Sisters and Jane Handcock.
This year’s festival expanded its reach across the city, embodying its mission of empowerment, elevation, and education. The event’s success was a testament to Mary J. Blige’s enduring impact and commitment to uplifting underserved communities.
As the curtains closed on another remarkable weekend, the Strength of a Woman Festival left an indelible mark on New York City, echoing Mary J. Blige’s message of love, empowerment, and resilience.
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Explore Mary J. Blige's music on Billboard. Get the latest news, biography, and updates on the artist.
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Billboard
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https://www.billboard.com/artist/mary-j-blige/
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I'll Be There For You/You're All I Need To Get By
Method Man Featuring Mary J. Blige
3 12 Wks
20
(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman (From "New York Undercover")
Mary J. Blige
95 12 Wks
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Who is Mary J. Blige? Age, net worth, hometown & more to know about Super Bowl halftime performer
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2022-02-13T13:47:00+00:00
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Here are a few things you should know about Mary J. Blige before she takes the stage for the Super Bowl 56 halftime show.
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Everyone step aside. The Queen of Hip-Hop Soul is coming through.
Mary J. Blige is set to join Dr. Dre, Eminem, Snoop Dogg and Kendrick Lamar on Sunday at SoFi Stadium for the Super Bowl 56 halftime show. The five music legends have combined for a total of 43 Grammy Awards and produced numerous hit songs, so they are expected to deliver stellar performances when the Bengals and Rams head to their locker rooms.
"I had the chance to sit back and watch [Blige's] set, and it gave me goosebumps," Dr. Dre said at the pre-Super Bowl press conference. "So, if I'm getting them, I know what the audience is gonna feel when she hits the stage. ... I'm not blowing smoke. I literally got goosebumps."
Here are a few things you should know about Blige before she takes the stage for the Super Bowl 56 halftime show.
MORE: Complete history of Super Bowl halftime show performers
How old is Mary J. Blige?
Mary Jane Blige is 51 years old. She was born on Jan. 11, 1971, in the Bronx, N.Y. She spent the first few years of her life moving around before settling in Yonkers, telling People in 2020 that growing up there was "very, very hard."
"I sang a lot. I just sang. It made me feel better," Blige said. "I'd wake up in the morning singing and go to bed singing and it just made me feel great. ... What made it hard was the environment. It was a lot of people hurting — trying to survive and the environment was just terrible. That's all I can say. Everybody did what they had to do to survive."
At 17 years old, Blige recorded a version of Anita Baker's "Caught Up in the Rapture," and the song found its way to Uptown Records. The label signed Blige, and she worked as a backup singer until she released her first solo album, "What's the 411?," in 1992. Sean "Puff Daddy" Combs served as a producer on the album, which achieved great commercial success.
Mary J. Blige net worth
Blige's net worth is $20 million, according to Celebrity Net Worth. She has built her fortune through her music and acting careers as well as endorsement deals with various brands.
MORE: How much are Super Bowl halftime show performers paid?
Where is Mary J. Blige from?
Blige is a proud New Yorker. While she had a rough upbringing, she considers the city "one of my favorite places."
"New York is just amazing and people need to know how amazing it is," Blige told People. "There's too much fun, too many things to eat, too many places to go and so many places to shop in New York."
MORE HALFTIME SHOW: 5 best performances ever | 5 worst performances ever
Mary J. Blige's family life
Is Mary J. Blige married?
Blige married her former manager Martin "Kendu" Isaacs in 2003, but she filed for divorce in 2016. The divorce was finalized in 2018 after a lengthy legal battle.
Blige does not have any biological children. Issacs had three children before starting his relationship with Blige.
Mary J. Blige's songs
"Be Without You"
"Family Affair"
"Just Fine"
"Not Gon' Cry"
"Real Love"
Super Bowl 56 halftime show trailer
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Today is Mary J. Blige’s 52nd birthday. Born in The Bronx section of New York City, she grew up in Richmond Hill, Georgia and sang in a...
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11 likes, 2 comments - _thenerdsocial on January 11, 2023: "Today is Mary J. Blige’s 52nd birthday. Born in The Bronx section of New York City, she grew up in Richmond Hill, Georgia and sang in a Pentecostal church. Then, she moved back with her family to Yonkers. Due to family and personal traumas, she dropped out of high school in her junior year to pursue a musical career. In 1989, she signed with Uptown Records and became the company’s youngest and first female artist. She released her first album with 1992’s What’s the 411? which launched her into superstardom and she became the “Queen of Hip Hop Soul”. Her second album, My Life, was on Time’s 100 greatest albums of all-time list.
Although better known for her music, Blige has done a lot of acting as she first appeared in The Jaime Foxx Show (HBO Max). Since then, she has made appearances on the series Ghost Whisperer (The Roku Channel and Hulu), Entourage (HBO Max), 30 Rock (Peacock), and The Wiz Live! (Apple TV). In addition, her movie credits include I Can Do Bad All by Myself (Amazon Prime Video), Rock of Ages (Tubi), Betty and Coretta (Amazon Prime Video), and Mudbound (Netflix) where she has earned many award nominations (Golden Globe, Academy Award, Critic’s Choice, and SAG). She became the first person to be nominated for an Academy Award in acting and original song in the same year.
More recently, you can see Blige in Sherlock Gnomes (Amazon Prime Video), Trolls World Tour (Hulu), Scream: Resurrection, The Umbrella Academy (Netflix), Power Book II: Ghost (STARZ), and the Aretha Franklin biopic Respect (Amazon Prime Video). What happens to be your favorite Mary J. Blige movie or television role over the years?
#maryjblige
#whatsthe411
#mylife
#QueenOfHipHopSoul
#thejaimefoxxshow
#HBOMax
#GhostWhisperer
#TheRokuChannel
#hulu
#entourage
#30rock
#PeacockTV
#TheWizLive
#appletv
#ICanDoBadAllByMyself
#AmazonPrimeVideo
#rockofages
#tubitv
#bettyandcoretta
#Mudbound
#SherlockGnomes
#TrollsWorldTour
#ScreamResurrection
#TheUmbrellaAcademy
#Netflix
#PowerBook2
#STARZ
#Respect".
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2024-07-03T16:38:30+00:00
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Mary Jane Blige (Script error: No such module "IPAc-en".; born January 11, 1971) is an American singer-songwriter, actress, and philanthropist. Her career began in 1991 when she signed to Uptown Records.[1] Furthermore, she went on to release 13 studio albums, eight of which have achieved...
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American singer-songwriterTemplate:SHORTDESC:American singer-songwriter
Mary Jane Blige (Script error: No such module "IPAc-en".; born January 11, 1971) is an American singer-songwriter, actress, and philanthropist. Her career began in 1991 when she signed to Uptown Records.[1] Furthermore, she went on to release 13 studio albums, eight of which have achieved multi-platinum worldwide sales. Blige has won nine Grammy Awards, four American Music Awards, twelve Billboard Music Awards and has also received three Golden Globe Award nominations, including one for her supporting role in the film Mudbound (2017) and another for its second original song "Mighty River" for Mudbound; she also received a nomination for the Academy Awards for Best Supporting Actress and Best Original Song, becoming the first person nominated for acting and songwriting in the same year. Since 2019, she stars in the Netflix superhero series The Umbrella Academy as Cha-Cha.
In 1992, Blige released her first album, What's the 411?.[4] Her 1994 album My Life is among Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time,[5] and Time magazine's All-Time 100 Albums.[6] She received a Legends Award at the World Music Awards in 2006, and the Voice of Music Award from ASCAP in 2007.[7] Billboard ranked Blige as the most successful female R&B/Hip-Hop artist of the past 25 years.[8] In 2017, Billboard magazine named her 2006 song "Be Without You" as the most successful R&B/Hip-Hop song of all time, as it spent an unparalleled 15 weeks atop the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart and over 75 weeks on the chart.[9] In 2011, VH1 ranked Blige as the 80th greatest artist of all time.[10] ln 2012, VH1 ranked Blige at number 9 in "The 100 Greatest Women in Music" list.[11]
Life and career[]
1971–1990: From early life to start of career[]
Blige was born on January 11, 1971 in New York, in the borough of The Bronx, but spent some time in Savannah, Georgia until she was 7. Afterwards she and her family moved back to New York and resided in the Schlobohm Housing Projects, located in Yonkers, New York.[12] She was born to mother Cora, a nurse, and father Thomas Blige, a Jazz musician. She is the second of three children. She has an older sister LaTonya Blige-DaCosta, and brother, Bruce Miller.[13][14] The family subsisted on her mother's earnings as a nurse after her father left the family in the mid-1970s,[15] a former alcoholic and the latter a Vietnam War veteran who suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder.[12] Blige spent her early years in Richmond Hill, Georgia, where she sang in a Pentecostal church.[16]
At the age of five, she was molested by a family friend, and as a teenager she endured years of sexual harassment from peers of both sexes. She briefly taught herself boxing in an effort to defend and protect herself.[17] She would eventually turn to alcohol, drugs and promiscuous sex to try and numb the pain.[18]
Blige later moved to Schlobohm Houses in Yonkers, New York, immediately north of New York City, where she lived with her mother and older sister.[19] Blige dropped out of high school in her junior year.[19]
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.[13] Redd sent it to the president and CEO of the label, Andre Harrell. Harrell met with Blige and in 1989 she was signed to the label as a backup vocalist for artists such as Father MC,[20] becoming the company's youngest and first female artist.[16]
1991–1996: What’s The 411? and My Life[]
After being signed to Uptown, Blige began working with record producer Sean Combs, also known as Puff Daddy.[21] He became the executive producer and produced a majority of the album.[22] The title, What's the 411?, derived from Blige's past occupation as a 4-1-1 operator;[23] it was also an indication by Blige of being the "real deal".[24] "What's the 411" nevertheless established Blige as a dynamic storyteller whose performances of love narrative drew upon both her musical influences and her lived experiences as a hip-hop-generation woman.[25] The music was described as "revelatory on a frequent basis".[19] Blige was noted for having a "tough girl persona and streetwise lyrics".[26] On July 28, 1992, Uptown/MCA Records released What's the 411?, to positive reviews from critics.[27] What's the 411? peaked at number six on the Billboard 200 and topped the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart.[28] It also peaked at number 53 on the UK Albums Chart.[29] It was certified three times Platinum by the RIAA.[30] According to Entertainment Weekly's 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".[31] According to Dave McAleer, Blige became the most successful new female R&B artist of 1992 in the United States.[32]
What's the 411? earned her two Soul Train Music Awards in 1993: Best New R&B Artist and Best R&B Album, Female.[33] 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.[34] By August 2010, the album had sold 3,318,000 copies in the US.[35] What's the 411? has since been viewed by critics as one of the 1990s' most important records.[27] Blige's combination of vocals over a hip hop beat proved influential in contemporary R&B.[36] 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.[37] 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,[38] which was reported in several tabloids. 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 Blender's list of the 100 greatest American albums of all time.[39] The following year, Rolling Stone placed it at number 279 on their 500 Greatest Albums of All Time,[40] and in 2006, the record was included in Time's 100 greatest albums of all-time list.[41]
Blige involved herself in several outside projects, recording a cover of Aretha Franklin's "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman" for the soundtrack to the FOX series New York Undercover, and "Everyday It Rains" (co-written by R&B singer Faith Evans) 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 Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group for her collaboration with Method Man. Shortly after, Blige was featured on Jay Z's breakthrough single, "Can't Knock the Hustle" from his debut Reasonable Doubt (1996) 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 (1996) including the US top 20 hit, "Touch Me, Tease Me", which also featured then up-and-coming rapper Foxy Brown.
1997–2001: Share My World and Mary[]
On April 22, 1997, MCA Records (parent company to Uptown Records, which was in the process of being dismantled) released Blige's third album, Share My World. By then, she and Combs had dissolved their working relationship. In his place were the Trackmasters, who executive-produced the project along with Steve Stoute. Sharing production duties were producers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, R. Kelly, Babyface and Rodney Jerkins. The album was made at a time when Blige was trying to "get her life together", by trying to overcome drugs and alcohol, as well as the ending of her relationship with Hailey. After an encounter with a person who threatened her life the previous year, she tried to quit the unhealthy lifestyle and make more upbeat, happier music. As a result, songs such as "Love Is All We Need" and "Share My World" were made. Share My World debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 and spawned five hit singles: "Love Is All We Need" (featuring Nas), "I Can Love You" (featuring Lil' Kim), "Everything", "Missing You" (UK only) and "Seven Days" (featuring George Benson). In February 1997, Blige performed her hit at the time, "Not Gon' Cry", at the 1997 Grammy Awards, which gained her a third Grammy Award nomination, her first for Best Female R&B Vocal Performance, as Blige was recording the follow-up to My Life. In early 1998, Blige won an American Music Award for "Favorite Soul/R&B Album". That summer, she embarked on the Share My World Tour, which resulted in a Gold-certified live album released later that year, simply titled The Tour. The album spawned one single, "Misty Blue".
On August 17, 1999, Blige's fourth album, titled Mary was released. It marked a departure from her more familiar hip hop-oriented sound; this set featured a more earthy, whimsical, and adult contemporary-tinged collection of songs, reminiscent of the 1970s to early 1980s soul. She also appeared on In Concert: A Benefit for the Crossroads Centre at Antigua with Eric Clapton in 1999. On December 14, 1999, the album was re-released as a double-disc set. The second disc was enhanced with the music videos for the singles "All That I Can Say" and "Deep Inside" and included two bonus tracks: "Sincerity" (featuring Nas, Andy Hogan and DMX) and "Confrontation" (a collaboration with hip hop duo Funkmaster Flex & Big Kap originally from their 1999 album The Tunnel). The Mary album was critically praised, becoming her most nominated release to date, and was certified double platinum. It was not as commercially successful as Blige's prior releases, though all of the singles: "All That I Can Say", "Deep Inside", "Your Child", and "Give Me You" performed considerably on the radio. In the meantime, MCA used the album to expand Blige's demographic into the nightclub market, as club-friendly dance remixes of the Mary singles were released. The club remix of "Your Child" peaked at number-one on the Billboard's Hot Dance Club Play chart in October 2000. In 2001, a Japan-only compilation, Ballads, was released. The album featured covers of Stevie Wonder's "Overjoyed", and previous recordings of Aretha Franklin's "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman" and Dorothy Moore's "Misty Blue". In 1999, George Michael and Mary J. Blige covered the song 'As' written by Stevie Wonder, and worldwide outside of the United States, it was the second single from George Michael's greatest hits album Ladies & Gentlemen: The Best of George Michael. It became a top ten UK pop hit, reaching number four on the chart. It was not released on the U.S. version of the greatest hits collection or as a single in the U.S. Michael cited Blige's record company president for pulling the track in America after Michael's arrest for committing a lewd act
2002–2004: No More Drama and Love & Life[]
On August 28, 2001, MCA released Blige's fifth studio album, No More Drama. The album's first single, "Family Affair" (produced by Dr. Dre) became her first number-one single on the Billboard Hot 100, where it remained for six consecutive weeks. It was followed by two further hit singles, the European only single "Dance for Me" featuring Common with samples from "The Bed's Too Big Without You" by The Police, and the Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis-produced title track (originally recorded for the Mary album), which sampled "Nadia's Theme", the piano-driven theme song to the daytime drama The Young and the Restless. Though the album sold nearly two million copies in the U.S., MCA was underwhelmed by its sales, and subsequently repackaged and re-released the album on January 29, 2002. The No More Drama re-release featured a new album cover, deleted three of the songs from the original tracklisting, while adding two brand-new songs—one of which was the fourth single and top twenty Hot 100 hit "Rainy Dayz", (featuring Ja Rule), plus two remixes; one of the title track, serviced by Sean Combs/Puff Daddy and the single version of "Dance for Me" featuring Common. Blige won a Grammy for 'Best Female R&B Vocal Performance' for the song "He Think I Don't Know." In April 2002, Blige performed with Shakira with the song "Love Is a Battlefield" on VH1 Divas show live in Las Vegas, she also performed "No More Drama" and "Rainy Dayz" as a duet with the returning Whitney Houston.
On July 22, 2002, MCA released Dance for Me, a collection of club remixes of some of her past top hits including the Junior Vasquez remix of "Your Child", and the Thunderpuss mix of "No More Drama." This album was released in a limited edition double pack 12" vinyl for DJ-friendly play in nightclubs.
On August 26, 2003, Blige's sixth album Love & Life was released on Geffen Records (which had absorbed MCA Records.) Blige heavily collaborated with her one-time producer Sean Combs for this set. Due to the history between them on What's the 411? and My Life, which is generally regarded as their best work, and Blige having just come off of a successful fifth album, expectations were high for the reunion effort.
Despite the album debuting at number one on the Billboard 200 and becoming Blige's fourth consecutive UK top ten album, Love & Life's lead-off single, the Diddy-produced "Love @ 1st Sight", which featured Method Man, barely cracked the top ten on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs, while altogether missing the top twenty on the Hot 100 (although peaking inside the UK top twenty). The following singles, "Ooh!", "Not Today" featuring Eve, "Whenever I Say Your Name" featuring Sting on the international re-release, and "It's a Wrap" fared worse. Although the album was certified platinum, it became Blige's lowest-selling to date. Critics and fans alike largely panned the disc, citing a lack of consistency and noticeable ploys to recapture the early Blige/Combs glory. Blige and Combs reportedly struggled and clashed during the making of this album, and again parted ways upon the completion of it.
The album became Blige's first album in six years to debut at number one on the Billboard 200, selling 285,298 copies in first week.[42] Love & Life received mixed reviews from music critics.[43] AllMusic gave it 4 stars and said the album "beamed with joy" and Rolling Stone gave it three stars, saying "You may not always love Blige's music, but you will feel her". The album was eventually certified Platinum by the RIAA. To date the album has sold over 1,000,000 copies in the US[44] and over 2,000,000 copies worldwide.[45] The album was nominated for the Best Contemporary R&B Album at the 46th Grammy Awards.
2005–2010: The Breakthrough, Growing Pains, Stronger & Each Tear[]
Geffen Records released Blige's seventh studio album, The Breakthrough on December 20, 2005. For the album, Blige collaborated with J.U.S.T.I.C.E. League, Rodney Jerkins, will.i.am, Bryan-Michael Cox, 9th Wonder, Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, Raphael Saadiq, Cool and Dre, and Dre & Vidal. The cover art was photographed by Markus Klinko & Indrani. It debuted at number one on both the Billboard 200 and Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums charts. Selling 727,000 copies in its first week, it became the biggest first-week sales for an R&B solo female artist in SoundScan history,[46][47] the fifth largest first-week sales for a female artist, and the fourth largest debut of 2005.
The lead-off single, "Be Without You", peaked at number three on the Billboard Hot 100, while peaking at number one on the R&B chart for a record-setting fifteen consecutive weeks; it remained on the chart for over sixteen months. "Be Without You" found success in the UK (peaking in the lower end of the top forty) it became Blige's longest charting single on the UK Singles Chart. It is her second longest charting single to date. The album produced three more singles including two more top-five R&B hits—"Enough Cryin'", which features Blige's alter ego Brook-Lynn (as whom she appeared on the remix to Busta Rhymes's "Touch It" in 2006); and "Take Me as I Am" (which samples Lonnie Liston Smith's "A Garden of Peace"). Blige's duet with U2 on the cover of their 1992 hit, "One" gave Blige her biggest hit to date in the UK, peaking at number two on the UK Singles Chart eventually being certified one of the forty highest-selling singles of 2006;[48] it was her longest charting UK single. The success of The Breakthrough won Blige nine Billboard Music Awards, two American Music Awards, two BET Awards, two NAACP Image Awards, and a Soul Train Award. She received eight Grammy Award nominations at the 2007 Grammy Awards, the most of any artist that year. "Be Without You" was nominated for both "Record of the Year" and "Song of the Year". Blige won three: "Best Female R&B Vocal Performance", "Best R&B Song" (both for "Be Without You"), and "Best R&B Album" for The Breakthrough.[49] Blige completed a season sweep of the "big three" major music awards, having won two American Music Awards in November 2006[50] and nine Billboard Music Awards in December 2006.[51]
In December 2006, a compilation called Reflections (A Retrospective) was released. It contained many of Blige's greatest hits and four new songs, including the worldwide lead single "We Ride (I See the Future)". In the UK, however, "MJB da MVP" (which appeared in a different, shorter form on The Breakthrough) was released as the lead single from the collection. The album peaked at number nine in the U.S, selling over 170,000 copies in its first week, while reaching number forty in the UK In 2006, Blige recorded a duet with rapper Ludacris, "Runaway Love", which is the third single on his fifth album, Release Therapy. It reached the top five on the Billboard Hot 100 and the R&B chart. Blige was featured with Aretha Franklin and the Harlem Boys Choir on the soundtrack to the 2006 motion picture Bobby, on the lead track "Never Gonna Break My Faith" written by Bryan Adams. The song was nominated for a Golden Globe and won the Grammy Award for Best Gospel Performance at the 50th Annual Grammy Awards.
Blige's eighth studio album, Growing Pains, was released on December 18, 2007, debuting at number two on the Billboard 200 and at number one on the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart. It sold 629,000 copies in its first week, marking the third time since Nielsen SoundScan began collecting data in 1991 that two albums sold more than 600,000 copies in a week in the United States. In its second week, the album climbed to number one, making it Blige's fourth number-one album. The lead single, "Just Fine", peaked at number twenty-two on the Billboard Hot 100 and at number three on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart. "Just Fine" was nominated for the Grammy Award for "Best Female R&B Vocal Performance", and Blige won "Best R&B Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals" for the Chaka Khan duet "Disrespectful" (featured on Khan's album Funk This) which Blige wrote.
Growing Pains was not released in the UK until February 2008, where it became Blige's fifth top ten and third-highest charting album.The Breakthrough and Reflections (A Retrospective) were released in the Christmas rush and therefore settled for lower peaks, although both selling more than her top five album Mary.[citation needed] "Just Fine" returned Blige to the UK singles chart top 20 after her previous two singles failed to chart highly. Subsequent singles from Growing Pains include "Work That", which accompanied Blige in an iTunes commercial, and "Stay Down".
Blige was featured on 50 Cent's 2007 album, Curtis, in the song "All of Me". In March 2008, she toured with Jay-Z in the Heart of the City Tour. They released a song called "You're Welcome". In the same period, cable network BET aired a special on Blige entitled The Evolution of Mary J. Blige, which showcased her career. Celebrities such as Method Man and Ashanti gave their opinions about Blige and her music. Blige is featured on singles by Big Boi, and Musiq Soulchild. Growing Pains was nominated for and won the Grammy Award for "Best Contemporary R&B Album", at the 51st Grammy Awards held on February 8, 2009, earning Blige her 27th Grammy nomination, in a mere decade. Blige went on the Growing Pains European Tour, her first tour there in two years. A tour of Australia and New Zealand was scheduled for June but was postponed due to "weariness from an overwhelming tour schedule"[52] and then eventually canceled entirely.[53]
On August 7, 2008, it was revealed Blige faced a US$2 million federal suit claiming Neff-U wrote the music for the song "Work That", but was owned by Dream Family Entertainment. The filing claimed that Dream Family never gave rights to use the song to Blige, Feemster or Geffen Records. Rights to the lyrics of the song used in an iPod commercial are not in question.[54]
Blige returned to performing in January 2009 by performing the song "Lean on Me" at the Presidential Inauguration Committee's, "We Are One: The Obama Inaugural Celebration at the Lincoln Memorial". Blige also performed her hit 2007 single, "Just Fine", with a new intro at the Neighborhood Inaugural Ball after Barack Obama was sworn in on January 20, 2009. Blige appeared as a marquee performer on the annual Christmas in Washington television special.
Blige's ninth studio album, Stronger with Each Tear, was released on December 21, 2009, debuting at number two on the Billboard 200 and at number one on the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart, selling 332,000 units in its first week of release. It became her fifth album not to take the top spot in the United States. The lead single, "The One", which features Canadian rapper Drake,[55] was released for airplay in June 2009, and was officially and digitally released in July 2009, peaking at number 63 on the Hot 100. Blige recorded "Stronger", as the lead single from the soundtrack to the basketball documentary "More than a Game" in August 2009. The second single from Stronger with Each Tear, "I Am", was released in December 2009 and reached number fifty-five on the Hot 100. The third international single from the album, "Each Tear", was remixed with different featured artists from different countries, then being released in February 2010. The single failed to chart anywhere except in the UK where it reached number one-hundred-eighty-three and in Italy where it reached number one. The album's third U.S. single, "We Got Hood Love" featuring Trey Songz, was released in March 2010 and reached number tw25 on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Singles chart though it failed to reach the Hot 100.[56] One of Blige's representatives reported to Us Weekly magazine that a tour in support of Stronger with Each Tear would begin in the fall of 2010.[57] In March 2010, Blige released Stronger with Each Tear in the United Kingdom, as well as in the European markets. The album performed modestly in the United Kingdom, debuting at number 33 on the UK Albums Chart and at number four on the UK R&B Chart. It reached the top 100 in other countries.
Blige was honored at the 2009 BET Honors Ceremony and was paid tribute by Anita Baker and Monica. On November 4, 2009, Blige sang The Star-Spangled Banner at Yankee Stadium before the New York Yankees and Philadelphia Phillies played the last game (game 6) of the World Series. Blige performed two songs from her ninth album as well as her previous hits, "No More Drama" and "Be Without You" along with the song "Color", which was featured on the Precious soundtrack. Blige appeared as a guest judge on the ninth season of American Idol on January 13, 2010.
On January 23, 2010, Blige released a track "Hard Times Come Again No More" with the Roots as well as performing it at the Hope for Haiti Now telethon. At the 2010 Grammy Awards, Blige and Andrea Bocelli performed" Bridge over Troubled Water". Blige also performed on BET's SOS Help For Haiti, singing "Gonna Make It" with Jazmine Sullivan and "One." Blige also took part in February 2010's We Are the World 25 for Haiti, singing the solo originally sung by Tina Turner in the original 1985 We Are the World version. At the 41st NAACP Image Awards Blige won Outstanding Female Artist and Outstanding Album for Stronger with Each Tear.[58] On November 18, 2010, Billboard revealed Mary J. Blige as the most successful female R&B/hip hop artist on the Top 50 R&B/Hip Hop Artists of the Past 25 Years list. She came in at number 2 overall.[59]
2011–2013: My Life II... The Journey Continues (Act 1) & A Mary Christmas[]
In January 2011, Hot 97 premiered Blige's teaser track "Someone to Love Me (Naked)" featuring vocals by Lil Wayne.[60] In July 2011, Blige released the song "The Living Proof" as the lead single to the soundtrack of the film The Help.[61] On July 24, VH1 premiered their third Behind the Music that profiled her personal and career life. In August 2011, Blige released her first single off the album, "25/8". Blige's tenth studio album, My Life II... The Journey Continues (Act 1), was released in November 2011.[62] The album, primarily recorded in Los Angeles and New York City, saw Blige looking toward the future while acknowledging the past. "From me to you, My Life II... Our journey together continues in this life," the singer explained. "It's a gift to be able to relate and identify with my fans at all times. This album is a reflection of the times and lives of people all around me." The album features production by Kanye West and the Underdogs.[63] The second single "Mr. Wrong" featuring Canadian rapper Drake was the most successful single from the album, peaking at number 10 on Billboard's R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart. The rest of the songs released, including lead single "25/8" achieved only moderate success, peaking within the top 40 on R&B/Hip-Hop Songs. The album itself debuted at #5 on the Billboard 200, selling 156,000 copies in the first week; it was eventually certified Gold in 2012 and has sold 763,000 in the US.[64]
On February 28, 2012, Blige performed "Star Spangled Banner" at the 2012 NBA All-Star Game. Blige appeared as guest mentor on American Idol on March 7, 2012, and performed "Why" on the results show the following night.[65] On September 23, 2012, Blige was a performer at the iHeartRadio Music Festival at the MGM Grand Las Vegas. Blige was featured on the song "Now or Never" from Kendrick Lamar's album Good Kid, M.A.A.D City, released on October 22, 2012.
In early 2013, reports surfaced that Blige was recording a Christmas album. The album, titled, A Mary Christmas was released on October 15, 2013, through Matriarch and Verve Records, her first release with the latter. The album includes collaborations with Barbra Streisand, the Clark Sisters, Marc Anthony and Jessie J. In early December, A Mary Christmas became Blige's 12th top ten album after it rose to #10 in its eight week.[66]
On October 23, 2013, Blige sang the national anthem before Game 1 of the 2013 World Series.[67]
2014–present: The London Sessions and Strength of a Woman[]
On February 5, 2014, a remix of Disclosure's "F for You" featuring guest vocals from Mary was released.[68]
It was announced May 30, 2014, that Think Like a Man Too (Music from and Inspired by the Film), released June 17 on Epic Records, would introduce new songs by Mary J. Blige, including the single "Suitcase".[69] Blige recorded a collection of music from and inspired by the film. In the United States, Think Like a Man Too debuted at number 30 on the Billboard 200, with 8,688 copies sold in its first week, becoming the lowest sales debut of any of her studio albums.[70] On Billboard's R&B/Hip-Hop chart, the soundtrack album charted at number six, marking Blige's 16th top ten entry on the chart, tying her with Mariah Carey for the second-most top tens by a female artist.[70]
June 2, 2014 saw Blige pairing up with another English musician with the release of a re-worked version of Sam Smith's "Stay with Me". A live visual to the song was released on the same day.[71]
Following her concert date at the Essence Festival, on July 9, 2014, it was announced Blige would move to London to experiment with a new sound for her new album.[72] Blige spent a month in London recording her album in RAK Studios with a host of young British acts, including Disclosure, Naughty Boy, Emeli Sandé and Sam Smith. Ten new songs, co-written and recorded by the singer, were released on November 24, 2014 on an album entitled The London Sessions.[73] That same month, she announced that she left Geffen and Interscope and signed with Capitol Records.
In August 2016, Blige was recruited to perform the new theme song for the ABC Daytime talk show The View for its twentieth season titled "World's Gone Crazy" written by Diane Warren. A music video was also shot for the new theme song with co-hosts Whoopi Goldberg, Joy Behar, Candace Cameron Bure, Raven-Symoné, Paula Faris, Sara Haines, Sunny Hostin and Jedediah Bila. Blige also appeared on The View alongside Maxwell during its premiere week on September 9, 2016 to discuss their joint tour and theme song.
On September 30, 2016, Blige premiered a new show, The 411, on Apple Music.[74] On its debut episode, she interviewed Hillary Clinton. A trailer was released online with Blige singing a cover of Bruce Springsteen's "American Skin" to a bewildered Clinton. The exchange received mixed and negative reaction on social media. Two weeks later, a studio version, this time featuring a verse from American rapper Kendrick Lamar was released online.
Following her highly publicized divorce from Kendu Issacs, Blige released two songs within October, "Thick of It" and "U + Me (Love Lesson)". On April 28, 2017, her thirteenth studio album, Strength of a Woman, was released.[75] It peaked at number three on the Billboard 200, number two on the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart and topped the R&B Albums chart.[76]
On July 12, 2018, Blige released the single "Only Love" on Republic Records, following her exit from Capitol Records.
On April 16, 2019, Blige announced that she is co-headlining a North American summer tour with Nas titled The Royalty Tour.[77]
On May 8, 2019, Blige released the single "Thriving" featuring Nas.[78] During an interview with Ebro Darden on Beats 1 for the premiere of "Thriving", Blige announced that her next studio album will be released before July.[79]
On June 23, 2019 at the BET Awards 2019, she was honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award for her extraordinary contributions to music industry.[80]
On June 25, 2019, The New York Times Magazine listed Mary J. Blige among hundreds of artists whose material was reportedly destroyed in the 2008 Universal fire.[81]
Acting career[]
1998—2016: Early works[]
In 1998, Blige made her acting debut on the sitcom The Jamie Foxx Show, playing the apparently southern Ola Mae, a preacher's daughter who wanted to sing more than gospel music. Her father was portrayed by Ronald Isley of the Isley Brothers. In 2001, Blige starred opposite rapper Q-Tip in the independent film Prison Song. That same year, Blige made a cameo on the Lifetime network series, Strong Medicine; playing the role of Simone Fellows. Blige's character was the lead singer of a band who was sick, but would not seek treatment. In 2000, Blige was featured in a superhero web cartoon in junction with Stan Lee. Blige used the cartoon as part of her performance while on her 2000 Mary Show Tour. In 2004, Blige starred in an Off-Broadway play, The Exonerated. The play chronicled the experiences of death row inmates. Blige portrayed Sunny Jacobs, a woman who spent 20 years in prison for a crime she did not commit. In late 2005, it was reported that Blige landed the starring role in the upcoming MTV Films biopic on American singer/pianist and civil rights activist, Nina Simone. By spring of 2010, Blige was slated to star as Simone with British actor David Oyelowo portraying her manager Clifton Henderson. Blige later dropped out of the role due to financial issues and the role was subsequently recast with Dominican American actress Zoe Saldana as Simone in Nina, released in 2016.
In February 2007, Blige guest-starred on Ghost Whisperer, in an episode called "Mean Ghost", as the character Jackie Boyd, the school's cheerleader coach grieving for the death of her brother and affected by the ghost of a dead cheerleader. The episode features many of Blige's songs. In August 2007, Blige was a guest star on Entourage, in the role of herself, as a client of Ari Gold's agency. In October 2007, Blige was also a guest star on America's Next Top Model, as a creative director for a photoshoot by Matthew Rolston. In May 2009, Mary made a guest appearance on 30 Rock, as an artist recording a benefit song for a kidney. Blige also had a supporting role in Tyler Perry's movie I Can Do Bad All by Myself, which was released in September 2009.[82]
Blige starred alongside Tom Cruise, Julianne Hough, and Alec Baldwin in the film adaptation of the 1980s jukebox hit musical Rock of Ages. Blige played Justice Charlier, the owner of a Sunset Strip gentlemen's club. Production began in May 2011 and the film was released in June 2012.
Blige starred in the Lifetime movie Betty and Coretta alongside Angela Bassett, Malik Yoba and Lindsay Owen Pierre. She played Dr. Betty Shabazz, the widow of Malcolm X. The film premiered in February 2013. In December 2015, she portrayed Evillene, the Wicked Witch of the West in NBC's The Wiz Live!.[83] In October 2016, Blige guest-starred on ABC legal drama How to Get Away with Murder as an old acquaintance of Annalise Keating played by Viola Davis.[84]
2017—present[]
In 2017, Blige starred in the period drama film Mudbound directed by Dee Rees. Playing Florence Jackson, the matriarch of her family,[85] she received praise such as Variety's review: "Mary J. Blige, as the mother of the Jackson family, gives a transformative performance that will elevate the acting career of the R&B star."[86] For her performance in Mudbound, Blige was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress,[87] the Critics' Choice Movie Award for Best Supporting Actress, the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role, and the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. As she was also nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song (with Taura Stinson and Raphael Saadiq), she became the first person nominated for an Academy Award for acting and original song in the same year.[88][89] Her nomination also made Dee Rees the first black woman to direct a film for which an actor was nominated for an Academy Award.[90][91]
Blige voiced Irene Adler in the 2018 animated film Sherlock Gnomes, and in 2020 voiced Queen Essence in the animated musical film Trolls World Tour. In 2018, it was announced that Blige was cast as Sherry Elliot in the third season of the slasher television series Scream.[92] The season premiered on VH1 on July 8, 2019.[93] In 2019, Blige starred in the role of Cha-Cha, a main antagonist in the Netflix superhero series The Umbrella Academy.[94]
Blige played a leading role in the upcoming horror film Body Cam.[95] She starred in the independent drama film Pink Skies Ahead that will premiere at the 2020 South by Southwest film festival.[96][97] She played singer Dinah Washington in the biographical drama film Respect about life and career of Aretha Franklin.[98] The film is scheduled to be released theatrically on October 9, 2020. In late 2019, Blige began production on an untitled documentary about her life and career directed by Vanessa Roth.[99] Blige will star as Monet in Power Book II: Ghost, the first spin-off for the highly-rated Starz cable drama Power.[100][101]
Personal life[]
Blige married her manager, Martin "Kendu" Isaacs, on December 7, 2003.[102] At the time, Isaacs had two children, Nas and Jordan, with his first wife, and an older daughter, Briana, from a teenage relationship.[103] In July 2016, Blige filed for divorce, citing "irreconcilable differences".[104] Blige and Isaacs' divorce was finalized on June 21, 2018.[105]
A Democrat, Blige performed for Barack Obama at the 2012 Democratic National Convention.[106]
Other ventures[]
In 2004, Blige launched her own record label, Matriarch Records, distributed through Interscope, and in mid-2012, discovered girl group Just'Us, making the group the first ladies of the label. Blige says "These are my little Mary's; they each remind me of myself at different points in my life." Blige has been reported to be working with Just'Us on their debut album.[107]
In July 2010, Blige launched her first perfume, My Life (through Carol's Daughter), exclusively on HSN.[108] The fragrance's success broke sales records in hours[109] and has been awarded two prestigious FIFI awards from the Fragrance Foundation.[110] The newest fragrance, My Life Blossom launched in August 2011 exclusively to HSN.
In October 2010, Blige released a line of sunglasses called "Melodies by MJB". The first Melodies collection featured four styles with a total of 20 color options. Each style represented a specific facet of Blige's life. Essence magazine reported that in the spring of 2011, "Melodies by MJB" extended their collection to offer more styles.[111][112]
Blige's production company, along with William Morris Endeavor, is also working on several TV and film projects.[113]
In partnership with the Home Shopping Network (HSN) and Carol's Daughter, Blige released her "My Life" perfume. The perfume broke HSN records by selling 65,000 bottles during its premiere.[114] The scent went on to win two FiFi Awards, including the "Fragrance Sales Breakthrough" award.[115]
Blige has had endorsement contracts with Reebok, Air Jordan, Pepsi, Coca-Cola, Gap, Target, American Express, AT&T Inc., M·A·C, Apple Inc., Burger King and Chevrolet.[116] She has also been a spokesperson with Carol's Daughter beauty products and Citibank's with Nickelback program.[citation needed]
Legacy[]
Main article(s): List of awards and nominations received by Mary J. Blige
Called the "Queen of Hip-Hop Soul", Blige is credited with influencing the musical marriage of hip hop and R&B.[117] Ethan Brown of The New Yorker says that albums "What's the 411?" and "My Life", in hindsight, invented "the sample-heavy sound that reinvigorated urban radio and became a blueprint for nineties hip-hop and R&B".[118] Brown further concludes that Mary's "duets with the Wu-Tang Clan's Method Man and Ghostface Killah set the trend for collaborations between rappers and R&B songbirds like Mariah Carey".[118] Tom Horan of The Daily Telegraph comments that Blige, being a hugely influential figure in popular music, "invented what is now called R&B by successfully combining female vocals with muscular hip hop rhythm tracks. All over the world, that recipe dominates today's charts."[119] Called one of the "most explosive, coming-out displays of pure singing prowess"[120] and "one of the most important albums of the nineties",[121] What's the 411? saw Blige pioneer "the movement that would later become neo soul, generating gripping songs that were also massive radio hits".[122]
African American scholars have noted the implications of Blige's presentation and representation of black womanhood and femininity in the typically male-dominated and centric sphere of hip hop. Blending the vocal techniques of rapping in hip hop with aspirational messages in R&B, Blige is credited to articulating black women's experiences in a "more factual and objective"[123] manner than typical stereotypes and tropes of black women in the media. Using her personal experiences and struggles with her family as source material for her songs, Blige refutes notions of black female hypersexuality by "imploring women to love and empower themselves through both autonomy and intimacy."[124] This desire for love does more than connect to her audience members. With particular attention on her single "Real Love," critics note how the song is "a performative text, declaratively demand[ing] recognition of Blige's full humanity and, more broadly, that of hip-hop-generation women."[124]
Blige has received notable awards and achievements. In 2010, she was ranked 80th on VH1's list of the 100 Greatest Artist of All Time.[125] Blige was listed as one of the 50 most influential R&B singers by Essence.[126] Rolling Stone magazine ranked My Life at number 279 on its list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.[40] The album was also included on Time's list of the 100 Greatest albums of All Time.[41] Alternately called the "Queen of R&B" for her success in the realm of R&B, Blige has amassed ten number one albums on the R&B/Hip Hop Albums chart .[59] Blige is also the only artist to have won Grammys in the R&B, hip hop, pop, and gospel fields.
As an actress, Blige received the Breakthrough Performance Award at the 2018 Palm Springs International Film Festival for her role in Mudbound.
Discography[]
Main article(s): Mary J. Blige discography
What's the 411? (1992)
My Life (1994)
Share My World (1997)
Mary (1999)
No More Drama (2001)
Love & Life (2003)
The Breakthrough (2005)
Growing Pains (2007)
Stronger with Each Tear (2009)
My Life II... The Journey Continues (Act 1) (2011)
A Mary Christmas (2013)
The London Sessions (2014)
Strength of a Woman (2017)
Tours[]
Headlining[]
Share My World Tour (1997–98)
The Mary Show Tour (2000)
No More Drama Tour (2002)
Love & Life Tour (2004)
The Breakthrough Experience Tour (2006)
Growing Pains European Tour (2008)
Love Soul Tour (2008)
Music Saved My Life Tour (2010–11)
The London Sessions Tour (2015)
Strength of a Woman Tour (2017)
Co-headlining[]
Heart of the City Tour (with Jay-Z) (2008)
The Liberation Tour (with D'Angelo) (2012–13)
King and Queen of Hearts World Tour (with Maxwell) (2016)
The Royalty Tour (with Nas) (2019)
Supporting[]
Humpin' Around the World Tour (with Bobby Brown) (1992-1993)[127]
Filmography[]
Main article(s): Mary J. Blige videography
Film[]
Year Title Role Notes 2001 Prison Song Mrs. Butler Film debut 2009 I Can Do Bad All By Myself Tanya 2012 Rock of Ages Justice Charlier 2013 Black Nativity Platinum Fro Nominated — American Black Film Festival Award for Best Ensemble Cast 2014 Champs Herself 2017 Mudbound Florence Jackson Gotham Special Jury Award for Best Ensemble Performance
New York Film Critics Online for Best Ensemble Cast
IndieWire Critic's Poll Award for Best Breakthrough Performance (Film)[128]
Hollywood Film Awards – Breakout Actress Award
Hollywood Film Awards – Breakout Ensemble Award[129]
Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award for Best Supporting Actress (Runner-up)[130]
Nominated — Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress
Nominated — Academy Award for Best Original Song
Nominated — Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role[131]
Nominated — Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture
Nominated — Critics' Choice Movie Award for Best Supporting Actress
Nominated — Critics' Choice Movie Award for Best Acting Ensemble
Nominated — Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress – Motion Picture
Nominated — Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song
Nominated — Gotham Independent Film Award for Breakthrough Actor
Nominated — Satellite Award for Best Supporting Actress - Motion Picture
Nominated — Washington D.C. Area Film Critics Association Award for Best Supporting Actress
Nominated — Washington D.C. Area Film Critics Association Award for Best Ensemble 2018 Sherlock Gnomes[132] Irene (voice) 2020 Pink Skies Ahead[133] Doctor Monroe 2020 Trolls World Tour Queen Essence (voice) Post-production 2020 The Violent Heart Nina Post-production 2020 Respect Dinah Washington Post-production TBA Body Cam Renee Post-production TBA Untitled Mary J. Blige Documentary[99] Herself Also producer
Television[]
Year Title Role Notes 1992 Out All Night Herself "Smooth Operator" (episode 9, season 1) 1993 Saturday Night Live Herself - Musical Guest John Goodman/Mary J. Blige (episode 15, season 18) 1994 8th Annual Soul Train Music Awards Herself - Presenter 1995 New York Undercover Herself "Private Enemy No. 1" (episode 14, season 1), "Tag You're Dead" (episode 2, season 2) [music performance] 1998 The Jamie Foxx Show Ola Mae "Papa Don't Preach" (episode 14, season 2) 1999 Moesha Herself "Good Vibrations?" (episode 1, season 5) 2001 Strong Medicine Simone Fellows "History" (episode 4, season 2) 2007 Ghost Whisperer Jackie Boyd "Mean Ghost" (episode 15, season 2) Entourage Herself "Gary's Desk" (episode 8, season 4) 2009 30 Rock Herself "Kidney Now!" (episode 22, season 3) 2010 & 2012 American Idol Guest judge/Herself 2010: Auditions were held in Atlanta, Georgia at the Georgia Dome when Blige guest judged. 2012: Mentor for the Top 13 Whitney Houston & Stevie Wonder Week 2012 The Voice Herself Mentor of Team Adam (season 3) 2013 Betty & Coretta Dr. Betty Shabazz Television film
Nominated — Women's Image Network Award for OutstandingOutstanding Actress Made for Television Movie / Mini-Series The X Factor Guest judge/herself Blige assisted Nicole Scherzinger at her judge's house in Antigua 2015 Empire Angie "Sins of the Father" (episode 10, season 1) The Wiz Live! Evillene, The Wicked Witch of the West TV special
Nominated — Critics' Choice Television Award for Best Supporting Actress in a Movie/Miniseries
Nominated — Black Reel Award for Best Supporting Actress: Television Movie/Cable Black-ish Mirabelle Chalet Guest appearance in Season 1, episode 24 2016 How To Get Away With Murder Ro TV Series (2 episodes) 2019–present The Umbrella Academy Cha-Cha Main role 2019 Scream Sherry Elliot Recurring role 2020 Power Book 2: Ghost Monet Filming
See also[]
Template:Wikipedia books
List of artists who reached number one in the United States
List of black Golden Globe Award winners and nominees
Honorific nicknames in popular music
References[]
[]
Official website
Mary J. Blige on IMDb
Mary J. Blige on Instagram
Template:Mary J. Blige Template:Mary J. Blige singles Template:Grammy Award for Best Urban Contemporany Album
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Bio: Mary J. Blige (born Mary Jane Blige on January 11, 1971 in The Bronx, New York) is an American singer, songwriter, model, and actress. Mary and her family moved to Richmond Hill, Georgia, when she was five years old, and spent her early years in the rural setting.
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Bio:
Mary J. Blige (born Mary Jane Blige on January 11, 1971 in The Bronx, New York) is an American singer, songwriter, model, and actress. Mary and her family moved to Richmond Hill, Georgia, when she was five years old, and spent her early years in the rural setting. She and her mother moved back to Yonkers, where she attended Roosevelt High School. She would drop out and work as a stylist. In 1988, Mary recorded a version of Anita Baker’s “Caught Up in the Rapture” at a kiosk in a mall. Her mother’s boyfriend played the tape to an A&R rep, which led to her getting signed to Uptown Records in 1989. From there, a legendary career was born. Mary’s debut, 1992’s What’s The 411?, signaled a new era in R&B. Her single, “You Remind Me,” was a number one hit. Her second album, My Life, is considered one of the Greatest Albums of all time. She also topped the charts with her collaboration with Method Man on the song, “All I Need.” Since her debut, Mary has been nominated for a record-setting 30 Grammy awards, and she has won nine. She is one of few entertainers to have eight or more albums reach multi-platinum status. She made her acting debut in 1998, appearing on The Jamie Foxx Show. She has also acted in movies like Prison Song, on shows like Empire and in plays like The Exonerated. In 2015, she was cast as Evillene in NBC’s The Wiz Live!
Best Known For:
Mary J. Blige is best known as a singer, with hit songs like “Real Love,” “Not Gon’ Cry,” “Family Affair,” and “All I Need.”
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Juliet Duggins
Owner/ Center Director
Juliet Duggins is the center director of Sylvan Learning in the Northeast Bronx. Juliet grew up in Long Island City, Queens. Juliet is used to being one of the first… first Black owned Sylvan owner in NYC, first cohort of girls at the Astoria Variety Boys Club. Although she loves anything that sparkles, her favorite color is red. Juliet’s favorite activity is community service. In fact, what keeps her motivated is knowing that other people are depending on her. Her hobbies include snowboarding and surfing. Food is Juliet’s love language and her favorite is fried chicken.A valuable lesson that she has learned from her mom/community is to work hard while you’re young or work hard for the rest of your life.
Guy Duggins
Owner / Chief of Operations
Guy Duggins is a resident of the Bronx who attended Fordham Preparatory for Boys High School located on the Fordham University campus. During high school,Mr. Duggins believes everything has a nuance and should not be viewed only in black and white. He has a range of hobbies, including fitness training and traveling with his family. Mr. Duggins has seen his community filled with a broad range of situations and learned over time that you can make it regardless of where you start. He believes his community has taught him that life is what you make of the opportunities, and he knows that his community is hungry for more opportunities.
Veronica Straws
V.P of Finance
Growing up in the Bronx, Ms. Veronica attended Aquinas high school where she participated in twirling, Future Teachers of America, and playing the saxophone in her school band.Veronica has fun singing whether that be in church or just for fun. One of her other joys is exploring technology and browsing the internet to learn new things. There’s no better food to offer Veronica than a nice warm bowl of macaroni and cheese.The most important thing that she learned from her community is that giving back makes a significant positive impact on other individuals and communities.
Quanesha Martin
Director of Education
Quanesha (Ms. Q) Martin is a proud native of Harlem, NY. Ms Q’s early exposure to the Upward Bound program at SUNY New Paltz launched her academic journey by first earning an Associates degree from BCC, continuing with a BA in Political Science from Baruch and culminating with an MS in Special Education from LIU Brooklyn. Prior to joining our Sylvan family as director of education, Ms. Q spent her early years balancing academics with extracurricular athletic activities that included playing volleyball and Ice skating. Nowadays, you are much more likely to catch Ms. Q. spending her down time talking to her childhood friends, rewatching her favorite movie Avengers: End Game, taking a painting class, or enjoying sancocho or oxtails from her old neighborhood in East Harlem. Ms. Q is constantly striving to become something that her community both needs and is proud of – and don’t tell her – but her community couldn’t be prouder.
Bria Knott
Center Coordinator
A Co-Op Native Indeed! Bria Knott’s journey from Truman High School to the vibrant halls of Lehman College is a testament to her resilience, adaptability, and unwavering passion for education. With a heart as big as her dreams, Bria’s story is one of determination, growth, and a commitment to making a difference in the lives of others.Beyond her academic pursuits, Bria finds joy in hobbies like fan fiction writing and doting on her beloved pet, Paisley the Yorkie-poo. Not to mention she has a #DoggyAngel Lexi the Maltese whom she misses very much. But her ultimate motivation lies in her aspiration to become a child life specialist and an advocate for children and their families during hospitalization crisis.
Christiana Addy
Marketing Intern
Christiana, who also goes by CeCe, is from the Co-Op City Area of The Bronx, NY. She attended Cardinal Spellman in the Baychester Area of The Bronx. Cece’s favorite color is purple, and her hobbies include creating marketing material for friends, such as logos and social media posts. CeCe grew up mostly in The Bronx and a little bit in Queens, with a Ghanian background.When it comes to her community, CeCe has learned that you’ll never know who’s there; she’s been taught that there are a plethora of networking opportunities, which has prompted her to always be an active member in her community, and so should you!
Mariah Aviles
Executive Assistant
Mariah Aviles hails from the borough of the Bronx, NY, where she attended The Young Women’s Leadership School in Harlem for high school. During her formative years, Mariah was deeply involved in dance, honing her skills at South Bronx Kids, and showcasing her talents in Christian hip-hop and salsa, both within her community and at her church. Her passion for creative expression extended into academics, where she found her niche in English Language Arts. During challenging times, Mariah draws strength from the resilience she has demonstrated in overcoming adversity and from the unwavering support of her cherished village. Mariah treasures the ethos of reciprocity and resource-sharing ingrained in her by her community, recognizing the value of recycling knowledge and extending a helping hand to others.
Reuben Bridges
STEM Program Coordinator
Reuben was Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1982, he moved to New York City at the age of four. His hobbies encompass a wide range of interests, including creating random robot projects, playing basketball, cycling, listening to 80s music, and gaming. These activities bring him joy and relaxation, fueling his passion for exploration and creativity. His community, especially his father, taught him the importance of hard work and education. They showed him that putting in effort and focusing on learning were key to achieving success. This lesson instilled in him a strong work ethic and a commitment to always strive for improvement.
Ramona Mathis-Smith
Sylvan Teacher
Ms. Ramona is an amazing certified teacher at Sylvan of Northeast Bronx. She was born in Brooklyn, NY and raised in Newark, NJ. She graduated from Mount Saint Dominic Academy in Caldwell, NJ. She is a creative arts writer. She had a hobby as a playwright and has an ultimate goal of taking classes to become a professional voice over actress, ballroom dancer, and a successful house flipper all while she takes care of her goldendoodle Tozin. One thing she learned from her community is whatever you do, be the best at it. She currently lives in Co-Op City and is a middle school Social Studies teacher right here in Co-Op City! At Sylvan she helps students in the community with homework, reading, and writing lessons.
Heather Fontaine-Youngs
Sylvan Teacher
Heather was born and raised in Mount Vernon and attended Mount Vernon High School. While there, she was involved in the Band,Drama and Art clubs. She then went on to graduate from the College of New Rochelle with her Bachelors in Literacy Education and a certified educator. She enjoys all colors and creating things, as it channels her creative elements. She also enjoys drawing and taking pictures.She has 3 kids and her “fourth” is her cat named Taco Spice. She enjoys thinking of ways to appreciate what she is blessed with. Her favorite food is potatoes because of how versatile it is and if stranded on a desert island, she would use her one Amazon purchase to acquire a boat. She also comes from an African-American family with 2 sisters and 2 brothers. She loves everyone in her community, from the children to her friends and family.
Takeiyah Brown
Sylvan Teacher
“Takeiyah was born and raised in Mount Vernon, NY and graduated from Mount Vernon High School where she was a cheerleader for four years. She even cheered for 2 years at SUNY Cobleskill while obtaining her Associate degree in Early Childhood Education. Takeiyah then transferred to North Carolina A&T State University earning her Bachelor of Arts in English -Technical Writing.She is an avid reader and has no pets, but she wants a Sphinx. What keeps her motivated on a day she may be down is breaking generational curses, her dreams, being a go-getter, and conquering fears. Nothing is stopping her! One thing the Bronx community has taught her is that our skin color and cultural breaks barriers! She believes there’s nothing we can’t do, and we will always rise above, especially Black women.
Peter Djentuh
Sylvan Teacher
Peter was born in Ghana. He moved to the U.S in 1992 and moved to CO-OP City in 1994. He received his Bachelors and Master’s at Lehman College in 2008 and 2011. Peter enjoys sports and supports all the New York teams. Peter loves math and numbers.Peter enjoys all the colors and doesn’t have one favorite. Watching sports is one of his pastimes as well as tending to his fish aquarium. Spending time with his wife and three children is the top pastime. His favorite food is FuFu, a traditional Ghanaian food.During Peter’s upbringing in the EWE people of Ghana, he and his 9 siblings learned that respect for everyone is their most important value.
Christina Medina
Sylvan Teacher
Ms. Christina is a from the Bronx and grew up in District 11. She attended Aquinas High School, which she described as a haven for girls in the South Bronx. Ms. Christina’s favorite color is blue in its tranquil effect. She also owns a shitzu named Max. Her go-to meal is empanadas, and she enjoys 80s music for the vibe its brings. On her spare time, she enjoys baking and cooking. If given the opportunity, she would create a space for teenage single mothers in her community with access to daycare.
Brianna Rivera
Sylvan Tutor
Brianna Rivera was born in London, England and moved to Long Island shortly after. As a young girl, she attended private school at Our Savior New American School, which provided close friendships she still maintains today.She is a light here at Sylvan, always willing to help and educate our students in intentional ways. Her faith in and relationship with God motivates her.During her spare time, she enjoys dancing, reading romantic novels, doing her makeup, and enjoying her father’s delicious mofongo and plenty of other dishes! One thing her community has taught her is that nothing is impossible with God.
Israh Jamal
Sylvan Tutor
Israh is a resident of Yonkers, NY, home to many famous musicians and actors like Ella Fitzgerald, Gene Krupa, Jon Voight, W.C. Handy, Sid Caesar, and Mary J. Blige. Israh attended Roosevelt High School – Early College Studies, there she joined the Dabke Dance Club. Dabke is a Levantine folk dance. After graduating from high school, Israh attended Lehman College in Bronx New York, there she continued her love for the English language by majoring in Creative English and the Philosophy of Law. Israh’s future goals are to attend Law School to become a Lawyer, she minored in Society and Religion. As Israh grew up she learned many lessons, the main lesson that was taught to her by uncle is “There is No success with failure”, which she keeps in mind as she pursues
her goals.
Jada Grey Duggins
Sylvan Teacher Assistant
Jada Grey Duggins is from the Bronx, NY. Jada Grey stays active in her free time by participating in dance and cheerleading, as well as being a part of the Black Student Union and Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, Inc. Sigma Kappa Zeta Chapter’s Archonette Youth Auxiliary.In her free time, she loves working on 3D puzzles and sewing to make clothes. When she’s feeling down, she focuses on her next event, tries new recipes, or uses that time to sleep.Having been given the opportunity to attend school in Manhattan’s District 2, which are very different from schools in the Bronx, Jada Grey has learned that education is not equal everywhere.
Jordyn Morton
Sylvan Teacher Assistant
Jordyn was born in Co-Op City, Bronx, NY. Currently, Jordyn is a 3rd year high school student in Urban Assembly School for Business for Young Women, and her favorite subject is Math.Some of Jordyn’s favorite things are the color yellow, because it’s bright and happy, the comfort food of Baked Mac-N-Cheese, and music. Her family has roots from Bermuda and St. Thomas. Although she’s only visited St. Thomas once, she plans on going back soon. One thing Jordyn has learned is that sometimes you have to make opportunities for yourself. You can’t just wait for it, especially if you have access to the technology.
|
||||
correct_birth_00056
|
FactBench
|
2
| 25
|
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2014/aug/31/mary-j-blige-interview-uk-london-sessions
|
en
|
Mary J Blige interview: 'The UK is a better place to make music than the States'
|
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[
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[
"Tom Horan",
"www.theguardian.com",
"tom-horan"
] |
2014-08-31T00:00:00
|
<p>The soul singer talks to <strong>Tom Horan</strong> about her month in London making an album with the cream of British talent including Disclosure, Naughty Boy and Sam Smith</p>
|
en
|
the Guardian
|
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2014/aug/31/mary-j-blige-interview-uk-london-sessions
|
A short walk from Lord's cricket ground is a pocket of St John's Wood that seems for ever suspended in the 70s. Around the corner from a clutch of Peabody estates, the Oslo Court restaurant still serves prawn cocktail, peach melba and veal Holstein. It's 1.59pm on a Thursday at the height of this summer's heatwave, and as an MCC member passes by in his egg-and-bacon tie, a black Mercedes pulls up outside a grand but anonymous building. From the car emerge two women clutching union jack carrier bags. The one with the coiffed blonde flick and the Gucci espadrilles is Mary J Blige.
The much-garlanded soul singer isn't here for the heritage eats. Blige is starting her two o'clock shift at RAK recording studios, itself synonymous with eras long departed. The blue plaque above her head records the name of founder Mickie Most, producer of hits for Hot Chocolate, the Yardbirds, Suzi Quatro and more. But Blige is at RAK for a project that is entirely of the moment, decamping from New York for a creative stint in London that promises to deliver the most innovative and unusual album of her 22-year career. For two weeks she has been collaborating with some of the most exciting young artists in contemporary music, a disparate group who are in their own way as ineffably English as any on the roster in the glory days of Most.
The movement that began with Amy Winehouse and Adele and now sees British acts making up 40% of sales in the US charts has been followed by a second wave of UK musicians being embraced by America. In particular this summer, the insistent pop house music of Surrey brothers Disclosure and the impassioned torch songs of their friend Sam Smith have cut a swath from east coast to west. As well as performing, all three are accomplished songwriters, and it is with Disclosure, Smith and their coterie of regular collaborators that Blige has been hard at work. Ten new songs, co-written and recorded by the singer in one month in postcodes W6, NW8 and NW5, will be released this autumn as Mary J Blige: The London Sessions.
Baronial as RAK may be, the studio that Blige is using is no more than 10ft inside the front door, and in turn the booth where her microphone awaits no more than 6ft inside that. By 2.01pm she is ready for action, the closest to a litany of diva demands being a whispered "Can I get my tea, please?" Primed for this businesslike approach to the recording process is a team of 12 blokes, ranging from tea boy to session players and finally the producer of the day, Jimmy Napes, 20 years her junior, who stands before the mixing desk. Napes co-wrote much of Disclosure's immaculate debut album Settle and has done the same for Sam Smith's debut In the Lonely Hour. It may be Napes's bicycle that is propped against the desk. He signals for the track to be run, and Blige attacks her opening note.
But where is she? A window the width of the room looks into the cavernous recording area that holds the musicians. Through it can be spied a bass player and pianist, barely illuminated, and at the back a distant drummer. Blige, however, is invisible. She is definitely in there somewhere: her voice begins to dance across the music in tones that are rich and plaintive and entirely assured. In just a line or two she fills the mixing room with life. Then she audibly digs down and summons up something extra. In the bottom left-hand corner of the window her outstretched hands appear, reaching up from her spot in the shadows. Napes, however, is not convinced.
"Something not quite right with your phrasing at the beginning of verse two," he says. 'Can we go again please Mary?'
She laughs.
"What's happening is I can't flip the page quick enough to get to that part," she says. Napes peers over to see her struggling with the sheaf of lyrics. "But I'm warming up," she says brightly. "We're getting there!" Which, as she was born in the Bronx, is pronounced "We gittin they!"
Now she sings again, and what is striking is not just the timbre, but the rhythm. With her voice dipping in and out of it, an initially unremarkable beat has taken on new punch and syncopation. Blige was first launched as "the queen of hip-hop soul", and it was over thumping breakbeats that she first sang for producer Sean "Puffy" Coombs in the early 1990s, and then again a decade later with Dr Dre. To compete with beats takes real vocal talent; to somehow elevate them too is one of Blige's special gifts.
Napes wants another take. Then another. On the seventh, Blige has appreciably gone up a gear. By the ninth, however, the engineer is exchanging glances with the boy operating the computer behind a spaghetti vongole of wiring. She may have made 11 studio albums and been a guest vocalist on more than 120 tracks, but truculence is a known aspect of Blige's character. Are the toys about to exit Mary's pram?
"OK, Mary," says Napes. "Let's do the last take." "You just say that to get the best performance," says the engineer. "Then you get her to do one more after."
"Sshhh," says Napes, possibly winking.
Blige sings it all again, somehow finding what Napes calls "an extra 5%".
"I'm happy, Mary," he says.
"I'm happy that you happy, Jimmy," comes the voice from the booth.
With her vocal duties done, Blige comes into the mixing room to listen to the playbacks, sinking into a sofa next to the project's American executive producer, Rodney "Darkchild" Jerkins, a don of the production world who has worked most notably with Michael Jackson, Beyoncé and Lady Gaga. Aside from the song, the two also appear keen to talk about food, and in particular fish and chips, the consumption of which Blige feels is central to what she calls "the London-scene experience". Napes meanwhile is in the RAK kitchen, which has hosted the tea breaks of everything from Radiohead's The Bends to Kim Wilde's Kids in America. I ask him how he came to be part of the album.
"It has been a little bit surreal to be honest," he says, 'I grew up listening to Mary J Blige, and then there she is with the Disclosure boys in Kentish Town, where my studio is, next to a car park. She had loved Stay With Me, which I wrote with Sam Smith for his album, and that's how I got the opportunity to work on this project. We were writing for a week or so – we've got some wicked songs. It does take time to get the confidence to say to her, 'I think you can sing that better' – but it's crucial. She is counting on me to call her on stuff, because she wants to make the best record she can."
Disclosure were the starting point for Blige's fascination with London's new crop of music-makers. Late last year she saw the duo's single F for You on the Vevo video site, and got in touch with them about covering the song. The resulting release was not a cover, but an astutely balanced duet, composed by Blige, that retained the vocals of the group's 20-year-old singer Howard Lawrence and married them with a set she had written herself. Her contribution brought new depth to the original: driving, gutsy, soulful – it made Disclosure sound immeasurably funkier and was the most original thing she had done in years.
"I love what Mary did on that track," Howard tells me on the phone. "She hadn't just changed everything, written entirely new stuff and gotten rid of everything we'd done. She wrote something we believe totally fits with the track stylistically – it's an excellent house music vocal. But she also chose to send it over and say 'what do you guys think'? As opposed to putting it straight out and saying 'I don't care what those guys think, I'm Mary J Blige."'
And what about when it came to working face-to-face with the 30-times-nominated, nine-time Grammy winner in deepest Kentish Town? "The track Right Now started with some chords I made on Jimmy Napes's piano," he says. "We took that and gave it a Disclosurey feel with some drums that Guy [his brother] made. Mary leaves the instrumental side to us and gets much more involved when it comes to writing vocals. So she puts an idea in, then we all have a dog-fight until someone comes up with something that they agree on. It's a really good way of working, because no one is afraid to just pitch ideas. We did the majority of the songwriting within about two and half hours, and then spent a lot of time editing and polishing, because that's how Guy and me work. We'll write a whole song very roughly, then go in and proof-read it for a long, long time and change it so much that you wouldn't even recognise it from when you started.
"Mary has amazing vocal control but she also has such a level of soul to her voice. That's why she is the queen of that style, of writing using ad libs. She'll just go off on one over a track, and get really into it – just sing whatever comes naturally. And that normally ends up making the final take."
And what about her notion of a London sound? What does he think she believes she is getting from this month spent collaborating here? "The sound in London at the moment is house music. That is what the majority of people are producing their songs like. But the ones that get truly successful are the ones using proper songwriting. Rudimental for example – they write proper songs and then produce them like dance music. And that is exactly what we're trying to do, along with a few other people. But that applies to any genre, not just dance music. You could take the songs off Sam Smith's album, produce them in a completely different way and they would still be a huge success – you could produce them like acid jazz and I still feel like they'd get somewhere."
Back in the studio, Blige is preparing to leave. It is the third anniversary of the death of Amy Winehouse and she has arranged to have a get-together with Amy's father, Mitch Winehouse, whom she does not know but wants to meet. After some discussion with the assembled locals she has decided on dinner at the nearby Sea Shell of Lisson Grove – conceivably London's poshest chippy. When she has gone, Rodney Jerkins, an affable pear-shaped man umbilically attached to a MacBook Pro, plays rough edits of some of the London Sessions tracks. "It's all comin' from here right now," says Jerkins, whose embrace of "yookay" cuisine consists of taking constant furtive nibbles at a supply of Cornish pasties.
"On the final record, we wanna keep the feeling of London," he says. A film crew are making a documentary of the recording, and he plans to drop in audio clips from it between tracks. "You have so much different music here. Variety births the next generation. In California the music kind of all feels the same. That 90s house vibe you have right now – it feels fresh. Dancin', celebratin' – feelin' good about life. We're making a Mary Blige record, but she can introduce new styles to the world." He says they will make 13 tracks and then choose a final 10. We listen to three and the variety is striking.
It is certainly not an out-and-out house record. Pick Me Up, produced by Watford's own Naughty Boy and co-written with Emeli Sandé, mixes sub-bass with clarinet and a percussion sound that recalls early 00s UK garage. Therapy, written by Napes and Sam Smith, has a doo-wop feel, while the Disclosure number is house plus additional squelches. Disparate as the writers and producers may be, Jerkins agrees that these all sound unquestionably like Mary J Blige tracks: 'She knows how to cement her voice to the lyric. She knows how to make you know what she's been through." The feeling that she conveys of a life lived though all its triumphs and defeats is certainly at the heart of Blige's sound.
The next day she is back at RAK to work with another young UK producer, Sam Romans. Romans thinks he knows the attraction of Blige's "London scene": "I'm doing a track at the moment with Naughty Boy – a soul track – and he was saying it's amazing how a Pakistani singer from Watford and a Jewish producer are making something that would be described as black music. That is the interesting thing about England."
And what of Blige herself? At the end of the Romans session we sit down to talk at her hotel and she starts with her own vision for The London Sessions. "Our idea was to become part of London," she says, "to really embrace the culture – to really live in it. Not that I haven't been here before, but I've never had the chance to really soak in it the way I have this time. To make records ["rekkits"] from the London-scene perspective." What is that exactly? What does she think London has? "Freedom," she says. "The music is free over here the way it used to be in the States. Artists are just free to do what they love. Listening to the radio you can hear the freedom. The music is living and breathing – you can hear that from Adele's last album. It was massive – a big deal. But she did what she loved."
She has clearly relished the combination of creative freedom and the discipline of a time limit. "Working with these guys," she says, "it's like they're my family. We all seem to have a good chemistry together. And when I sign on, I sign on – I can't go hang out! Because I have to make sure that my music is right. And I love to work. I love creating, and once I'm in it, I'm just in it. I just love being all in the midst of the creativity."
Does she always find it so easy to enter a studio and summon up such potent and emotive performances? "Once you agree you're ready, you ready," she says. "You walk in. You already know what the mindset is, you know what the song is. You read the words, and get everything from here [hand on heart]. When I'm singing, I don't think about anything but what I'm doing. I could look crazy in that moment, it doesn't matter to me. I'm just trying to get all this stuff out. Because it feels good to get it out. It feels good to sing. It's like you can fly almost, when you singing that stuff."
Of her meeting with Mitch Winehouse, she says this: "When you lose a child… I can't even imagine what that must feel like. But he's a beautiful person. It was like he gave me the chance to hug her through him. She was one of the special ones, and I never got a chance to meet her. Her voice had a lot of pain, a lot of joy, a lot of struggle, trying to figure out 'Who am I'? And she was just so free in her expression. She said whatever she wanted to say – and that's what I admired about her. She was talking to you: 'It is what it is – like it or not.'"
In everyone connected with The London Sessions, this quest for emotional honesty was a recurrent theme. Never arch or ironic, all the young Londoners were notable for an earnestness that somehow chimed with Blige's years of singing with a raw and open heart. The final part of the jigsaw came in a telephone conversation with Sam Smith, writer of four songs for the Blige project and riding high in Los Angeles on the success of his debut album and its anthemic single Stay With Me.
"With my record – and when you think about Adele, and Amy Winehouse and Ed Sheeran – we're not worried about the way we're looking, the way we're coming across in our music," he said. "We're just saying what's in our minds and in our hearts. Some people think that when you are singing about heartbreak, or how lonely you are, or how sad, that you are admitting to weakness. But I don't see that as weakness. I see that as strength – to be able to face your issues and your sadness head-on. That's what I've tried to do in my music, and I think that's what this Mary album is about – a fearless vulnerability.'
Mary J Blige: The London Sessions will be released in November on Capitol Records
|
|||||
correct_birth_00056
|
FactBench
|
3
| 86
|
https://www.allamericanspeakers.com/speakers/388953/Mary-J.-Blige
|
en
|
Mary J. Blige
|
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[] | null |
Biography and booking information for Mary J. Blige, Grammy Award-Winning Singer, Songwriter & Rapper; Queen of Hip-Hop Soul. Contact All American Speakers Bureau to book the best keynote speaker for your next live or virtual event.
|
en
|
https://www.allamericanspeakers.com/speakers/388953/Mary-J.-Blige
|
Mary J. Blige is a Grammy Award-winning singer, songwriter, actress, and philanthropist. Her career began in 1989 when she signed to Uptown Records, becoming the youngest and first female artist on the label.
Blige has won nine Grammy Awards, four American Music Awards, twelve Billboard Music Awards and has also received three Golden Globe Award nominations, including one for her supporting role in the film "Mudbound" (2017) and another for its second original song "Mighty River"; she also received a nomination for the Academy Awards for Best Supporting Actress and Best Original Song, becoming the first person nominated for acting and songwriting in the same year.
In 1992, Blige released her first album, What's the 411?. Her 1994 album My Life is among Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, and Time magazine's All-Time 100 Albums. She received a Legends Award at the World Music Awards in 2006, and the Voice of Music Award from ASCAP in 2007. Billboard ranked Blige as the most successful female R&B/Hip-Hop artist of the past 25 years.
In 2017, Billboard magazine named her 2006 song "Be Without You" as the most successful R&B/Hip-Hop song of all time, as it spent an unparalleled 15 weeks atop the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart and over 75 weeks on the chart. In 2011, VH1 ranked Blige as the 80th greatest artist of all time. In 2012, VH1 ranked Blige at number 9 in "The 100 Greatest Women in Music" list and in 2024, she was selected as an inductee into the Rock and Roll Music Hall of Fame.
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20 Facts About Mary J Blige
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Explore the fascinating life and career of the legendary Mary J Blige through these 20 incredible facts. From her humble beginnings to Grammy-winning success, discover the woman behind the music.
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Mary J Blige was born on January 11, 1971, in The Bronx, New York.
Mary J Blige, whose full name is Mary Jane Blige, was born and raised in The Bronx, providing her with a unique perspective on life and music.
She is known as the “Queen of Hip-Hop Soul.”
Mary J Blige earned this title due to her distinct blend of hip-hop and soul music, which resonated with audiences and helped define a new sound in the industry.
Mary J Blige has won nine Grammy Awards throughout her career.
Her exceptional talent and contribution to the music industry have earned her numerous accolades, including nine Grammy Awards in various categories.
She released her debut album, “What’s the 411?,” in 1992.
This album catapulted Mary J Blige to fame and showcased her powerful vocals and emotional depth, setting the stage for her successful career.
Mary J Blige has sold over 80 million records worldwide.
Her impressive record sales demonstrate the widespread appeal and enduring popularity of her music among fans across the globe.
She has appeared in several movies and TV shows.
Apart from her successful music career, Mary J Blige has also showcased her acting skills in films like “Mudbound” and TV shows like “Power.”
Mary J Blige has been nominated for two Academy Awards.
Her performance in the movie “Mudbound” earned her nominations for both Best Supporting Actress and Best Original Song at the Academy Awards.
She established the Mary J Blige and Steve Stoute Foundation for the Advancement of Women Now.
This foundation aims to empower and inspire women by providing them with educational opportunities and resources for personal and professional growth.
Mary J Blige has collaborated with numerous artists throughout her career.
She has worked with notable musicians including U2, Jay-Z, and Drake, creating memorable and chart-topping collaborations.
She was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2018.
This recognition is a testament to Mary J Blige’s impact and influence on the entertainment industry.
Mary J Blige has been open about her struggles with substance abuse.
Despite facing personal challenges, she has used her experiences as a source of strength and inspiration in her music.
She is known for her signature blonde bob hairstyle.
Mary J Blige’s iconic hairstyle has become a recognizable part of her image throughout her career.
Mary J Blige has been named one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people.
This recognition highlights her cultural impact and significance beyond the realm of music.
She has been recognized as one of Rolling Stone’s 100 Greatest Singers of All Time.
Her extraordinary vocal abilities have earned her a place among the greatest singers in music history.
Mary J Blige’s album “My Life” is considered a groundbreaking and influential work.
This album, released in 1994, is often celebrated for its raw and introspective lyrics, resonating with listeners on a deeply emotional level.
She has been awarded the BET Lifetime Achievement Award.
This prestigious award acknowledges Mary J Blige’s long-standing impact and contributions to the world of music.
Mary J Blige has ventured into the world of fashion with her own clothing line.
Her fashion line, called “Melodies by MJB,” features chic and stylish designs that reflect her personal sense of style.
She has written an autobiography titled “My Life.”
In this memoir, Mary J Blige shares her personal journey and reflects on the challenges she has overcome throughout her life.
Mary J Blige has been credited with influencing a new generation of artists.
Her unique blend of R&B, soul, and hip-hop continues to inspire and shape the sound of contemporary music.
She is known for her philanthropic efforts and involvement in various charitable causes.
Mary J Blige has used her platform to support organizations focused on youth empowerment, education, and fighting poverty.
Conclusion
In conclusion, Mary J Blige is an incredibly talented and influential artist who has made a tremendous impact on the music industry. Her powerful voice, soulful lyrics, and raw emotion have resonated with millions of fans worldwide. Through her music, she has shared her personal struggles, triumphs, and experiences, creating a deep connection with her audience.Mary J Blige’s achievements and accolades speak for themselves. With numerous Grammy Awards, Billboard chart-topping hits, and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, she has solidified her status as a musical icon. Beyond her musical career, she has also excelled as an actress, philanthropist, and entrepreneur.As a true pioneer of R&B and hip-hop, Mary J Blige has paved the way for many artists, especially women, to speak their truth and tell their stories through music. Her influence can be felt in the works of artists across genres, and her impact on popular culture is undeniable.Mary J Blige’s journey is a testament to perseverance, determination, and the power of music to heal and inspire. Her enduring legacy is sure to continue to inspire future generations of artists for years to come. Mary J Blige is a true trailblazer and a force to be reckoned with in the music industry.
FAQs
1. When did Mary J Blige start her music career?
Mary J Blige began her music career in the late 1980s.
2. How many Grammy Awards has Mary J Blige won?
Mary J Blige has won a total of nine Grammy Awards throughout her career.
3. Is Mary J Blige involved in any philanthropic work?
Yes, Mary J Blige is actively involved in various philanthropic endeavors, particularly in areas such as education and cancer research.
4. Has Mary J Blige appeared in any films or TV shows?
Yes, Mary J Blige has ventured into acting and has appeared in films such as “Mudbound” and TV shows like “Power.”
5. Is Mary J Blige still actively making music?
Yes, Mary J Blige continues to release new music and tour around the world.
6. What is Mary J Blige’s most famous song?
Mary J Blige’s most famous song is arguably “Real Love,” which became a breakout hit for her in the early 1990s.
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Mary J. Blige Hints At New Love
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2024-01-25T00:00:00
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Mary J. Blige hints that she has a new man in her life. In a recent interview the singer said that she is no longer single.
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105.1 The Bounce
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https://1051thebounce.com/2024/01/25/mary-j-blige-hints-at-new-love/
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Is Mary J. Blige done searching for that real love? The GRAMMY-winner has revealed that she is now off the market.
In Blige’s latest interview, per Vibe, the singer was asked about the status of her current relationship.
“No, I’m not single. I’m happily doing what I’m doing,” the singer replied. She didn’t give any more details on who her new boo could be.
The “Real Love” singer said that her latest song, “Still Believe In Love,” was created when she had just finalized her divorce. She said that she “needed something different” and “postive” at that point in her life.
“I had to believe in myself […] I say ‘no matter what happens, I’m never gonna give up on me.’ And the timing, the climate for the song was just perfect for right now,” she said.
Blige was married to record producer Kendu Isaacs. They got married in 2004 and got divorced after 12 years of marriage.
Mary J. Blige’s Recent Honors
In 2022, Blige dropped her GRAMMY-nominated album Good Morning Gorgeous. She followed up with a tour that was supported by Ella Mai and Queen Naija in select cities. That same year, she also took the stage at the Super Bowl with Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Eminem, Kendrick Lamar, and 50 Cent. Additionally, she reviewed the 2022 Icon Award at the Billboard Music Awards for her success in the music industry.
“My career has been such an incredible and unexpected journey that has included many turns into avenues I never could have imagined like acting, producing, launching businesses, and now even my own music festival,” expressed Blige in a press statement per Vibe. “Through it all, I always one way or another gravitated back to my first love, music. To be recognized in this way at this moment, with the Icon Award at the Billboard Music Awards, is an incredible honor and one that I am truly humbled by.”
Mary J. Blige: Her 10 Best Songs, Ranked
Autumn Hawkins is the National Hip-Hop and R&B writer for Beasley Media, currently residing in New Jersey. Prior to working at Beasley Media, she was in broadcast news as an entertainment producer. When she's not impatiently waiting for Beyoncé to drop new music, she is reading, shopping, or planning a vacation.
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Mary J. Blige is an American singer-songwriter and actress who has been called the Queen of Hip-Hop Soul. A major artist of the late 20th and early 21st centuries who redefined music genres, Blige is especially known for soulful ballads and infectious dance hits, and her music is often personal, spiritual, and emotional.
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Music career
Britannica Quiz
Pop Culture Quiz
Blige sang backup for various artists until the 1992 release of her first solo album, What’s the 411?, produced primarily by rapper Sean (“Puffy”) Combs (Diddy). That album reveals the pain of Blige’s childhood while presenting a unique sound that mixed classic soul with hip-hop and urban contemporary R&B, redefining soul music and influencing a generation of artists. The album also produced the top 10 hit “Real Love.” Her success continued with the introspective My Life (1994); a documentary centering on the album appeared in 2021.
Blige’s glamorous but street-tough image softened over time. However, her music remained personal, emotional, and spiritual. Among Blige’s host of hit singles are “Be Without You” (1994), “Not Gon’ Cry” (1996), and “Take Me as I Am” (2005). Her hit albums include Share My World (1997) and Growing Pains (2007), both of which reached number one on the Billboard charts. No More Drama (2001), Blige’s fifth studio album, presents an artist who is happy with the woman she has become. That album spawned the irresistible number one single, “Family Affair,” which spent six weeks at the top of the charts. Her 2006 release, Reflections (2006), provides a retrospective of her work.
Blige also joined rock band U2 on numerous occasions to perform their single “One,” most notably at a benefit concert for victims of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. She recorded a version of the song on her album The Breakthrough (2005), and another version was released as a single in mainland Europe and the United Kingdom in 2006. Of Blige’s passionate vocal delivery on “One,” U2 lead singer Bono said:
Mary J. Blige brought the song places I couldn’t possibly have been or understood. I don’t know exactly where she went, or the names she put on the places, or the problems she was trying to solve with her interpretation, but I felt them so strongly.
Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content. Subscribe Now
Blige’s 2008 tour with Jay-Z made her one of hip-hop’s top-grossing live acts, and the following year she won a Grammy Award for best contemporary R&B album—her ninth total career Grammy—for Growing Pains. Stronger with Each Tear (2009) was criticized for its overreliance on guest vocalists and Auto-Tune technology, but Blige rebounded in convincing fashion with My Life II…The Journey Continues (Act I) (2011), which plays to her strengths, balancing soulful ballads with catchy dance tunes that recall her earliest hits. An album of Christmas standards, A Mary Christmas, appeared in 2013. The following year she released the soundtrack for the comedy film Think Like a Man Too and The London Sessions, the latter of which features collaborations with several British producers and musicians, including Sam Smith, Naughty Boy, and the duo Disclosure. The critically acclaimed Strength of a Woman (2017) was inspired by Blige’s acrimonious breakup with her husband and manager, Kendu Isaacs. Blige’s 14th studio album, Good Morning Gorgeous, appeared in 2022. Shortly thereafter she was among a group of hip-hop stars—which included Snoop Dogg, Dr. Dre, and Eminem—who performed at the Super Bowl halftime show.
In 2019 Blige received a lifetime achievement award from Black Entertainment Television (BET). In 2024 Blige was scheduled to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Acting career
Blige forayed into acting, making guest appearances on several television shows and taking supporting roles in such films as Rock of Ages (2012), Betty and Coretta (2013), Black Nativity (2013), and Mudbound (2017). For her work in the latter movie, a drama about racism in 1940s Mississippi, Blige earned an Academy Award nomination for best supporting actress. In addition, “Mighty River,” which she cowrote and sang for the film’s soundtrack, received an Oscar nod.
She later lent her voice to the animated feature Sherlock Gnomes (2018) and Trolls World Tour (2020). Her other credits from 2020 include the horror thriller Body Cam, in which she played a police officer. During this time she also had recurring roles on such TV shows as Scream and The Umbrella Academy. In Power Book II: Ghost (2020–24), a spin-off of the popular crime drama Power, Blige played a drug “queenpin.” (In early 2024 it was announced that the series would end after its fourth season concludes in September.) She played jazz great Dinah Washington in the Aretha Franklin biopic Respect (2021), which starred Jennifer Hudson in the lead role. In 2024 Blige costarred in the film Rob Peace, playing the mother of a young man whose promising future is compromised by his economic situation and issues involving his family and past.
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Mary J. Blige performs on the National Mall during the Operation Tribute to Freedom, NFL and Pepsi sponsored “NFL Kickoff Live 2003” Concert, September 4, 2003 (cropped)
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Jan. 11 in Music History: Happy birthday, Mary J. Blige
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Vicki Peterson was born, The Jimi Hendrix Experience recorded 'Purple Haze' at Olympic Studios in London; Nirvana's landmark album 'Nevermind' reached the top of the Billboard 200 Album Chart; T. Rex drummer Mickey Finn died from alcohol related liver problem; Led Zeppelin performed "Kashmir" live for the first time, Today in Music History.
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History Highlight:
The “Queen of Hip-Hop Soul” Mary J. Blige was born on this date in 1971 in the Bronx borough of New York City. In 1992, she released her debut album, What’s the 411?, which was a breakout critical and commercial hit, selling more than 3 million copies. The single “Real Love” hit No. 7 on the Billboard Hot 100. Blige’s 14 studio albums have sold an estimated 100 million copies worldwide, and has won nine Grammy Awards. She performed as part of the Super Bowl halftime show in both 2001 and 2023, and is an Oscar- and Golden Globe-nominated actress.
Also, in:
1958 - The release date for the Elvis Presley single 'Jailhouse Rock' was put back a week after Decca Records, a U.K. pressing plant, was unable to meet the advance orders of 250,000 copies.
1963 - The Beatles recorded their first national TV show 'Thank Your Lucky Stars'. They lip synched to their new single 'Please Please Me' which was released that day.
1964 - 'Louie Louie' by The Kingsmen was the No. 1 song on the U.S. Cash Box music chart. For a while, the record was banned by a handful of U.S. radio stations because of its indecipherable lyrics, which were rumored to contain some "naughty words." Even the F.B.I. investigated the song, but finally concluded that they could find nothing wrong.
1964 - The Whisky a Go Go opened in West Hollywood, CA. This club would go on to be a launching pad for such acts as The Doors and Frank Zappa's Mothers of Invention.
1964 - Ring Of Fire The Best of Johnny Cash became the first No. 1 album when Billboard debuted their Country Album Chart. It was his sixteenth album in total and his first compilation album.
1967 - The Jimi Hendrix Experience recorded "Purple Haze" at Olympic Studios in London.
1971 - Pearl, the second and final solo album by Janis Joplin, is released - three months after her death.
1975 - Led Zeppelin performed "Kashmir" live for the first time during a concert at the Ahoy in Rotterdam, Holland. The song was written by Jimmy Page and Robert Plant (with contributions from John Bonham) over a period of three years. It became a concert staple, performed by the band at almost every concert after its release. The song has been described as one of Led Zeppelin's most overtly progressive epics.
1985 - A Brazilian rock Festival held in Rio claimed to be the biggest ever staged. The festival featured Queen, Rod Stewart, AC/DC, Whitesnake, Yes and Iron Maiden.
1992 - Nirvana's landmark album Nevermind reached the top of the Billboard 200 Album Chart for the first of two non-consecutive weeks at number one. They also peaked at number six on the Billboard Hot 100 Singles Chart with "Smells Like Teen Spirit" and made their debut appearance on U.S. television on Saturday Night Live on this night.
1993 - Ted Nugent was fined $1,000 for shooting off two flaming arrows during a Damn Yankees concert at Cincinnati Gardens. Nugent was also given a three-day suspended sentence for a misdemeanor fire-code violation.
2003 - T. Rex drummer Mickey Finn died from alcohol related liver problems in a London hospital. He was 55 years old.
2005 - Former Bread guitarist and Academy Award-winning songwriter James Griffin died at his home in Nashville at the age of 61.
2017 - Rockabilly guitarist Tommy Allsup, who narrowly avoided boarding the plane that killed Buddy Holly and the Big Bopper, died at age 85. The musician famously lost a coin toss for a seat on the plane and his place was taken by teen star Ritchie Valens, who also died when the plane crashed. Allsup went on to become a Grammy-winning musician, who played with Merle Haggard, Roy Orbison and Willie Nelson.
Birthdays: Laurens Hammond, inventor of the Hammond organ, was born today in 1895. The sound of the Hammond was used by many rock artists including Procol Harum, Keith Emerson, Led Zeppelin, The Allman Brothers and The Faces. Hammond died on July 3, 1973.
Slim Harpo, blues musician ("Baby Scratch My Back"), was born today in 1924.
Clarence Clemons, saxophonist for the E Street Band, was born today in 1942.
Tony Kaye, keyboardist for Yes, is 79.
Naomi Judd was born today in 1946. She passed away in 2022.
Terry Williams, drummer for Rockpile and Dire Straits, is 76.
Charlie Huhn, of Foghat and Ted Nugent’s band, is 73.
Lee Ritenour is 72.
Big Bank Hank (Henry Lee Jackson), rapper from The Sugarhill Gang, was born today in 1956.
Vicki Peterson of The Bangles is 66.
Tom Dumont of No Doubt is 56.
Tom Rowlands of The Chemical Brothers is 53.
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https://www.sistersletter.com/culture-style/girls-trip-to-new-york-city-every-borough-has-its-own-beat
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en
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Girls’ Trip to New York City: Every Borough Has Its Own Beat
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[
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2024-06-20T04:01:00+00:00
|
From a Tony-nominated show featuring the music of Alicia Keys to the birthplace of hip-hop to skyline views from a chic rooftop, NYC makes for an unforgettable summer getaway.
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en
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/apple-touch-icon.png?v=2
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Sisters
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https://www.sistersletter.com/culture-style/girls-trip-to-new-york-city-every-borough-has-its-own-beat
|
Have you visited New York? Would you like to? Do you have a favorite attraction or site? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
In the words of Alicia Keys, let’s hear it for New York! “The concrete jungle where dreams are made of,” as she sings, is always a great place to visit. But a Broadway musical featuring Keys’ music and life story makes the Big Apple an even more exciting destination for Black women now. "Hell's Kitchen," nominated for 13 Tony Awards, encapsulates the quintessential New York experience in a symphony of sights, sounds, and flavors. Set in the heart of Manhattan, the show mirrors the city's raw energy. The streets pulse with life—gritty yet glamorous, like a jazz riff echoing through narrow alleys. The show introduces us to a kaleidoscope of characters: struggling artists, ambitious dreamers, and seasoned New Yorkers. Alicia Keys' soulful tunes infuse the narrative. From brownstone stoops to subway platforms, her music becomes the soundtrack of our own New York moments.
Any native New Yorker will tell you; the city’s best attraction is people watching. But here are some unique things to do, see, hear, eat, drink and more in every one of NYC’s five boroughs.
The Bronx
The Bronx, known as the home of the New York Yankees, has so much to offer. The borough and its parks played a big part in cultivating the hip-hop culture of the 70’s. The Bronx’s Cedar Park holds a special place in history. When a house party with DJ Kool Herc reached capacity, he took his turntable and mixer to the park next door. The Black and brown youth started this movement, and the world celebrated Hip-Hop’s 50th Anniversary in 2023. If you sign up for the Birthplace of Hip Hop Tour from Hushtours.com, you can explore the city and some vivid murals celebrating hip-hop legends and graffiti artists in the Bronx.
If you want to continue engaging your artistic senses, head to the Black-owned, woman-owned The Lit Bar for a great read and a sip. You might meet some of your favorite literary artists. Tamron Hall recently stopped in for a book signing, and Mary J. Blige signed books there last year.
Where to stay: The landmark Opera House Hotel was known in days past as the Great Bronx Opera House. With a predominately Latin population in The Bronx, the Opera House was the center of Latin culture in the 1940s and 1970s. Several Latin nightclubs called the Opera House home. The renovated Opera House Hotel is reminiscent of the area’s rich history. It is steps away from major transportation that can whisk you to nearby attractions like the Bronx Zoo or Beatstro: The Hip Hop Restaurant. You can enjoy “Rhythm and Latin soul food” while vibing to amateur talent, live DJ parties, and dance battles here.
Brooklyn
Brooklyn is the most populated borough in New York City. This may have played a part in the Nets’ move to Brooklyn in 2012. One thing for sure is that Jay-Z, a multifaceted businessman, legendary rapper, former Nets and Barclays Center stakeholder, and Brooklyn’s native son, was instrumental in making this deal happen. Jay-Z, born Shawn Carter, grew up in Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood. Recently, December 4th was commemorated as “Jay-Z Day,” celebrating all he has done for New York. So, before you take in a game or concert at Barclay’s Center, grab lunch at the notable Black-owned pizzeria, Cuts & Slices. Have your mind blown by a slice topped with untraditional toppings like salmon or oxtails. Then, wind down or up at the black-owned Franklin Bar in Bed-Stuy. Here, you can sip good wine while you feel good vibes spun by a DJ.
Where to stay: A once dilapidated mansion returned to its original glory as a beautiful Italianate villa, Akwaaba Mansion Brooklyn is situated in a charming tree-lined community with lovely brownstones. Akwaaba is a dream realized by Glenn Pogue and Monique Greenwood, who have fashioned each room with a mix of antiques and Afrocentricity. Start your day with a hearty Southern breakfast, sip tea in the secluded garden, or enjoy a dip in the jacuzzi.
Manhattan
Manhattan offers visitors attractions like Central Park and the Empire State Building. Central Park serves as an escape from the concrete that binds the city together and the greenspace sees many visitors. Still, many may not know that “Before Central Park was created, the landscape along what is now the Park’s perimeter from West 82nd to West 89th Street was the site of Seneca Village,” according to the Central Park Conservancy. From 1825 to 1857, Seneca Village was a predominantly African American community that allowed Blacks to own property, which was rare.
Other districts in this borough include Lower Manhattan, Washington Heights, and Harlem. Harlem, dubbed the “cultural capital of Black America,” has several historical attractions. Sites include The Apollo Theatre, the Paris Blues Jazz Club, and Amy Ruth’s Homestyle Southern Cuisine. If you want to simultaneously feed your soul with good food and melodic sounds, head to the Red Rooster Harlem. The restaurant is co-owned by famed Ethiopian-born Swedish-American celeb chef, restauranteur, television personality, and author Marcus Samuelsson. At Red Rooster Harlem, you can savor the mac and cheese and sounds of jazz, gospel, soul, and R&B.
Where to stay: The Harlem Flophouse, owned by Latin-born New Yorker Rene Cavo, is known for its beauty and has been the backdrop for fashion models and musicians. It’s the place to go if you want to escape the hustle and bustle of New York. The hotel is a quiet haven with no televisions or telephones to disrupt your calm. You can even unwind to live music, including the Blues or Jazz.
Queens
Queens, also known as the “world’s borough,” is a large mixture of diverse people and is said to be the “most diverse county in America.” With this bountiful array of cultures comes an eclectic grouping of dining, shopping, and cultural experiences like no other. Many visitors love Queens because they can embark on an international journey by simply visiting one neighborhood to the next. Head to Jamaica, Queens, and try New York’s #1 meat patties at Jamaican Flavors. Or head to Flushing, New York, and taste the authentic Asian foods. Be sure to visit Chinatown for authentic Chinese cuisine.
Where to stay: Queens is the largest borough based on its area, so you have many hotel choices. For a modern, trendy hotel, consider a stay at the Boro Hotel. Enjoy the rooftop terrace and more. If you are staying in Flushing, you might book a room at the Renaissance New York Flushing Hotel at Tangram. Here, you can enjoy various activities with your family, from tennis to movie nights and evening entertainment. Plus, there is a kids’ club and a free airport shuttle service.
Staten Island
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2018-03-31T08:12:00
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Mary J. Blige, January 11, American singer and rapper Mary J Blige was born in The Bronx, New York on the 11 January 1971, Her father, Thomas Blige was a musician and her mother Cora Blige, a nurse.
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en
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Famous Birthdays By SunSigns.Org
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https://www.sunsigns.org/famousbirthdays/profile/mary-j-blige/
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Childhood And Early Life
American singer and rapper Mary J Blige was born in The Bronx, New York on the 11 January 1971. Her father, Thomas Blige was a musician and her mother Cora Blige, a nurse.
Mary J Blige was raised in Richmond Hill, Georgia and later moved back to New York to live with her mother and sister.
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Education
Mary J Blige dropped out of high school and did not graduate.
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Rise To Fame
Having been exposed to gospel music while living in Georgia Mary J Blige became interested in music. She sang in various bands. In the late 1980s she recorded a cover of Caught Up In Rapture, and when Jeff Redd an employee of Uptown Records heard it he was impressed and sent it to Andre Harrell, the CEO of Uptown Records. The result was that in 1989 Blige was offered a recording contract as a backing singer with the label with the label.
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Career
Mary J Blige’s career breakthrough came when the rapper, songwriter and the record producer Puff Daddy (Sean Combs) undertook to produce her first album What’s the 411? The album was released on the 28 July 1992 and reached number six on the Billboard 200 and then reached number one on the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart. What’s the 411? was certified platinum three times by the RIAA and established Blige was a recording star. On the 25 August 1992 Real Love was released and this become Blige’s first top ten hit on the 100 Hot chart. Real Love further cemented her status as a major recording star. Her second album, My Life was released in 1994. Other albums include Share My World (1997). Mary (1999). No More Drama (2001). Love & Life (2003). The Breakthrough (2005), Growing Pains (2007). Stronger With Each Tear (2009. A Mary Christmas (2013). The London Sessions (2014) and Strength of a Woman (2017).
Her first number one hit was Family Affair which topped the Billboard 100 on the 3 November 2001 and stayed there for six consecutive weeks. In April 2006 Be Without You charted number one on the R&B chart for the 15th consecutive week. This broke Mariah Carey’s record of fourteen weeks which she had held with We Belong Together.
On the 30 September 2016 Blige’s Apple Music talk show, The 411 debuted. Democratic presidential candidate Hilary Clinton was her first guest.
Mary J Blige has toured widely with her first tour Share My World Tour taking place in 1997 and 1998. Her latest tour is the Strength of a Woman World Tour (2017).
Blige started her recording label in 2004. The label, Matriarch Records signed the girl group Just’Us in 2012.
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Endorsements
Mary J Blige has endorsed the perfumes My Life and My Life Blossom as well as a range of sunglasses. Blige also owns a production company is involved in several film and television projects.
Other products Blige has endorsed and companies she has worked with include Air Jordan, American Express, Apple Inc., Burger King, Coca-Cola, and Pepsi.
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Acting Career
Acting credits include The Jamies Foxx show (1998). Angel (2001). Ghost Whisperer (2007). Can Do Bad All By Myself (2009). Rock of Ages (2012). Betty & Coretta (2013). Empire (2015). How To Get Away With Murder (2016) and Mudbound (2017).
Awards And Achievements
In 2012 Mary J Blige shared the Black Reel Best Song award for the song Living Proof. In 2009 she won a Best Contemporary R&B Album Grammy for Growing Pains. She shared a Grammy for Best R&B Vocal Performance by a Duo or Group in 2008 with Chaka Kahn for Disrespectful. She also won a Grammy that year for Best Female R&B Vocal Performance for Be Without You and another Grammy for the album The Breakthrough.
Personal Life
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Mary J. Blige
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AKA Mary Jane Blige
Born: 11-Jan-1971
Birthplace: Bronx, NY
Gender: Female
Religion: Born-Again Christian
Race or Ethnicity: Black
Sexual orientation: Straight
Occupation: Musician
Nationality: United States
Executive summary: Pop/R&B diva
Mary J. Blige spent her childhood between Savannah and Yonkers, soaking up the musical influences of her mother's 70s soul collection and her Pentecostal church. Through occasional visits with her musician father, she began to develop her singing technique and learn the basics of harmony. When she was 17, a recording made in a Karaoke booth of her singing Anita Baker's Caught Up In The Rapture began to be circulated by her mother's boyfriend, eventually resulting in an audition and -- immediately afterwards -- a contract with Uptown Records. A period of several years followed before work began on an album of her own, but in the interim Blige was kept busy as a guest performer for many of her Uptown labelmates.
With Sean Puff Daddy Combs at the helm, her debut record What's The 411 eventually surfaced in 1992, its its blend of soul and hip-hop garnering enthusistic response from both critics and the record-buying public. An album of remixes appeared the next year, filling the gap before her second release My Life in 1994, which was also under the direction of Combs. This second album continued her forward momentum, featuring the popular singles You Gotta Believe, All Night Long and You Bring Me Joy, and resulted in a Grammy nominations for Best R&B Album. A contribution to the Waiting to Exhale soundtrack in 1995 served to broaden her popularity.
The dictates of Combs were discarded in 1997, and Blige took on executive producer duties for herself with the next effort Share My World; the album became her first number one on the mainstream charts and received numerous industry awards. A live document, The Tour, followed in 1998. With Mary, her fourth release, the singer assumed even further control of her output, as well as bringing an extensive roster of collaborators of varying backgrounds on board -- Eric Clapton, Elton John, Lauryn Hill and Aretha Franklin amongst them. 2001's No More Drama and 2003's Love & Life (which once again enlisted the help of producer Combs) continued to maintain the upward arc of her career.
Mother: Cora Blige
Sister: LaTonya Blige-DaCosta
Sister: Jonquell
Brother: Bruce
Boyfriend: K-Ci Hailey
Husband: Kendu Isaacs (m. 7-Dec-2003)
Grammy Best Rap Performance By A Duo Or Group (1995)
Grammy Best Female R&B Vocal Performance (2002)
Grammy Best Pop Collaboration With Vocals (2003)
Endorsement of Apple Sep-2015
Endorsement of Burger King (2012)
Endorsement of Coca-Cola
Endorsement of Unilever Axe men's grooming (2010)
Endorsement of Megaupload (2011)
Risk Factors: Alcoholism
FILMOGRAPHY AS ACTOR
Mudbound (21-Jan-2017)
Black Nativity (27-Nov-2013)
Rock of Ages (13-Jun-2012) · Justice
Beats Rhymes & Life: The Travels of a Tribe Called Quest (8-Jul-2011) · Herself
I Can Do Bad All by Myself (11-Sep-2009) · Tanya
Fade to Black (5-Nov-2004) · Herself
Prison Song (27-Apr-2001)
Official Website:
http://www.mjblige.com/
Do you know something we don't?
Submit a correction or make a comment about this profile
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2014-04-02T08:22:38
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Mary J. Blige has influenced a generation of artists with hits like 'Real Love' and 'Be Without You.' She has also had a successful acting career, including her Oscar-nominated performance in 'Mudbound.'
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/_assets/design-tokens/biography/static/images/favicon.3635572.ico
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Biography
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|
(1971-)
Who Is Mary J. Blige?
When a recording of 17-year-old Mary J. Blige singing at a karaoke booth came to the attention of Uptown Records, the company put her under contract immediately. She sang backup until the 1992 release of her first solo album, What's the 411?, a record that re-defined modern soul. Blige has had several No. 1 Billboard hits and has won nine Grammy Awards. She has also earned positive reviews for her acting in projects such as the 2013 TV movie Betty & Coretta and the 2017 World War II-era drama Mudbound.
Early Life
Born on January 11, 1971, in the Bronx, New York, Blige has won over millions of fans with her music. But before becoming a successful hip-hop singer, Blige endured a hellish childhood marred by violence, alcohol and drugs. Her mother, Cora Blige, was a nurse and an alcoholic; her father, Thomas Blige, was a jazz musician who played the bass guitar, as well as a Vietnam War veteran who suffered from severe post-traumatic stress disorder. "My mother went through awful abuse from my father," Blige once recalled. "He left us when I was 4, but he'd come back from time to time and abuse her some more."
Hoping to escape from her father, Blige and her mother moved to the Schlobohm Houses, a public housing project in Yonkers. The projects offered only more horror: "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. It was a dangerous place. No one wanted anyone else to get ahead. 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."
Blige found escape from the terrible world of her childhood in church and in music. "I loved being there because I wouldn't be hurt," she said about going to church. "I felt wanted and special, and when I was 12, I sang the hymn 'Lord, Help Me To Hold Out Until My Change Has Come.' I was praying as I sang it. I felt the Spirit." However, by the time she turned 16, she had dropped out of school, stopped going to church, and become addicted to drugs and sex. "I ended up becoming my environment," Blige said. "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."
Albums: '411' and 'My Life'
It was Blige's voice that rescued her from the tragic life into which she was quickly falling. "Everyone talked about the karaoke machine at the mall," she remembered. "So I went in and recorded Anita Baker's 'Caught Up in the Rapture' on a cassette tape. I didn't think it was anything big." After four years of sending out her demo tape to no avail, Blige managed to get the tape to Uptown Records CEO Andre Harrell, who was blown away by her beautiful, powerful and soulful voice. He signed Blige to a record contract in 1992 and assigned a young up-and-coming music producer named Sean "Diddy" Combs to work with her. Blige released her debut album, What's the 411? later that year, and it instantly became a huge success. The album sold more than 3 million copies, bolstered by the hit singles "You Remind Me" and "Real Love."
Two years later, Blige released a second album, My Life, on which she wrote or co-wrote nearly all of the songs. My Life proved another critical and popular success with singles such as "Be Happy," "Mary Jane (All Night Long)" and "You Bring Me Joy." In 1996, she won her first Grammy Award (best rap performance by a duo or group) for "I'll be There For You/You're All I Need to Get By," a duet with Method Man of the Wu-Tang Clan. Her third album, 1997's Share My World, reached No. 1 on the Billboard albums chart, and featured hits like "Love Is All We Need" and "Everything."
Personal Struggles
While her music was adored by fans and critics alike, behind her professional success Blige's personal life continued to spiral out of control. "I didn't know my own worth," she said. "I was ignorant. The people making money off me kept me blind: 'Mary likes cocaine? OK, let's make sure she keeps getting it. Alcohol? Get her that.'" Blige finally managed to turn her life around when she met and fell in love with a music executive named Kendu Isaacs. "After I met him, everything changed in my life," she said. "He was the first person to ever challenge what I did: 'Why are you drinking? Why do you hate yourself? You don't need to be around people who tear you down. You're beautiful, Mary.' He was the first man to ever tell me that." Blige and Isaacs married in 2003, and she became a stepmother to his three children. In 2016, it was reported that the couple has called it quits.
In 2001, Blige released an album fittingly titled No More Drama. The album features her most popular song to date, "Family Affair," which was one of the most popular songs of the decade and remains a classic of the hip-hop soul genre. After her 2003 album Love & Life earned only lukewarm reviews, Blige recorded her most popular and acclaimed album to date, The Breakthrough, in 2005. In addition to selling more than 7 million copies worldwide, The Breakthrough was nominated for eight Grammy Awards and won three, for best R&B album, best R&B song and best R&B female vocal performance (for the song "Be Without You"). Blige continued to put out new albums thereafter, including Growing Pains (2007) and Stronger with Each Tear (2009).
Soundtrack and 'London Sessions'
In 2011, Blige contributed a song, "The Living Proof," to the soundtrack of the hit film The Help. She also released the album My Life: Part II ... The Journey Continues, which became a Top 5 hit. The record featured the song "Mr. Wrong," a collaboration with rapper Drake. The following year, Blige celebrated the 25th anniversary of her breakthrough debut What's the 411? with a new edition of this classic album and also released the holiday collection A Mary Christmas.
2014 saw the songstress handling all of the tracks for the soundtrack to Think Like a Man Too. That same year, refusing to rest on her laurels, Blige expanded her musical palette geographically with the album The London Sessions, showcasing her time in the United Kingdom and featuring songwriting from Sam Smith, Emeli Sandé and Disclosure. Renowned as the Queen of Hip-Hop Soul, Blige is undeniably one of the great singers and artists of her generation. She has sold over 50 million albums and, as of 2015, has won nine Grammy Awards.
In addition to music, Blige has branched out into acting. She appeared in Tyler Perry's dramatic comedy I Can Do Bad All By Myself in 2009, and sang in the musical film Rock of Ages alongside Tom Cruise, Alec Baldwin and Russell Brand in 2012. Taking on a more dramatic role, in 2013, she appeared as Dr. Betty Shabazz, the widow of slain civil rights leader Malcolm X, in the TV movie Betty & Coretta. Angela Bassett co-starred as Coretta Scott King, the widow of Martin Luther King Jr., in the small-screen production, which explored the lives of these two women in the wake of their husbands' deaths.
In 2017, Blige pulled off a rare acting/singing double nomination from the Golden Globes, earning consideration for her supporting role in the period drama Mudbound and its song "Mighty River." (Barbra Streisand is the only performer to win Globes in both categories the same year, for her contributions to A Star Is Born in 1976.) Blige later earned Academy Award nominations for Supporting Actress and Original Song.
Early in 2018, it was announced that Blige was being honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, with Combs tapped to deliver the introduction for the January 11 ceremony.
Legal Woes
In May 2013, Blige was revealed to have a substantial outstanding tax bill. The Internal Revenue Service filed $3.4 million tax lien against her and her husband in New Jersey that February. This huge tab covered three years' worth of unpaid taxes. A spokesperson for Blige told the Associated Press that the singer is working "with her new team to resolve all these issues as quickly as possible."
QUICK FACTS
Name: Mary J. Blige
Birth Year: 1971
Birth date: January 11, 1971
Birth State: New York
Birth City: The Bronx
Birth Country: United States
Gender: Female
Best Known For: Mary J. Blige has influenced a generation of artists with hits like 'Real Love' and 'Be Without You.' She has also had a successful acting career, including her Oscar-nominated performance in 'Mudbound.'
Industries
Pop
Astrological Sign: Capricorn
Fact Check: We strive for accuracy and fairness. If you see something that doesn’t look right, contact us!
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Mary J. Blige | Biography, Music, & Facts
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Mary J. Blige is an American singer-songwriter and actress who has been called the Queen of Hip-Hop Soul. A major artist of the late 20th and early 21st centuries who redefined music genres, Blige is especially known for soulful ballads and infectious dance hits, and her music is often personal, spiritual, and emotional.
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Encyclopedia Britannica
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https://www.britannica.com/biography/Mary-J-Blige
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Music career
Britannica Quiz
Pop Culture Quiz
Blige sang backup for various artists until the 1992 release of her first solo album, What’s the 411?, produced primarily by rapper Sean (“Puffy”) Combs (Diddy). That album reveals the pain of Blige’s childhood while presenting a unique sound that mixed classic soul with hip-hop and urban contemporary R&B, redefining soul music and influencing a generation of artists. The album also produced the top 10 hit “Real Love.” Her success continued with the introspective My Life (1994); a documentary centering on the album appeared in 2021.
Blige’s glamorous but street-tough image softened over time. However, her music remained personal, emotional, and spiritual. Among Blige’s host of hit singles are “Be Without You” (1994), “Not Gon’ Cry” (1996), and “Take Me as I Am” (2005). Her hit albums include Share My World (1997) and Growing Pains (2007), both of which reached number one on the Billboard charts. No More Drama (2001), Blige’s fifth studio album, presents an artist who is happy with the woman she has become. That album spawned the irresistible number one single, “Family Affair,” which spent six weeks at the top of the charts. Her 2006 release, Reflections (2006), provides a retrospective of her work.
Blige also joined rock band U2 on numerous occasions to perform their single “One,” most notably at a benefit concert for victims of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. She recorded a version of the song on her album The Breakthrough (2005), and another version was released as a single in mainland Europe and the United Kingdom in 2006. Of Blige’s passionate vocal delivery on “One,” U2 lead singer Bono said:
Mary J. Blige brought the song places I couldn’t possibly have been or understood. I don’t know exactly where she went, or the names she put on the places, or the problems she was trying to solve with her interpretation, but I felt them so strongly.
Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content. Subscribe Now
Blige’s 2008 tour with Jay-Z made her one of hip-hop’s top-grossing live acts, and the following year she won a Grammy Award for best contemporary R&B album—her ninth total career Grammy—for Growing Pains. Stronger with Each Tear (2009) was criticized for its overreliance on guest vocalists and Auto-Tune technology, but Blige rebounded in convincing fashion with My Life II…The Journey Continues (Act I) (2011), which plays to her strengths, balancing soulful ballads with catchy dance tunes that recall her earliest hits. An album of Christmas standards, A Mary Christmas, appeared in 2013. The following year she released the soundtrack for the comedy film Think Like a Man Too and The London Sessions, the latter of which features collaborations with several British producers and musicians, including Sam Smith, Naughty Boy, and the duo Disclosure. The critically acclaimed Strength of a Woman (2017) was inspired by Blige’s acrimonious breakup with her husband and manager, Kendu Isaacs. Blige’s 14th studio album, Good Morning Gorgeous, appeared in 2022. Shortly thereafter she was among a group of hip-hop stars—which included Snoop Dogg, Dr. Dre, and Eminem—who performed at the Super Bowl halftime show.
In 2019 Blige received a lifetime achievement award from Black Entertainment Television (BET). In 2024 Blige was scheduled to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Acting career
Blige forayed into acting, making guest appearances on several television shows and taking supporting roles in such films as Rock of Ages (2012), Betty and Coretta (2013), Black Nativity (2013), and Mudbound (2017). For her work in the latter movie, a drama about racism in 1940s Mississippi, Blige earned an Academy Award nomination for best supporting actress. In addition, “Mighty River,” which she cowrote and sang for the film’s soundtrack, received an Oscar nod.
She later lent her voice to the animated feature Sherlock Gnomes (2018) and Trolls World Tour (2020). Her other credits from 2020 include the horror thriller Body Cam, in which she played a police officer. During this time she also had recurring roles on such TV shows as Scream and The Umbrella Academy. In Power Book II: Ghost (2020–24), a spin-off of the popular crime drama Power, Blige played a drug “queenpin.” (In early 2024 it was announced that the series would end after its fourth season concludes in September.) She played jazz great Dinah Washington in the Aretha Franklin biopic Respect (2021), which starred Jennifer Hudson in the lead role. In 2024 Blige costarred in the film Rob Peace, playing the mother of a young man whose promising future is compromised by his economic situation and issues involving his family and past.
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Mary J. Blige Biography
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Read all about Mary J. Blige with TV Guide's exclusive biography including their list of awards, celeb facts and more at TV Guide.
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Fast Facts
Dropped out of high school in the 11th grade, but eventually earned her GED
Her demo tape was a karaoke-type recording of Anita Baker's "Caught Up in the Rapture" that she made at a mall when she was 17
It wound up in the hands of Uptown Records exec Andre Harrell, who signed her
Sean Combs was her musical mentor, helping to produce her 1992 debut album, What's the 411?, and its follow-up, 1994's My Life
What's the 411? sold more than two million copies and helped establish what was then termed "New Jack Swing" (a blend of soul and hip-hop)
Made her acting debut in a 1998 episode of The Jamie Foxx Show
In 2004, appeared in the off-Broadway play The Exonerated
Started her own record label, Matriarch Records
Awards
2018Independent Spirit Awards-Robert Altman Award: winner
2018Golden Globe-Best Original Song - Motion Picture: nominated
2017Critics' Choice Awards-Best Supporting Actress: nominated
2017Screen Actors Guild Awards-Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role: nominated
2017Screen Actors Guild Awards-Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture: nominated
2017Oscar-Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role: nominated
2017Oscar-Best Achievement in Music (Original Song): nominated
2012Golden Globe-Best Original Song - Motion Picture: nominated
2012Critics' Choice Movie Awards-Best Song: nominated
2007Critics' Choice Awards-Best Song: nominated
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Mary J. Blige
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AKA Mary Jane Blige
Born: 11-Jan-1971
Birthplace: Bronx, NY
Gender: Female
Religion: Born-Again Christian
Race or Ethnicity: Black
Sexual orientation: Straight
Occupation: Musician
Nationality: United States
Executive summary: Pop/R&B diva
Mary J. Blige spent her childhood between Savannah and Yonkers, soaking up the musical influences of her mother's 70s soul collection and her Pentecostal church. Through occasional visits with her musician father, she began to develop her singing technique and learn the basics of harmony. When she was 17, a recording made in a Karaoke booth of her singing Anita Baker's Caught Up In The Rapture began to be circulated by her mother's boyfriend, eventually resulting in an audition and -- immediately afterwards -- a contract with Uptown Records. A period of several years followed before work began on an album of her own, but in the interim Blige was kept busy as a guest performer for many of her Uptown labelmates.
With Sean Puff Daddy Combs at the helm, her debut record What's The 411 eventually surfaced in 1992, its its blend of soul and hip-hop garnering enthusistic response from both critics and the record-buying public. An album of remixes appeared the next year, filling the gap before her second release My Life in 1994, which was also under the direction of Combs. This second album continued her forward momentum, featuring the popular singles You Gotta Believe, All Night Long and You Bring Me Joy, and resulted in a Grammy nominations for Best R&B Album. A contribution to the Waiting to Exhale soundtrack in 1995 served to broaden her popularity.
The dictates of Combs were discarded in 1997, and Blige took on executive producer duties for herself with the next effort Share My World; the album became her first number one on the mainstream charts and received numerous industry awards. A live document, The Tour, followed in 1998. With Mary, her fourth release, the singer assumed even further control of her output, as well as bringing an extensive roster of collaborators of varying backgrounds on board -- Eric Clapton, Elton John, Lauryn Hill and Aretha Franklin amongst them. 2001's No More Drama and 2003's Love & Life (which once again enlisted the help of producer Combs) continued to maintain the upward arc of her career.
Mother: Cora Blige
Sister: LaTonya Blige-DaCosta
Sister: Jonquell
Brother: Bruce
Boyfriend: K-Ci Hailey
Husband: Kendu Isaacs (m. 7-Dec-2003)
Grammy Best Rap Performance By A Duo Or Group (1995)
Grammy Best Female R&B Vocal Performance (2002)
Grammy Best Pop Collaboration With Vocals (2003)
Endorsement of Apple Sep-2015
Endorsement of Burger King (2012)
Endorsement of Coca-Cola
Endorsement of Unilever Axe men's grooming (2010)
Endorsement of Megaupload (2011)
Risk Factors: Alcoholism
FILMOGRAPHY AS ACTOR
Mudbound (21-Jan-2017)
Black Nativity (27-Nov-2013)
Rock of Ages (13-Jun-2012) · Justice
Beats Rhymes & Life: The Travels of a Tribe Called Quest (8-Jul-2011) · Herself
I Can Do Bad All by Myself (11-Sep-2009) · Tanya
Fade to Black (5-Nov-2004) · Herself
Prison Song (27-Apr-2001)
Official Website:
http://www.mjblige.com/
Do you know something we don't?
Submit a correction or make a comment about this profile
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Mary J. Blige: The True Superhero of Hip-Hop Soul
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Mary J. Blige: The True Superhero of Hip-Hop Soul
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â
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. Sheâs battled incredible adversity throughout her life, but always forged her own path rather than bowing to trends, and through her painfully honest lyrics sheâs shone a light on the experiences of young black women, making her as relatable a figure as she is an influential one. Â
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 âto abuse us some moreâ. 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 âWe lived in the ghetto⦠Iâd 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 wasnât 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: âIs it somehow my fault?ââ
â
â
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: âI 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, drugsâIâd do whatever it took to feel a little better.â Fortunately her teenage instincts werenât 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 Bakerâs 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 âPuffyâ Combs. The pair came up with Maryâs debut album, Whatâs 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 âThe Queen of Hip-Hop Soulâ.Â
â
â
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. Sheâs battled incredible adversity throughout her life, but always forged her own path rather than bowing to trends, and through her painfully honest lyrics sheâs shone a light on the experiences of young black women, making her as relatable a figure as she is an influential one. Â
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 âto abuse us some moreâ. 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 âWe lived in the ghetto⦠Iâd 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 wasnât 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: âIs it somehow my fault?ââ
â
â
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: âI 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, drugsâIâd do whatever it took to feel a little better.â Fortunately her teenage instincts werenât 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 Bakerâs 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 âPuffyâ Combs. The pair came up with Maryâs debut album, Whatâs 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 âThe Queen of Hip-Hop Soulâ.Â
â
â
My Life and beyond
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 Maryâs second album, 1994âs 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 Clanâs Method Man, Iâll Be There For You/Youâre 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 TLCâs No Scrubs and Bills Bills Bills by Destinyâs Child.Â
â
â
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. Â
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 âI am every young girl in every hood⦠the fans understand that whatever theyâre going through in their lives, Iâm probably going through it, too â and then some. But whatever happens, weâre gonna get each other through it. Weâre gonna cry at my concert, weâre gonna be mad, weâre gonna go through the emotions that weâre having, you know what I mean? Itâs not just songs and glamor. Itâs sweat, blood, broken toes, and mistakes⦠Itâs life.â 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 Timeâs 100 Most Influential People in 2022, âshe was the one for it because she wasnât 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.âÂ
â
â
Now Mary is more than just a spokesperson for New Yorkers, sheâs 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. Itâs a vital local service that provides valuable support, and coupled with Maryâs own inspirational career, itâs part of a legacy that unquestionably marks Mary J Blige out as a True Superhero.
â
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Celebrating Strength: Mary J. Blige’s Festival Takes Over NYC
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[…]
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en
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Sheen Magazine
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https://www.sheenmagazine.com/celebrating-strength-mary-j-bliges-festival-takes-over-nyc/
|
I had the honor of attending the third annual Strength of a Woman Festival and Summit on behalf of Sheen Magazine, and it was nothing short of transformative. This year’s festival, a powerful tribute to female empowerment and community, was brought to life by GRAMMY and Emmy Award-winning and Oscar-nominated artist Mary J. Blige, alongside partners PEPSI®, Live Nation Urban, and MVD Inc. Spanning May 10th to May 12th, this year’s event took over New York City, marking its debut in the birthplace of Hip-Hop after two successful years in Atlanta.
Mary J. Blige, a newly inducted Rock & Roll Hall of Fame honoree, expressed her joy at bringing the festival to her hometown. “This past weekend was a whirlwind in the best way possible,” she said. “Getting to bring this home to NYC is something I won’t forget. Thank you to everyone who came out, to all my family who participated and to everyone involved, including my partners at Pepsi, who made this dream come to life. Until next year!”
The festival kicked off on Friday, May 10th, with an intimate welcome party at Corner Social in Harlem, hosted by none other than Mary J. Blige. The event set the tone for the weekend, featuring cocktails, hors d’oeuvres, and music by Hot 97’s Funkmaster Flex. The night continued with two sold-out jazz shows at the legendary Blue Note in Greenwich Village, headlined by 5x GRAMMY-winning artist Robert Glasper. Mary J. Blige herself joined Glasper on stage, sharing personal anecdotes and leaving the audience with the inspiring mantra: “Each one, teach one, help one.” Celebrities like Tiffany Haddish, Tasha Smith, Rapsody, and Bryan Michael Cox were among the notable attendees.
Saturday’s Strength of a Woman Summit at The Glasshouse drew over 4,000 attendees and was a cornerstone of the weekend. The summit began with a motivational prayer from Tasha Smith and welcome remarks from comedian Jess Hilarious. The day was filled with star-studded panels, including “Girl Talk with MJB,” featuring Mary J. Blige and her close friends Angie Martinez, Taraji P. Henson, and Tasha Smith. Another highlight was the “Our Men Honor the Strength of a Woman” panel, with stars from Starz’s hit series, including Method Man and Larenz Tate.
The summit’s programming, free to the public with registration, showcased nine panels emphasizing empowerment, education, and equity. Speakers included Marsai Martin, Pinky Cole Hayes, Crystal Renee Hayslett, Misa Hylton, and many more. The diverse sessions covered wellness, culture, finance, entrepreneurship, style, beauty, and podcasts, embodying the festival’s mission.
Beyond the panels, attendees enjoyed various activations. Highlights included a tooth gem station by Get Gem’d, a build-your-own bouquet bar, and “Mary’s Living Room,” a sanctuary featuring Sun Goddess wines, Sister Love jewelry, and exclusive Strength of a Woman merchandise. Guests also relived the magic of Mary J. Blige’s iconic “My Life” album in a custom listening booth.
PEPSI®, a key festival partner, offered attendees delicious food, custom cocktails, mocktails, and complimentary beverages at the Pepsi Dig In Village. This initiative featured dishes from five female-owned restaurants, spotlighting Black-owned businesses. “Pepsi returned as co-presenting partner for the Mary J. Blige Strength of a Woman Festival and Summit, this time bringing our shared vision to elevate, educate and empower women to New York City – our own backyard and Mary’s hometown,” said Kent Montgomery, Senior Vice President, PepsiCo Industry Relations and Multicultural Development.
Saturday evening culminated in a spectacular concert at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, headlined by Mary J. Blige. The lineup included 50 Cent, Jill Scott, Fat Joe, Jadakiss, Lola Brooke, Honey Bxby, and Funk Flex. The night featured tributes to “Hip Hop Moms” and a surprise performance by WanMor, who serenaded their mother with “A Song for Mama.”
50 Cent’s set was particularly electrifying, featuring surprise appearances by G-Unit members and cast members from his hit Starz series. Mary J. Blige joined 50 Cent on stage for a powerful performance of “Hate It Or Love It,” and continued to thrill the crowd with her hits, including surprise performances from Vado, A. Boogie, and Method Man.
The festival concluded on Sunday with a sold-out Mother’s Day Brunch at Brooklyn Chop House in Times Square. Hosted by Mary J. Blige, the event featured sounds by Funk Flex and DJ Smooth Ski, and notable attendees like Taraji P. Henson. The final event was a gospel concert at Brooklyn Paramount, featuring The Clark Sisters and Jane Handcock, presented by Femme It Forward.
This year’s festival not only celebrated women but also gave back to the community. On April 25, Pepsi launched the Pepsi x Mary J. Blige Strength of a Woman Community Fund, offering $100,000 in grants to local organizations supporting underserved women in Yonkers, NY, Mary’s hometown.
The Strength of a Woman Festival and Summit was a remarkable celebration of female empowerment, community, and culture. It was an honor to witness firsthand the impact of Mary J. Blige’s vision and dedication to uplifting women. The festival’s success in New York City underscores its significance and promises an even more spectacular event next year. As Mary J. Blige herself said, “Until next year!” We can only anticipate more inspiration, empowerment, and unforgettable moments.
Photo Credit: Antoine DeBrill
Photo Credit: Sterlingpics for Mary J. Blige
Photo Credit: Wendy Ngal
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Mary J. Blige
Mary Jane Blige ( BLYZHE; born January 11, 1971) is an American singer, songwriter, and actress. Often referred to as the "Queen of Hip-Hop Soul" and "Queen of R&B", Blige has won 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 . Read more on Wikipedia
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Mary Jane Blige ( /ˈblaɪʒ/; born January 11, 1971), preferably known as Mary J. Blige, is an American singer-songwriter, record producer, and occasional actress. She is a recipient of nine Grammy Awards and four American Music Awards, and has recorded eight multi-platinum albums. She is the only...
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https://drake.fandom.com/wiki/Mary_J._Blige
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This page uses Creative Commons Licensed content from Wikipedia (view authors).
Mary Jane Blige ( /ˈblaɪʒ/; born January 11, 1971), preferably known as Mary J. Blige, is an American singer-songwriter, record producer, and occasional actress. She is a recipient of nine Grammy Awards and four American Music Awards, and has recorded eight multi-platinum albums. She is the only artist with Grammy Award wins in R&B, Rap, Gospel, and Pop.
Blige started her musical career in 1992, releasing her debut album, What's the 411? on MCA Records and Uptown. With her tenth album, My Life II... The Journey Continues (Act 1) (2011), she has ten consecutive albums debut in the top 10 on the Billboard 200, and a total of 11 albums to debut top. Blige's work has defined the course of R&B/Hip-Hop music. My Life, in particular, is considered among the greatest albums ever recorded according to Rolling Stone (279/500), Time, and Vibe. For her part in combining hip hop and soul in the early 1990s and its subsequent commercial success, Blige received the World Music Awards "Legends Award". In 2007 the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers awarded her its "Voice of Music" Award. ASCAP official Jeanie Weems stated that "[Blige's] music has been the voice of inspiration to women worldwide in both struggle and triumph." That same year, Time included her in its "Time 100" list, a collection of the year's 100 most influential individuals around the world. In a documentary by BET television, Mary J. Blige said that when she hears music, she sees colors. In other words she has synesthesia.
As of 2011, Blige has sold over 50 million albums and 15 million singles worldwide. Billboard Magazine ranked Blige as the most successful female R&B artist of the past 25 years. The magazine also lists her 2006 song "Be Without You" as the top R&B song of the 2000s, as it spent an unparalleled 15 weeks atop the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart. In 2011, VH1 ranked Blige as the 80th greatest artist of all time. Moreover, she is ranked number 100 on the list of "100 greatest singers of all time" by Rolling Stone magazine. In 2012, VH1 ranked Blige at number 9 in "The 100 Greatest Woman in Music."
Blige also earned high remarks for her work in film and fragrance. She starred in the 2009 Tyler Perry box-office hit I Can Do Bad All By Myself and played a role in the film Rock of Ages, which was released to theaters in 2012. She is a recipient of two Golden Globe Awards nominations for her musical contributions to the films Bobby and The Help. She is named to play music icon Nina Simone in the upcoming biopic Nina. In partnership with the Home Shopping Network (HSN) and Carol's Daughter, Blige released her "My Life" perfume. The perfume broke HSN records by selling 65,000 bottles during its premiere. The scent went on to win two FiFi Awards, including the prestigious "Fragrance Sales Breakthrough" award.
Collaborations with Drake[]
Blige has collaborated with Drake in:
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2024-06-27T00:00:00
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Find out when Mary J. Blige is next playing live near you. List of all Mary J. Blige tour dates, concerts, support acts, reviews and venue info.
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en
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Songkick
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https://www.songkick.com/artists/532016-mary-j-blige
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Mary J. Blige (born January 11, 1971) is a decade-spanning American R&B, hip-hop and neo-soul singer-songwriter and actress, hailing from The Bronx, New York, U.S.
Under the influence of R&B/soul legends Aretha Franklin, Gladys Knight, and Chaka Khan among others, Blige earned her first taste of recognition after singing Anita Baker’s “Caught Up in the Rapture” into a karaoke machine at the mall. A recording of the performance was then given by Blige’s stepfather to Andre Harrell, the CEO of Uptown Records, who signed the young Blige to sing backup for a host of acts including Father MC. In 1991 however, Sean Combs, better known as Diddy, showed Blige the ropes and began working on her debut album. “What the 411?” was released in July 1998, and introduced a whole new wave of gritty and unrefined R&B with a strong connection to hip hop. The album went on to sell over three million copies, aided by the No. 1 R&B chart singles “Real Love” and “You Remind Me”.
Combs was once again at the reigns of Blige’s second album “My Life” released in November 1994. Largely written by the singer herself this time, “My Life” debuted at No. 7 on the Billboard 200, and topped the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart. The success of her first two albums led to Blige collaborating with the likes of Faith Evans, Method Man, Ghostface Killah, and Jay-Z.
Documenting her tumultuous and unsustainable previous lifestyle, Blige’s third full-length “Share My World” shot to No. 1 on the Billboard 200 in 1997. The album was the singer’s highest-selling album to date, aided by the five hit singles “Love Is All We Need” featuring Nas, “I Can Love You” featuring Lil’ Kim, “Everything”, “Missing You”, and “Seven Days”. In a move away from hip-hop towards the adult contemporary scene, the album “Mary” released in 1999, was an acclaimed album that later earned success for its club-friendly dance remixes.
The new millennium brought the albums “No More Drama” in 2001, “Love & Life” in 2003, the Grammy Award winning “The Breakthrough” in 2005, and the compilation “Reflections” in 2006. Dubbed the “Queen of Hip-Hop Soul”, Blige’s subsequent album “Growing Pains” marked the third successive album which topped both the Billboard 200 and R&B/Hip-Hop Album charts. Shortly after Blige contributed to 50 Cent’s 2007 album “Curtis” and toured as a part of Jay-Z’s Heart of the City tour.
“Stronger with Each Tear” appeared in December 2009, with guest contributions from Drake, Trey Songz and will.i.am, followed by “My Life II… The Journey Continues (Act 1) in 2011. After issuing the Christmas album “A Mary Christmas” in 2013, and contributing to the soundtrack to the comedy film “Think Like a Man Too”, Blige enlisted the help of Disclosure, Sam Smith, and Emeil Sandé for the album “The London Sessions” released in 2014.
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Attending a Mary J. Blige concert for me is like going to church. There’s going to be a lot of praising, amen's and hallelujahs. This is just the way it is when Mary is in town. My usual experience at her shows is spiritual, reflective and cathartic. Sometimes I might even catch the “Holy Ghost.” It also always leaves me drained with a hoarse voice the following day. Because I have such high expectations when it comes to Mary and the fact that this was called “The Liberation Tour,” I was a bit surprised that the show ended and didn’t feel as I had previously. Sure, the concert was good, but it wasn’t great. Don’t get me wrong, she still gave a performance I’ll remember. She preached to the choir and we hung onto every word, shouting back when necessary (and taking notes as well). Mary still looks fabulous (who is her trainer and can he/she hook me up?), but her voice wasn’t as pure and crisp as it has been in previous shows. There was something lacking that I can’t quite put my finger on. It seemed like Mary wasn’t at the top of her game. Perhaps she was tired or just having an off night. A friend who attended with me said it might be because Mary has had so much turmoil this year. I wasn’t quite sure what turmoil she was referring to – outside of Mary having issues with her charity FFAWN – so I did some research and didn’t find much that would explain Mary’s demeanor. Changing twice (into a black dress and white outfit with thigh-high leopard print boots), she started the show rocking a red shorts outfit and her trademark sunglasses. The set opened with her version of Chaka Khan’s Ain’t Nobody. Keeping the high-energy pace going, next was Family Affair, followed by Feel Inside and Enough Cryin’. She asked the audience if she could get her “Charlie Wilson on” during Real Love (which led into the Gap Band’s Outstanding). Before launching into Good Woman Down she expressed to the men that, “Fellas, I am a woman and I relate to them, so no disrespect.” At the end of Not Gonna Cry Mary had her own Holy Ghost moment singing repeatedly, “He wasn’t worth it!” I usually take a break during I’m Going Down because the audience has sung this song at every single Mary show I’ve been too. And that’s fine, because I’ve been singing along to all the songs anyway, and I need a moment to collect myself before I go HAM again. I had just one issue, though. Not only did the audience sing I’m Going Down, we also sang portions of My Life and Be Without You. I found this unusual because Mary generally sings all songs. Ending with Be Without You there was no encore. When the house lights turned on, I was a bit perplexed. The show just didn’t seem long enough. And once I realized she only sang one song from Growing Pains (Just Fine), I was even more disappointed.
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Mary J. Blige personifies soul and it clearly has a huge influence on both her life and her performance. As she appeared onstage at the iTunes festival, there was a wonderful feeling of warmth resonating from the singer as she took her place behind the microphone to deliver a powerful opener 'Enough Cryin''. She clearly enjoys performing live as her face is adorned with a huge smile as she receives the huge cheers and applause from the crowd.
She explains to the British audience that she has been away for a while so tonight would be a celebration for both of them and she keeps the celebratory vibes with 'The One' and 'Just Fine'. Her soulful vocal travels around the venue with ease and she showcases the reason she is such a celebrated artist. A number of vocal acrobatics amaze the crowd during a jazzed up rendition of 'Therapy'.
For such a soulful artist, not many people could have predicted her to have performed a U2 cover, yet she makes 'One' her own and delivers it in her own signature style. Mass singalong to 'Be Without You' closes a fantastic home coming of sorts as the UK audience leave hoping Mary will return soon.
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I, Theresa Speaks, seen MS. Mary J. at my 4th of July bash at the Art Museum in Philadelphia, Pa. She rocked it! Her performance was so on point. I was jamming at home in front of my television. I wished I could have seen her Live. It so happened to be I was off that night from work. She was great! She had at least 6in heels on and she was dancing and singing as if she had on sneakers. I was so amazed! It began to rain but that didn't stop her. She performed until she was finished. I really enjoyed her and her band was really good also. I said if she ever came back to Philly I would go see her. She will be here June 4-5,2022 at the Roots Picnic here in Philadelphia, Pa. Unfortunately, I won't be able to atend the concert because I can't afford the tickets. I wish I could though! Anyway, Mary J. will rock it like she did that year. Thanks for letting me be able to give my review. Mrs. Theresa Speaks 1346 W. Toronto St. Phila., Pa. 19132-2417. Take Care MARY and God Bless you1
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Mary J. Blige
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AP News
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https://apnews.com/hub/mary-j-blige
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The Associated Press is an independent global news organization dedicated to factual reporting. Founded in 1846, AP today remains the most trusted source of fast, accurate, unbiased news in all formats and the essential provider of the technology and services vital to the news business. More than half the world’s population sees AP journalism every day.
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https://www.sundance.org/blogs/2024-sundance-film-festival-announces-91-projects-selected-for-the-feature-films-episodic-and-new-frontier-lineup-for-40th-edition/
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2024 Sundance Film Festival Announces 91 Projects Selected for the Feature Films, Episodic, and New Frontier Lineup for 40th Edition
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2023-12-06T10:00:29-08:00
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All Eyes on Independents In-Person and Online Ticket Packages and Passes Currently On Sale; Individual Ticket Sales Begin January 11 PARK CITY, UTAH, December 6, 2023 — Today the nonprofit Sundance Institute announced the 82 films, eight episodic titles, and a New Frontier interactive experience selected for the 2024 Sundance Film Festival. The Festival will
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en
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sundance.org - sundance.org
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https://www.sundance.org/blogs/2024-sundance-film-festival-announces-91-projects-selected-for-the-feature-films-episodic-and-new-frontier-lineup-for-40th-edition/
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PARK CITY, UTAH, December 6, 2023 — Today the nonprofit Sundance Institute announced the 82 films, eight episodic titles, and a New Frontier interactive experience selected for the 2024 Sundance Film Festival. The Festival will take place January 18–28, 2024, in person in Park City and Salt Lake City, with a selection of titles available online nationwide from January 25–28, 2024. This year marks the 40th edition of the Festival, bringing together audiences in Utah and beyond to celebrate Sundance’s rich history of supporting engaging new stories and groundbreaking independent artists. In-Person Ticket Packages and Passes and Online Ticket Packages and Passes are currently on sale and single film tickets go on sale January 11 at 10 a.m. MT.
To kick things off, the Festival will begin at noon MT on January 18 with premieres in Park City, showcasing the range of offerings in this year’s lineup across categories. Adding to the festivities, on the evening of January 18, the Institute will host the Opening Night Gala: Celebrating 40 Years Presented by Chase Sapphire®. The fundraiser will benefit the year round artist support work of the Sundance Institute.
Films will debut in Park City starting January 18, with additional showings in Park City and Salt Lake City over the course of the Festival. Select titles also become available online beginning January 25, including all Competition titles (U.S. Dramatic, U.S. Documentary, World Cinema Dramatic, World Cinema Documentary, and NEXT), as well as additional selections from the feature, episodic, and shorts programs. Audiences can experience the curated online selection exclusively via festival.sundance.org. The online program, as noted below per listing, will allow fans of independent storytelling across the country to enjoy a sampling of the Festival lineup from wherever they are. The short film selections and 40th edition programming for the 2024 Sundance Film Festival will be announced on December 12.
“From the first edition in 1985, Sundance Film Festival has aimed to provide a space to gather, celebrate, and engage with risk-taking artists that are committed to bringing their independent visions to audiences — the Festival remains true to that goal to this day,” said Robert Redford, Sundance Institute Founder and President. “It continues to evolve, but its legacy of showcasing bold work that starts necessary conversations continues with the 2024 program.”
“The Institute takes great pride in the role the Festival plays in advancing our mission to support artists creating audacious work,” said Joana Vicente, Sundance Institute CEO. “This year is especially significant as we look back on our history of showcasing stories that surprise and delight, spark empathy and reflection, and honor our shared humanity. We’re all thrilled for this opportunity to celebrate the power of storytelling as we gather in January to introduce captivating works from acclaimed filmmakers and discover more new voices.”
“Sundance’s passion and power shines through its programming. Curation is Sundance’s secret sauce and we’re energized by the range of films, stories, and artists we’ve watched and selected from around the world,” said Eugene Hernandez, Director, Sundance Film Festival and Public Programming. “This Festival has had a vital history of first impressions: introductions to new talent, new friends, new worlds — our commitment to our artists and our audiences is fundamental to our work. Our programming team, lead by Kim Yutani, has curated 11 days of exciting new voices and stories for the many audiences we serve whether they’re joining us in Utah or experiencing the Festival offerings from afar. Sundance 2024 will be a special year for discovery and community.”
“While we don’t set out to program the Festival with a defined theme in mind, it became apparent this year that our slate’s biggest strength is how it showcases the vitality of independent storytelling,” said Kim Yutani, Sundance Film Festival Director of Programming. “Our program is tightly curated and covers a broad cross section of form, perspective, and genre that we’re looking forward to sharing with audiences. These titles are inventive and they beautifully represent the kind of groundbreaking work we’ve sought to amplify at Sundance throughout our history.”
The full slate of works announced today includes 82 feature-length films representing 24 countries. The 2024 program is composed of 40 of 101 (40%) feature film directors who are first-time feature filmmakers, and 11 of the feature films and projects announced today were supported by Sundance Institute in development through direct granting or residency labs.
World premieres make up 85, or 94%, of the Festival’s 90 feature films and episodic programs announced today.
Also announced today is the winner of the 2024 Alfred P. Sloan Feature Film Prize, an annual award given to an artist with the most outstanding depiction of science and technology in a feature film. This year the prize has gone to Love Me, screening in the U.S. Dramatic Competition category.
The Sundance Film Festival is an artist program of the Sundance Institute, a nonprofit that has impacted thousands of artists every year plus thousands more through its public programming. Proceeds earned through Festival ticket sales go to uplifting and developing emerging artists on a year-round basis through focused labs, direct grants, fellowships, residencies, and more.
These films were selected from a record number of 17,435 submissions from 153 countries or territories, including 4,410 feature-length films. Of these feature film submissions, 1,679 were from the U.S., and 2,741 were international. The eight episodic projects were selected from 573 submissions and there were 385 New Frontier submissions. Director demographics are available in an editor’s note below.
U.S. DRAMATIC COMPETITION
The U.S. Dramatic Competition offers Festivalgoers a first look at the world premieres of groundbreaking new voices in American independent film. Films that have premiered in this category in recent years include Fair Play, Nanny, CODA, Passing, Minari, Never Rarely Sometimes Always, The Farewell, Clemency, Eighth Grade, and Sorry to Bother You.
Between the Temples / U.S.A. (Director and Screenwriter: Nathan Silver, Screenwriter: C. Mason Wells, Producers: Tim Headington, Theresa Steele Page, Nate Kamiya, Adam Kersh, Taylor Hess) — A cantor in a crisis of faith finds his world turned upside down when his grade school music teacher reenters his life as his new adult bat mitzvah student. Cast: Jason Schwartzman, Carol Kane, Dolly de Leon, Caroline Aaron, Robert Smigel, Madeline Weinstein. World Premiere. Available online for Public.
Dìdi (弟弟) / U.S.A. (Director, Screenwriter, and Producer: Sean Wang, Producers: Carlos López Estrada, Josh Peters, Valerie Bush) — In 2008, during the last month of summer before high school begins, an impressionable 13-year-old Taiwanese American boy learns what his family can’t teach him: how to skate, how to flirt, and how to love your mom. Cast: Izaac Wang, Joan Chen, Shirley Chen, Chang Li Hua. World Premiere. Available online for Public.
Exhibiting Forgiveness / U.S.A. (Director, Screenwriter, and Producer: Titus Kaphar, Producers: Stephanie Allain, Derek Cianfrance, Jamie Patricof, Sean Cotton) — Utilizing his paintings to find freedom from his past, a Black artist on the path to success is derailed by an unexpected visit from his estranged father, a recovering addict desperate to reconcile. Together, they learn that forgetting might be a greater challenge than forgiving. Cast: André Holland, John Earl Jelks, Andra Day, Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor. World Premiere. Available online for Public.
Good One / U.S.A. (Director, Screenwriter, and Producer: India Donaldson, Producers: Diana Irvine, Graham Mason, Wilson Cameron) — On a weekend backpacking trip in the Catskills, 17-year-old Sam contends with the competing egos of her father and his oldest friend. Cast: Lily Collias, James Le Gros, Danny McCarthy. World Premiere. Available online for Public.
In The Summers / U.S.A. (Director and Screenwriter: Alessandra Lacorazza, Producers: Alexander Dinelaris, Rob Quadrino, Fernando Rodriguez-Vila, Lynette Coll, Sergio Lira, Cristóbal Güell) — On a journey that spans the formative years of their lives, two sisters navigate their loving but volatile father during their yearly summer visits to his home in Las Cruces, New Mexico. Cast: René Pérez Joglar, Sasha Calle, Lío Mehiel, Leslie Grace, Emma Ramos, Sharlene Cruz. World Premiere. Available online for Public.
Love Me / U.S.A. (Directors and Screenwriters: Sam Zuchero, Andy Zuchero, Producers: Kevin Rowe, Luca Borghese, Ben Howe, Shivani Rawat, Julie Goldstein) — Long after humanity’s extinction, a buoy and a satellite meet online and fall in love. Cast: Kristen Stewart, Steven Yeun. World Premiere. Available online for Public.
Ponyboi / U.S.A. (Director: Esteban Arango, Screenwriter: River Gallo, Producers: Mark Ankner, River Gallo, Adel “Future” Nur, Trevor Wall) — Unfolding over the course of Valentine’s Day in New Jersey, a young intersex sex worker must run from the mob after a drug deal goes sideways, forcing him to confront his past. Cast: River Gallo, Dylan O’Brien, Victoria Pedretti, Murray Bartlett, Indya Moore. World Premiere. Available online for Public.
A Real Pain / U.S.A., Poland (Director, Screenwriter, and Producer: Jesse Eisenberg, Producers: Dave McCary, Ali Herting, Emma Stone, Jennifer Semler, Ewa Puszczyńska) — Mismatched cousins David and Benji reunite for a tour through Poland to honor their beloved grandmother. The adventure takes a turn when the pair’s old tensions resurface against the backdrop of their family history. Cast: Jesse Eisenberg, Kieran Culkin, Will Sharpe, Jennifer Grey, Kurt Egyiawan. World Premiere. Available online for Public.
Stress Positions / U.S.A. (Director and Screenwriter: Theda Hammel, Producers: Brad Becker-Parton, John Early, Stephanie Roush, Allie Jane Compton, Greg Nobile) — Terry Goon is keeping strict quarantine in his ex-husband’s Brooklyn brownstone while caring for his nephew — a 19-year-old model from Morocco named Bahlul — bedridden in a full leg cast after an electric scooter accident. Unfortunately for Terry, everyone in his life wants to meet the model. Cast: John Early, Qaher Harhash, Theda Hammel, Amy Zimmer, Faheem Ali, John Roberts. World Premiere. Available online for Public.
Suncoast / U.S.A. (Director and Screenwriter: Laura Chinn, Producers: Jeremy Plager, Francesca Silvestri, Kevin Chinoy, Oly Obst) — A teenager who, while caring for her brother along with her audacious mother, strikes up an unlikely friendship with an eccentric activist who is protesting one of the most landmark medical cases of all time. Inspired by a semi-autobiographical story. Cast: Laura Linney, Woody Harrelson, Nico Parker. World Premiere. Available online for Public.
U.S. DOCUMENTARY COMPETITION The U.S. Documentary Competition offers Festivalgoers a first look at world premieres of nonfiction American films illuminating the ideas, people, and events that shape the present day. Films that have premiered in this category in recent years include Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project, Navalny, Fire of Love, Summer of Soul (…Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised), Boys State, Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution, APOLLO 11, Knock Down the House, One Child Nation, American Factory, Three Identical Strangers, and On Her Shoulders.
As We Speak / U.S.A. (Director and Producer: J.M. Harper, Producers: Sam Widdoes, Peter Cambor, Sam Bisbee) — Bronx rap artist Kschimemba explores the growing weaponization of rap lyrics in the United States criminal justice system and abroad — revealing how law enforcement has quietly used artistic creation as evidence in criminal cases for decades. World Premiere. Available online for Public.
Daughters / U.S.A. (Directors: Angela Patton, Natalie Rae, Producers: Lisa Mazzotta, Justin Benoliel, Mindy Goldberg, Sam Bisbee, Kathryn Everett, Laura Choi Raycroft) — Four young girls prepare for a special Daddy Daughter Dance with their incarcerated fathers, as part of a unique fatherhood program in a Washington, D.C., jail. World Premiere. Available online for Public.
EVERY LITTLE THING / Australia (Director: Sally Aitken, Producers: Bettina Dalton, Oli Harbottle, Anna Godas) — Amid the glamour of Hollywood, Los Angeles, a woman finds herself on a transformative journey as she nurtures wounded hummingbirds, unraveling a visually captivating and magical tale of love, fragility, healing, and the delicate beauty in tiny acts of greatness. World Premiere. Available online for Public.
FRIDA / U.S.A., Mexico (Director: Carla Gutiérrez, Producers: Katia Maguire, Sara Bernstein, Justin Wilkes, Loren Hammonds, Alexandra Johnes) — An intimately raw and magical journey through the life, mind, and heart of iconic artist Frida Kahlo. Told through her own words for the very first time — drawn from her diary, revealing letters, essays, and print interviews — and brought vividly to life by lyrical animation inspired by her unforgettable artwork. World Premiere. Available online for Public.
Gaucho Gaucho / U.S.A., Argentina (Directors and Producers: Michael Dweck, Gregory Kershaw, Producers: Cameron O’Reilly, Christos V. Konstantakopoulos, Matthew Perniciaro) — A celebration of a community of Argentine cowboys and cowgirls, known as Gauchos, living beyond the boundaries of the modern world. World Premiere. Available online for Public.
Love Machina / U.S.A. (Director and Producer: Peter Sillen, Producer: Brendan Doyle) — Futurists Martine and Bina Rothblatt commission an advanced humanoid AI named Bina48 to transfer Bina’s consciousness from a human to a robot in an attempt to continue their once-in-a-galaxy love affair for the rest of time. World Premiere. Available online for Public.
Porcelain War / U.S.A., Ukraine (Director and Screenwriter: Brendan Bellomo, Director: Slava Leontyev, Producers and Screenwriters: Aniela Sidorska, Paula DuPré Pesmen, Producers: Camilla Mazzaferro, Olivia Ahnemann) — Under roaring fighter jets and missile strikes, Ukrainian artists Slava, Anya, and Andrey choose to stay behind and fight, contending with the soldiers they have become. Defiantly finding beauty amid destruction, they show that although it’s easy to make people afraid, it’s hard to destroy their passion for living. World Premiere. Available online for Public.
Skywalkers: A Love Story / U.S.A. (Director, Screenwriter, and Producer: Jeff Zimbalist, Producers: Maria Bukhonina, Tamir Ardon, Chris Smith, Nick Spicer) — To save their career and relationship, a daredevil couple journey across the globe to climb the world’s last super skyscraper and perform a bold acrobatic stunt on the spire. World Premiere. Available online for Public.
Sugarcane / U.S.A., Canada (Director: Julian Brave NoiseCat, Director and Producer: Emily Kassie, Producer: Kellen Quinn) — An investigation into abuse and missing children at an Indian residential school ignites a reckoning on the nearby Sugarcane Reserve. World Premiere. Available online for Public.
Union / U.S.A. (Directors: Stephen Maing, Brett Story, Producers: Samantha Curley, Mars Verrone) — The Amazon Labor Union (ALU) — a group of current and former Amazon workers in New York City’s Staten Island — takes on one of the world’s largest and most powerful companies in the fight to unionize. World Premiere. Available online for Public.
WORLD CINEMA DRAMATIC COMPETITION These narrative feature films from emerging talent around the world offer fresh perspectives and inventive styles. Films that have premiered in this category in recent years include Scrapper, Mami Wata, Brian and Charles, Hive, Luzzu, The Souvenir, The Guilty, Monos, Yardie, The Nile Hilton Incident, and Second Mother.
Brief History of a Family / China, France, Denmark, Qatar (Director and Screenwriter: Jianjie Lin, Producers: Ying Lou, Yue Zheng, Yiwen Wang) — A middle-class family’s fate becomes intertwined with their only son’s enigmatic new friend in post one-child policy China, putting unspoken secrets, unmet expectations, and untended emotions under the microscope. Cast: Feng Zu, Keyu Guo, Xilun Sun, Muran Lin. World Premiere. Available online for Public.
Girls Will Be Girls / India, France, Norway (Director, Screenwriter, and Producer: Shuchi Talati, Producers: Richa Chadha, Claire Chassagne) — In a strict boarding school nestled in the Himalayas, 16-year-old Mira discovers desire and romance. But her sexual, rebellious awakening is disrupted by her mother who never got to come of age herself. Cast: Preeti Panigrahi, Kani Kusruti, Kesav Binoy Kiron. World Premiere. Available online for Public.
Handling the Undead / Norway (Director and Screenwriter: Thea Hvistendahl, Screenwriter: John Ajvide Lindqvist, Producers: Kristin Emblem, Guri Neby) — On a hot summer day in Oslo, the newly dead awaken. Three families faced with loss try to figure out what this resurrection means and if their loved ones really are back. Based on the book by John Ajvide Lindqvist. Cast: Renate Reinsve, Bjørn Sundquist, Bente Børsum, Anders Danielsen Lie, Bahar Pars. World Premiere. Available online for Public.
In the Land of Brothers / Iran, France, Netherlands (Directors, Screenwriters, and Producers: Raha Amirfazli, Alireza Ghasemi, Producers: Adrien Barrouillet, Frank Hoeve, Charles Meresse, Emma Binet, Arya Ghamavian) — Three members of an extended Afghan family start their lives over in Iran as refugees, unaware they face a decades-long struggle ahead to be “at home.” Cast: Hamideh Jafari, Bashir Nikzad, Mohammad Hosseini. World Premiere. Available online for Public.
Layla / U.K. (Director and Screenwriter: Amrou Al-Kadhi, Producer: Savannah James-Bayly) — When Layla, a struggling Arab drag queen, falls in love for the first time, they lose and find themself in a transformative relationship that tests who they really are. Cast: Bilal Hasna, Louis Greatorex, Safiyya Ingar, Darkwah, Terique Jarrett, Sarah Agha. World Premiere. Available online for Public.
Malu / Brazil (Director and Screenwriter: Pedro Freire, Producers: Tatiana Leite, Sabrina Garcia, Leo Ribeiro, Roberto Berliner) — Malu — a mercurial, unemployed actress living with her conservative mother in a precarious house in a Rio de Janeiro slum — tries to deal with her strained relationship with her own adult daughter while surviving on memories of her glorious artistic past. Cast: Yara de Novaes, Carol Duarte, Juliana Carneiro da Cunha, Átila Bee. World Premiere. Available online for Public.
Reinas / Switzerland, Peru, Spain (Director and Screenwriter: Klaudia Reynicke, Screenwriter and Producer: Diego Vega, Producers: Britta Rindelaub, Thomas Reichlin, Daniel Vega, Valérie Delpierre) — Surrounded by social and political chaos in Lima during the summer of 1992, Lucia, Aurora, and their mother, Elena, plan to leave and seek opportunities in the United States. Their farewell involves reconnecting with their estranged father, Carlos, adding turbulence to the regrets, hopes, and fears of their emotional departure. Cast: Abril Gjurinovic, Luana Vega, Jimena Lindo, Gonzalo Molina, Susi Sánchez. World Premiere. Available online for Public.
Sebastian / U.K., Finland, Belgium (Director and Screenwriter: Mikko Mäkelä, Producer: James Watson) — Max, a 25-year-old aspiring writer living in London, begins a double life as a sex worker in order to research his debut novel. Cast: Ruaridh Mollica, Hiftu Quasem, Ingvar Sigurdsson, Jonathan Hyde, Leanne Best, Lara Rossi. World Premiere. Available online for Public.
Sujo / Mexico, U.S.A., France (Directors, Screenwriters, and Producers: Astrid Rondero, Fernanda Valadez, Producers: Diana Arcega, Jewerl Keats Ross, Virginie Devesa, Jean-Baptiste Bailly-Maitre) — When a cartel gunman is killed, he leaves behind Sujo, his beloved 4-year-old son. The shadow of violence surrounds Sujo during each stage of his life in the isolated Mexican countryside. As he grows into a man, Sujo finds that fulfilling his father’s destiny may be inescapable. Cast: Juan Jesús Varela, Yadira Pérez, Alexis Varela, Sandra Lorenzano, Jairo Hernández, Kevin Aguilar. World Premiere. Available online for Public.
Veni Vidi Vici / Austria (Director and Screenwriter: Daniel Hoesl, Director: Julia Niemann, Producer: Ulrich Seidl) — The Maynards and their children lead an almost perfect billionaire family life. Amon is a passionate hunter, but doesn’t shoot animals, as the family’s wealth allows them to live totally free from consequences. Cast: Laurence Rupp, Ursina Lardi, Olivia Goschler. World Premiere. Available online for Public.
WORLD CINEMA DOCUMENTARY COMPETITION These nonfiction feature films from emerging talent around the world showcase some of the most courageous and extraordinary filmmaking today. Films that have premiered in this category in recent years include The Eternal Memory, 20 Days in Mariupol, All That Breathes, Flee, Honeyland, Sea of Shadows, Shirkers, This Is Home, Last Men in Aleppo, and Hooligan Sparrow.
Agent of Happiness / Bhutan, Hungary (Director and Producer: Arun Bhattarai, Director: Dorottya Zurbó, Producers: Noémi Veronika Szakonyi, Máté Artur Vincze) — Amber is one of the many agents working for the Bhutanese government to measure people’s happiness levels among the remote Himalayan mountains. But will he find his own along the way? World Premiere. Available online for Public.
The Battle for Laikipia / Kenya, U.S.A. (Director and Producer: Daphne Matziaraki, Director: Peter Murimi, Producer: Toni Kamau) — Unresolved historical injustices and climate change raise the stakes in a generations-old conflict between Indigenous pastoralists and white landowners in Laikipia, Kenya, a wildlife conservation haven. World Premiere. Available online for Public.
Black Box Diaries / Japan, U.S.A., U.K. (Director and Producer: Shiori Ito, Producers: Eric Nyari, Hanna Aqvilin) — Journalist Shiori Ito embarks on a courageous investigation of her own sexual assault in an improbable attempt to prosecute her high-profile offender. Her quest becomes a landmark case in Japan, exposing the country’s outdated judicial and societal systems. World Premiere. Available online for Public.
Eternal You / Germany, U.S.A. (Directors: Hans Block, Moritz Riesewieck, Producers: Christian Beetz, Georg Tschurtschenthaler) — Startups are using AI to create avatars that allow relatives to talk with their loved ones after they have died. An exploration of a profound human desire and the consequences of turning the dream of immortality into a product. World Premiere. Available online for Public.
Ibelin / Norway (Director: Benjamin Ree, Producer: Ingvil Giske) — Mats Steen, a Norwegian gamer, died of a degenerative muscular disease at the age of 25. His parents mourned what they thought had been a lonely and isolated life, when they started receiving messages from online friends around the world. World Premiere. Available online for Public.
IGUALADA / Colombia, U.S.A., Mexico (Director: Juan Mejía Botero, Producers: Juan E. Yepes, Daniela Alatorre, Sonia Serna) — In one of Latin America’s most unequal countries, Francia Márquez, a Black Colombian rural activist, challenges the status quo with a presidential campaign that reappropriates the derogatory term “Igualada” — someone who acts as if they deserve rights that supposedly don’t correspond to them — and inspires a nation to dream. World Premiere. Available online for Public.
Never Look Away / New Zealand (Director, Screenwriter, and Producer: Lucy Lawless, Screenwriters and Producers: Matthew Metcalfe, Tom Blackwell) — New Zealand–born groundbreaking CNN camerawoman Margaret Moth risks it all to show the reality of war from inside the conflict, staring down danger and confronting those who perpetuate it. World Premiere. Available online for Public.
A New Kind of Wilderness / Norway (Director: Silje Evensmo Jacobsen, Producer: Mari Bakke Riise) — In a forest in Norway, a family lives an isolated lifestyle in an attempt to be wild and free, but a tragic event changes everything, and they are forced to adjust to modern society. World Premiere. Available online for Public.
Nocturnes / India, U.S.A. (Director and Producer: Anirban Dutta, Director: Anupama Srinivasan) — In the dense forests of the Eastern Himalayas, moths are whispering something to us. In the dark of night, two curious observers shine a light on this secret universe. World Premiere. Available online for Public.
Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat / Belgium, France, Netherlands (Director and Screenwriter: Johan Grimonprez, Producers: Daan Milius, Rémi Grellety) — In 1960, United Nations: the Global South ignites a political earthquake, musicians Abbey Lincoln and Max Roach crash the Security Council, Nikita Khrushchev bangs his shoe denouncing America’s color bar, while the U.S. dispatches jazz ambassador Louis Armstrong to the Congo to deflect attention from its first African post-colonial coup. World Premiere. Available online for Public.
NEXT Pure, bold works distinguished by an innovative, forward-thinking approach to storytelling populate this program. Unfettered creativity promises that the films in this section will shape the greater next wave in American cinema. Films that have premiered in this category in recent years include KOKOMO CITY, A Love Song, RIOTSVILLE, USA, The Infiltrators, Searching, Skate Kitchen, A Ghost Story, and Tangerine. NEXT is presented by Adobe.
Desire Lines / U.S.A. (Director, Screenwriter, and Producer: Jules Rosskam, Screenwriter: Nate Gualtieri, Producers: André Pérez, Amy E. Powell, Brittani Ward) — Past and present collide when an Iranian American trans man time-travels through an LGBTQ+ archive on a dizzying and erotic quest to unravel his own sexual desires. Cast: Theo Germaine, Aden Hakimi. World Premiere. Documentary. Available online for Public.
Kneecap / Ireland, U.K. (Director and Screenwriter: Rich Peppiatt, Producers: Jack Tarling, Trevor Birney) — There are 80,000 native Irish speakers in Ireland. 6,000 live in the North of Ireland. Three of them became a rap group called Kneecap. This anarchic Belfast trio becomes the unlikely figurehead of a civil rights movement to save the mother tongue. Cast: Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh, Naoise Ó Cairealláin, JJ Ó Dochartaigh, Michael Fassbender, Josie Walker, Simone Kirby). World Premiere. Fiction. Available online for Public.
Little Death / U.S.A. (Director and Screenwriter: Jack Begert, Screenwriter: Dani Goffstein, Producers: Darren Aronofsky, Andy S. Cohen, Dylan Golden, Brendan Naylor, Sam Canter, Noor Alfallah) — A middle-aged filmmaker on the verge of a breakthrough. Two kids in search of a lost backpack. A small dog a long way from home. Cast: David Schwimmer, Gaby Hoffmann, Dominic Fike, Talia Ryder, Jena Malone, Sante Bentivoglio. World Premiere. Fiction. Available online for Public.
REALM OF SATAN / U.S.A. (Director and Screenwriter: Scott Cummings, Producers: Caitlin Mae Burke, Pacho Velez, Molly Gandour) — An experiential portrait depicting Satanists in both the everyday and in the extraordinary as they fight to preserve their lifestyle: magic, mystery, and misanthropy. Cast: Peter Gilmore, Peggy Nadramia, Blanche Barton. World Premiere. Documentary. Available online for Public.
Seeking Mavis Beacon / U.S.A. (Director and Screenwriter: Jazmin Renée Jones, Producer: Guetty Felin) — Launched in the late ’80s, educational software Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing taught millions globally, but the program’s Haitian-born cover model vanished decades ago. Two DIY investigators search for the unsung cultural icon, while questioning notions of digital security, AI, and Black representation in the digital realm. World Premiere. Documentary. Available online for Public.
Tendaberry / U.S.A. (Director, Screenwriter, and Producer: Haley Elizabeth Anderson, Producers: Carlos Zozaya, Matthew Petock, Zachary Shedd, Hannah Dweck, Theodore Schaefer, Daniel Patrick Carbone) — When her boyfriend goes back to Ukraine to be with his ailing father, 23-year-old Dakota anxiously navigates her precarious new reality, surviving on her own in New York City. Cast: Kota Johan, Yuri Pleskun. World Premiere. Fiction. Available online for Public.
PREMIERES
This showcase of world premieres presents highly anticipated films on a variety of subjects, in both fiction and nonfiction. Fiction films that have screened in Premieres include Past Lives, Passages, Good Luck to You, Leo Grande, Promising Young Woman, Kajillionaire,The Report, Late Night, and The Big Sick. Past documentary films include Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie, Invisible Beauty, The Dissident, Lucy and Desi, On the Record, and Miss Americana.
The American Society of Magical Negroes / U.S.A. (Director, Screenwriter, and Producer: Kobi Libii, Producers: Julia Lebedev, Eddie Vaisman, Angel Lopez) — A young man, Aren, is recruited into a secret society of magical Black people who dedicate their lives to a cause of utmost importance: making white people’s lives easier. Cast: Justice Smith, David Alan Grier, An-Li Bogan, Drew Tarver, Rupert Friend, Nicole Byer. World Premiere. Fiction.
And So It Begins / U.S.A., Philippines (Director, Screenwriter, and Producer: Ramona S. Diaz) — Amidst the traditional pomp and circumstance of Filipino elections, a quirky people’s movement rises to defend the nation against deepening threats to truth and democracy. In a collective act of joy as a form of resistance, hope flickers against the backdrop of increasing autocracy. World Premiere. Documentary. Available online for Public.
DEVO / U.K., U.S.A. (Director: Chris Smith, Producers: Chris Holmes, Anita Greenspan, Danny Gabai) — Born in response to the Kent State massacre, new wave band Devo took their concept of “de-evolution” from cult following to near–rock star status with groundbreaking 1980 hit “Whip It” while preaching an urgent social commentary. World Premiere. Documentary.
A Different Man / U.S.A. (Director and Screenwriter: Aaron Schimberg, Producers: Christine Vachon, Vanessa McDonnell, Gabriel Mayers) — Aspiring actor Edward undergoes a radical medical procedure to drastically transform his appearance. But his new dream face quickly turns into a nightmare, as he loses out on the role he was born to play and becomes obsessed with reclaiming what was lost. Cast: Sebastian Stan, Renate Reinsve, Adam Pearson. World Premiere. Fiction.
Freaky Tales / U.S.A. (Directors, Screenwriters, and Producers: Ryan Fleck, Anna Boden, Producers: Poppy Hanks, Jelani Johnson) — In 1987 Oakland, a mysterious force guides The Town’s underdogs in four interconnected tales: Teen punks defend their turf against Nazi skinheads, a rap duo battles for hip-hop immortality, a weary henchman gets a shot at redemption, and an NBA All-Star settles the score. Basically another day in the Bay. Cast: Pedro Pascal, Jay Ellis, Normani Kordei Hamilton, Dominique Thorne, Ben Mendelsohn, Ji-Young Yoo. World Premiere. Fiction.
Ghostlight / U.S.A. (Director and Screenwriter: Kelly O’Sullivan, Director and Producer: Alex Thompson, Producers: Pierce Cravens, Chelsea Krant, Ian Keiser, Eddie Linker, Alex Wilson) — When a construction worker unexpectedly joins a local theater’s production of Romeo and Juliet, the drama onstage starts to mirror his own life. Cast: Keith Kupferer, Dolly de Leon, Katherine Mallen Kupferer, Tara Mallen. World Premiere. Fiction.
Girls State / U.S.A. (Directors and Producers: Amanda McBaine, Jesse Moss) — Teenage girls from wildly different backgrounds across Missouri navigate a week-long immersive experiment in American democracy, build a government from the ground up, and reimagine what it means to govern. World Premiere. Documentary.
Look Into My Eyes / U.S.A. (Director and Producer: Lana Wilson, Producer: Kyle Martin) — A group of New York City psychics conduct deeply intimate readings for their clients, revealing a kaleidoscope of loneliness, connection, and healing. World Premiere. Documentary.
Luther: Never Too Much / U.S.A. (Director: Dawn Porter, Producers: Trish D Chetty, Ged Doherty, Jamie Foxx, Datari Turner, Leah Smith) — Luther Vandross started his career supporting David Bowie, Roberta Flack, Bette Midler, and more. His undeniable talent earned platinum records and accolades, but he struggled to break out beyond the R&B charts. Intensely driven, he overcame personal and professional challenges to secure his place amongst the greatest vocalists in history. World Premiere. Documentary.
My Old Ass / U.S.A. (Director and Screenwriter: Megan Park, Producers: Tom Ackerley, Margot Robbie, Josey McNamara, Steven Rales) — The summer before college, bright-yet-irreverent Elliott comes face-to-face with her older self during a mushroom trip. The encounter spurs a funny and heartfelt journey of self-discovery and first love as Elliott prepares to leave her childhood home. Cast: Maisy Stella, Percy Hynes White, Maddie Ziegler, Kerrice Brooks, Aubrey Plaza. World Premiere. Fiction.
The Outrun / U.K., Germany (Director and Screenwriter: Nora Fingscheidt, Screenwriter: Amy Liptrot, Producers: Sarah Brocklehurst, Dominic Norris, Jack Lowden, Saoirse Ronan) — After living life on the edge in London, Rona attempts to come to terms with her troubled past. She returns to the wild beauty of Scotland’s Orkney Islands — where she grew up — hoping to heal. Adapted from the bestselling memoir by Amy Liptrot. Cast: Saoirse Ronan, Paapa Essiedu, Stephen Dillane, Saskia Reeves. World Premiere. Fiction.
Power / U.S.A. (Director and Producer: Yance Ford, Producers: Sweta Vohra, Jess Devaney, Netsanet Negussie) — Driven to maintain social order, policing in the United States has exploded in scope and scale over hundreds of years. Now, American policing embodies one word: power. World Premiere. Documentary.
Presence / U.S.A. (Director: Steven Soderbergh, Screenwriter: David Koepp, Producers: Julie M. Anderson, Ken Meyer) — A family moves into a suburban house and becomes convinced they’re not alone. Cast: Lucy Liu, Chris Sullivan, Callina Liang, Julia Fox, Eddy Maday, West Mulholland. World Premiere. Fiction.
Rob Peace / U.S.A. (Director and Screenwriter: Chiwetel Ejiofor, Producers: Andrea Calderwood, Antoine Fuqua, Kat Samick, Rebecca Hobbs, Jeffrey Soros, Alex Kurtzman) — Robert Peace grew up in an impoverished section of Newark and later graduated from Yale with degrees in molecular biophysics and biochemistry while on scholarship. Peace led a dual life in academia and research while also earning six figures selling marijuana. Based on Jeff Hobbs’ bestselling biography. Cast: Jay Will, Mary J. Blige, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Camila Cabello, Michael Kelly, Mare Winningham. World Premiere. Fiction. Available online for Public.
Sasquatch Sunset / U.S.A. (Director, Screenwriter, and Producer: David Zellner, Director and Producer: Nathan Zellner, Producers: Lars Knudsen, Tyler Campellone, George Rush, Jesse Eisenberg) — A year in the life of a singular family. Cast: Riley Keough, Jesse Eisenberg, Christophe Zajac-Denek, Nathan Zellner. World Premiere. Fiction.
Sue Bird: In The Clutch / U.S.A. (Director and Producer: Sarah Dowland, Producers: Emily Singer Chapman, Svetlana Zill) — In her 21-year professional career, WNBA basketball legend Sue Bird has won five Olympic gold medals and become the most successful point guard to ever play the game. Alongside her fiancée, U.S. soccer star Megan Rapinoe, Sue confronts her next challenge: retiring from the only life she’s ever known. World Premiere. Documentary.
Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story / U.K., U.S.A. (Director and Producer: Ian Bonhôte, Director and Screenwriter: Peter Ettedgui, Producers: Lizzie Gillett, Robert Ford) — Never-before-seen home movies and extraordinary personal archives reveal how Christopher Reeve went from unknown actor to iconic movie star as the ultimate screen superhero. He learned the true meaning of heroism as an activist after suffering a tragic accident that left him quadriplegic and dependent on a ventilator to breathe. World Premiere. Documentary. Salt Lake Opening Film
Thelma / U.S.A. (Director and Screenwriter: Josh Margolin, Producers: Zoë Worth, Chris Kaye, Nicholas Weinstock, Benjamin Simpson, Karl Spoerri, Viviana Vezzani) — When 93-year-old Thelma Post gets duped by a phone scammer pretending to be her grandson, she sets out on a treacherous quest across the city to reclaim what was taken from her. Cast: June Squibb, Fred Hechinger, Richard Roundtree, Parker Posey, Clark Gregg, Malcolm McDowell. World Premiere. Fiction. Available online for Public.
Will & Harper / U.S.A. (Director and Producer: Josh Greenbaum, Producers: Rafael Marmor, Will Ferrell, Jessica Elbaum, Christopher Leggett) — When Will Ferrell finds out his close friend of 30 years is coming out as a trans woman, the two decide to embark on a cross-country road trip to process this new stage of their relationship in an intimate portrait of friendship, transition, and America. World Premiere. Documentary.
Winner / U.S.A., Canada (Director, Screenwriter, and Producer: Susanna Fogel, Screenwriter: Kerry Howley, Producers: Amanda Phillips, Shivani Rawat, Julie Goldstein, Scott Budnick, Ameet Shukla) — Reality Winner is a brilliant young misfit from a Texas border town who finds her morals challenged while serving as an NSA contractor. A sarcastic, gun-lovin, vegan, yogi, and CrossFit fanatic, Reality is an unconventional whistleblower who ends up being prosecuted for exposing Russia’s hacking of the 2016 election. Cast: Emilia Jones, Connie Britton, Zach Galifianakis, Kathryn Newton, Danny Ramirez. World Premiere. Fiction.
MIDNIGHT
From horror flicks and wild comedies to chilling thrillers and works that defy any genre, these films will keep you wide awake and on the edge of your seat. Films that have premiered in this category in recent years include Infinity Pool, Talk to Me, FRESH, Hereditary, Mandy, Relic, Assassination Nation, and The Babadook.
I Saw the TV Glow / U.S.A. (Director and Screenwriter: Jane Schoenbrun, Producers: Emma Stone, Dave McCary, Ali Herting, Sam Intili, Sarah Winshall) — Teenager Owen is just trying to make it through life in the suburbs when his classmate introduces him to a mysterious late-night TV show — a vision of a supernatural world beneath their own. In the pale glow of the television, Owen’s view of reality begins to crack. Cast: Justice Smith, Brigette Lundy-Paine, Ian Foreman, Helena Howard, Fred Durst, Danielle Deadwyler. World Premiere. Fiction.
In A Violent Nature / Canada (Director and Screenwriter: Chris Nash, Producers: Peter Kuplowsky, Shannon Hanmer) — The enigmatic resurrection, rampage, and retribution of an undead monster in a remote wilderness. Cast: Ry Barrett, Andrea Pavlovic, Lauren Taylor. World Premiere. Fiction.
It’s What’s Inside / U.S.A. (Director and Screenwriter: Greg Jardin, Producers: William Rosenfeld, Kate Andrews, Jason Baum, Raúl Domingo) — A pre-wedding party descends into an existential nightmare when an estranged friend shows up with a mysterious suitcase. Cast: Brittany O’Grady, James Morosini, Alycia Debnam-Carey, Gavin Leatherwood, Reina Hardesty, Nina Bloomgarden. World Premiere. Fiction.
Kidnapping Inc. / Haiti, France, Canada (Director, Screenwriter, and Producer: Bruno Mourral, Screenwriter and Producer: Gilbert Jr. Mirambeau, Screenwriter: Jasmuel Andri, Producers: Samuel Chauvin, Yanick Letourneau, Gaëthan Chancy) — Tasked with what appears to be a simple abduction for hire, two hapless kidnappers find out that it’s anything but and end up in the middle of a political conspiracy. Cast: Jasmuel Andri, Rolaphton Mercure, Anabel Lopez, Ashley Laraque, Gessica Geneus, Patrick Joseph. World Premiere. Fiction.
Krazy House / Netherlands (Directors and Screenwriters: Steffen Haars, Flip van der Kuil, Producer: Maarten Swart) — When Russian workers in Bernie’s house turn out to be wanted criminals, Bernie has to man up and save his ’90s sitcom family. Cast: Nick Frost, Alicia Silverstone, Jan Bijvoet, Gaite Jansen, Walt Klink, Kevin Connolly. World Premiere. Fiction.
Love Lies Bleeding / U.S.A., U.K. (Director and Screenwriter: Rose Glass, Producers: Andrea Cornwell, Oliver Kassman — Reclusive gym manager Lou falls hard for Jackie, an ambitious bodybuilder headed through town to Las Vegas in pursuit of her dream. But their love ignites violence, pulling them deep into the web of Lou’s criminal family. Cast: Kristen Stewart, Katy O’Brian, Ed Harris, Dave Franco, Jena Malone, Anna Baryshnikov. World Premiere. Fiction.
The Moogai / Australia (Director and Screenwriter: Jon Bell, Producers: Kristina Ceyton, Samantha Jennings, Mitchell Stanley) — A young Aboriginal couple bring home their second baby. What should be a joyous time takes a sinister turn as the mother starts seeing a malevolent spirit she is convinced is trying to take her baby. Cast: Shari Sebbens, Meyne Wyatt, Tessa Rose, Jahdeana Mary, Clarence Ryan, Bella Heathcote. World Premiere. Fiction.
Your Monster / U.S.A. (Director, Screenwriter, and Producer: Caroline Lindy, Producers: Kayla Foster, Shannon Reilly, Melanie Donkers, Kira Carstensen) — After her life falls apart, soft-spoken actress Laura Franco finds her voice again when she meets a terrifying, yet weirdly charming, monster living in her closet. Cast: Melissa Barrera, Tommy Dewey, Meghann Fahy, Edmund Donovan, Kayla Foster. World Premiere. Fiction.
EPISODIC
Our Episodic section was created specifically for bold stories told in multiple episodes, with an emphasis on independent perspectives and innovative storytelling. Past projects that have premiered within this category include Willie Nelson and Family, OJ: Made in America, Wild Wild Country, The Jinx, Bring on the Dancing Horses, Work in Progress, State of the Union, Gentefied, Wu Tang Clan: Of Mics and Men, and Quarter Life Poetry.
Better Angels: The Gospel According To Tammy Faye / U.S.A. (Director and Screenwriter: Dana Adam Shapiro, Executive Producers: Elton John, David Furnish, Danny Gabai, Alexander Moore, Hellen Rollins, Peter Rollins, Screenwriter: Helen Rollins) — As told by her family, friends, and enemies, the meteoric rise, scandalous fall, and unlikely resurrection of Tammy Faye, the “First Lady of the Electric Church,” poses an increasingly relevant question: How did we get the story so wrong? World Premiere. Documentary. Four-part limited series, screening parts one and two.
Conbody VS Everybody / U.S.A. (Director and Executive Producer: Debra Granik, Executive Producers: Anne Rosellini, Victoria Stewart, Jeff Skoll, Diane Weyermann, Joslyn Barnes, Jonathan Scheuer) — Taking place over eight years, Coss Marte builds ConBody, a gym inspired by workouts he developed while in prison. Committed to employing trainers who were formerly incarcerated, Coss creates a community fighting to break the cycle of recidivism while navigating society’s many obstacles to reentry. World Premiere. Documentary. Six-part limited series, screening two episodes. Available online for Public.
God Save Texas / U.S.A. — Three directors offer their unique and personal perspectives on their home state of Texas, creating vivid portraits of a state that mirrors the United States’ past, present, and future. Inspired by the book God Save Texas: A Journey Into the Soul of the Lone Star State by Lawrence Wright. World Premiere. Documentary. Anthology series.
God Save Texas: Hometown Prison (Director and Executive Producer: Richard Linklater, Executive Producers: Lawrence Wright, Alex Gibney, Peter Berg, Michael Lombardo, Elizabeth Rogers) — Huntsville, Texas sits at the heart of an expansive prison industrial complex. Yet, for many residents, these prisons exist in another realm, disconnected from their lives. Richard Linklater revisits his hometown to explore its diverse inhabitants, painting a vibrant portrait that encapsulates the criminal justice system of Texas.
God Save Texas: The Price of Oil (Director: Alex Stapleton, Executive Producers: Lawrence Wright, Alex Gibney, Richard Linklater, Peter Berg, Michael Lombardo, Stacey Offman) – As the world’s energy capital, Houston is a city that manufactures both its prominence and demise. Alex Stapleton explores the industry’s impact on her family, who arrived as enslaved people in the 1830’s, built thriving communities, and now must cope with the human costs of Texas’ biggest money-maker.
God Save Texas: La Frontera (Director: Iliana Sosa, Executive Producers: Lawrence Wright, Alex Gibney, Richard Linklater, Peter Berg, Michael Lombardo, Richard Perello) — Iliana Sosa examines how “nepantla,” an embrace of in-betweenness, characterizes relations to both her Mexican heritage and her hometown of El Paso, Texas. An exploration revealing how the city’s humanity and unique hybridity catalyzed unity, nurturing healing in the aftermath of a devastating mass shooting in 2019.
LOLLA: THE STORY OF LOLLAPALOOZA / U.S.A. (Director and Producer: Michael John Warren, Producers: James Lee Hernandez, Brian Lazarte, Brian Levy, Mat Whittington, Daniel Gibbs) — In the summer of ’91, the Lollapalooza music festival was born. What started as a farewell tour for the band Jane’s Addiction rose from the underground to launch a cultural movement and change music forever. World Premiere. Documentary. Three-part limited series, screening parts one and two. Available online for Public.
The Synanon Fix / U.S.A. (Director and Producer: Rory Kennedy, Producer and Screenwriter: Mark Bailey, Producers: Alexandra Korba, Keven McAlester, Screenwriter: Jeff Swimmer) — Exploring the rise and fall of the Synanon organization — through the eyes of the members who lived it — from its early days as a groundbreaking drug rehabilitation program to its later descent into what many consider a cult. World Premiere. Documentary. Four-part series, screening parts one and two.
Episodic Pilot Showcase:
Me/We / U.S.A. (Director and Executive Producer: Nzingha Stewart, Executive Producers and Screenwriters: Rob McElhenney, Keyonna Taylor, Executive Producers: Jackie Cohn, Nick Frenkel, Jermaine Johnson) — Amaria “Yaya” Jones, an argumentative teenager with a passion for dance, must plead her case to her overprotective brother in hopes of winning his blessing to walk to school with her first crush. Yaya’s story is a celebration of life. Cast: Camryn Jones, Victor Musoni, Anji White, Travis Wolfe Jr., Nadirah Bost, Mike Sampson. World Premiere. Fiction.
La Mesías / Spain (Directors, Screenwriters, and Executive Producers: Javier Calvo, Javier Ambrossi, Executive Producers: Domingo Corral, Susana Herreras, Fran Araújo) — Siblings Enric and Irene have a dark childhood, unbearable memories, and a toxic relationship with their mother. They live outside their family sect and are now far from the reach of their mother, yet not completely free. Cast: Roger Casamajor, Macarena García, Lofla Dueñas, Carmen Machi, Ana Rujas, Albert Pla, Amaia, Biel Rossell, Cecilia Roth. International Premiere. Fiction.
Penelope / U.S.A. (Director, Screenwriter, and Executive Producer: Mel Eslyn, Screenwriter and Executive Producer: Mark Duplass, Executive Producers: Jay Duplass, Shuli Harel) — Feeling out of place in modern society, a 16-year-old is drawn into the unknown wilderness, where she begins forming a new life for herself. Cast: Megan Stott, Austin Abrams. World Premiere. Fiction.
SPOTLIGHT The Spotlight program is a tribute to the cinema we love, presenting films that have played throughout the world. Films that have played in this category in recent years include Joyland, The Worst Person in the World, The Biggest Little Farm, Birds of Passage, The Rider, Ida, and The Lobster. Spotlight is presented by Audible.
àma Gloria / France (Director and Screenwriter: Marie Amachoukeli, Producer: Bénédicte Couvreur) — Six-year-old Cléo loves her nanny, Gloria, more than anything. When Gloria must return to Cape Verde to care for her own children, the two must make the most of their last summer together. Cast: Louise Mauroy-Panzani, Ilça Moreno Zego, Abnara Gomes Varela, Fredy Gomes Tavares, Arnaud Rebotini, Domingos Borges Almeida. U.S. Premiere. Fiction.
Hit Man / U.S.A. (Director, Screenwriter, and Producer: Richard Linklater, Producer and Screenwriter: Glen Powell, Producers: Mike Blizzard, Jason Bateman, Michael Costigan) — A strait-laced professor discovers his hidden talent as a fake hit man. He meets his match in a client who steals his heart and ignites a powder keg of deception, delight, and mixed-up identities. Inspired by an unbelievable true story. Cast: Glen Powell, Adria Arjona, Austin Amelio, Retta, Sanjay Rao. Fiction.
How to Have Sex / U.K. (Director and Screenwriter: Molly Manning Walker, Producers: Ivana MacKinnon, Emily Leo, Konstantinos Kontovrakis) — Three British teenage girls go on a rite-of-passage holiday, drinking, clubbing, and hooking up in what should be the best summer of their lives. As they dance their way across the sun-drenched streets of Malia, they find themselves navigating the complexities of sex, consent, and self-discovery. Cast: Mia McKenna-Bruce, Samuel Bottomley, Shaun Thomas, Lara Peake, Enva Lewis, Laura Ambler. U.S. Premiere. Fiction.
The Mother of All Lies / Morocco, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar (Director and Producer: Asmae El Moudir) — On a handmade set re-creating her Casablanca neighborhood, a young Moroccan filmmaker enlists family and friends to help unearth the troubling lies built into her childhood. Documentary. Available online for Public.
FAMILY MATINEE
Geared towards our youngest independent-film fans, this section of the Festival is programmed for children and adolescents. Films that have played in this category in recent years include Blueback, The Elephant Queen, Science Fair, My Life as a Zucchini, The Eagle Huntress, and Shaun the Sheep.
Out of My Mind / U.S.A. (Director: Amber Sealey, Screenwriter: Daniel Stiepleman, Producers: Peter Saraf, Robert Kessel, Dan Angel, Michael B. Clark) — Melody Brooks is navigating sixth grade as a nonverbal wheelchair user who has cerebral palsy. With the help of some assistive technology and her devoted, exuberant allies, Melody shows that what she has to say is more important than how she says it. Cast: Phoebe-Rae Taylor, Rosemarie DeWitt, Luke Kirby, Michael Chernus, Courtney Taylor, Judith Light. World Premiere. Fiction.
10 Lives / U.K. (Director and Screenwriter: Christopher Jenkins, Screenwriters: Karen Wengrod, Ken Cinnamon, Producers: Guy Collins, Sean Feeney, Yann Zenou, Adrian Politowski, Martin Metz) — A pampered cat takes for granted the lucky hand he has been dealt after he is rescued and loved by Rose, a kind-hearted and passionate student. When he loses his ninth life, fate steps in to set him on a transformative journey. Cast: Mo Gilligan, Simone Ashley, Sophie Okonedo, Dylan Llewellyn, Zayn Malik, Bill Nighy. World Premiere. Fiction.
SPECIAL SCREENINGS
One-of-a-kind moments highlight new independent works that add to the unique Festival experience.
War Game / U.S.A. (Director and Producer: Jesse Moss, Director: Tony Gerber, Producers: Todd Lubin, Jack Turner, Mark DiCristofaro, Jessica Grimshaw, Nick Shumaker) — A bipartisan group of U.S. defense, intelligence, and elected policymakers spanning five presidential administrations participate in an unscripted role-play exercise in which they confront a political coup backed by rogue members of the U.S. military, in the wake of a contested presidential election. World Premiere. Documentary.
NEW FRONTIER
New Frontier champions artists practicing at the crossroads of film, art, performance, and new media technology. This year, the section focuses on the powerful rise of AI, the role of artists on the rapidly changing landscape of technologies, and empowering narrative agency and sustainable creative practice through design.
Being (the Digital Griot) / U.S.A. (Lead Artist: Rashaad Newsome) — In this innovative participatory experience, Being, an artificial intelligence digital griot, asks the audience to engage in unifying and challenging discussions. It features a soundscape and movement informed by a dataset from Black communities, theorists, poets, and activists, including bell hooks, Paulo Freire, Dazié Grego-Sykes, and Cornel West.
Eno / U.S.A., U.K. (Director and Producer: Gary Hustwit, Producer: Jessica Edwards) — Visionary musician and artist Brian Eno — known for producing David Bowie, U2, Talking Heads, among many others; pioneering the genre of ambient music; and releasing over 40 solo and collaboration albums — reveals his creative processes in this groundbreaking generative documentary: a film that’s different every time it’s shown. World Premiere.
Sundance Institute
As a champion and curator of independent stories, the nonprofit Sundance Institute provides and preserves the space for artists across storytelling media to create and thrive. Founded in 1981 by Robert Redford, the Institute’s signature labs, granting, and mentorship programs, dedicated to developing new work, take place throughout the year in the U.S. and internationally. Sundance Collab, a digital community platform, brings a global cohort of working artists together to learn from Sundance advisors and connect with each other in a creative space, developing and sharing works in progress. The Sundance Film Festival and other public programs connect audiences and artists to ignite new ideas, discover original voices, and build a community dedicated to independent storytelling. Through the Sundance Institute artist programs, we have supported such projects as Beasts of the Southern Wild, The Big Sick, Bottle Rocket, Boys Don’t Cry, Boys State, Call Me by Your Name, Clemency, CODA, Drunktown’s Finest, The Farewell, Fire of Love, Flee, The Forty-Year-Old Version, Fruitvale Station, Get Out, Half Nelson, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Hereditary, Honeyland, The Infiltrators, The Last Black Man in San Francisco, Little Woods, Love & Basketball, Me and You and Everyone We Know, Mudbound, Nanny, Navalny, O.J.: Made in America, One Child Nation, Pariah, Raising Victor Vargas, Requiem for a Dream, Reservoir Dogs, RBG, Sin Nombre, Sorry to Bother You, The Souvenir, Strong Island, Summer of Soul (…or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised), Swiss Army Man, Sydney, A Thousand and One, Top of the Lake, Walking and Talking, Won’t You Be My Neighbor?, and Zola. Through year-round artist programs, the Institute also nurtured the early careers of artists such as Paul Thomas Anderson, Wes Anderson, Gregg Araki, Darren Aronofsky, Lisa Cholodenko, Ryan Coogler, Nia DaCosta, The Daniels, David Gordon Green, Miranda July, James Mangold, John Cameron Mitchell, Kimberly Peirce, Boots Riley, Ira Sachs, Quentin Tarantino, Taika Waititi, Lulu Wang, and Chloé Zhao. Support Sundance Institute in our commitment to uplifting bold artists and powerful storytelling globally by making a donation at sundance.org/donate. Join Sundance Institute on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X (formerly Twitter), and YouTube.
The Sundance Film Festival®
The Sundance Film Festival, a program of the nonprofit Sundance Institute, is the preeminent gathering of original storytellers and audiences seeking new voices and fresh perspectives. Since 1985, hundreds of films launched at the Festival have gone on to gain critical acclaim and reach new audiences worldwide. The Festival has introduced some of the most groundbreaking films and episodic works of the past three decades, including Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie, Fair Play, A Thousand and One, Pretty Baby: Brooke Shields, Rye Lane, Navalny, Fire of Love, Flee, CODA, Passing, Summer Of Soul (…or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised), Minari, Clemency, Never Rarely Sometimes Always, Zola, O.J.: Made in America, On the Record, Boys State, The Farewell, Honeyland, One Child Nation, The Souvenir, The Infiltrators, Sorry to Bother You, Top of the Lake, Won’t You Be My Neighbor?, Hereditary, Call Me by Your Name, Get Out, The Big Sick, Mudbound, Fruitvale Station, Whiplash, Brooklyn, Precious, The Cove, Little Miss Sunshine, An Inconvenient Truth, Napoleon Dynamite, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Reservoir Dogs, and sex, lies, and videotape. The program consists of fiction and nonfiction features and short films, series and episodic content, innovative storytelling, and performances, as well as conversations and other events. The Festival takes place in person in Utah, as well as online, connecting audiences to bold new artists and films. The 2024 Festival will be held January 18–28, 2024. Be a part of the Festival at festival.sundance.org and follow the Festival on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X (formerly Twitter), and YouTube.
The Festival is a program of the nonprofit Sundance Institute. To date 2024 Festival sponsors include: Presenting Sponsors – Acura, AMC+, Chase Sapphire®, Adobe; Leadership Sponsors – Audible, Hulu, DIRECTV, Omnicom Group, Ketel One Vodka, Shutterstock, United Airlines; Sustaining Sponsors – Canon U.S.A., Inc., Cotopaxi, DoorDash, Dropbox, Element[AL] Wines, World of Hyatt®, IMDb, MACRO, Rabbit Hole Bourbon & Rye, University of Utah Health, White Claw Hard Seltzer; Media Sponsors – Deadline Hollywood, IndieWire, Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, NPR, Variety, Vulture. Sundance Institute recognizes critical support from the State of Utah as Festival Host State. The support of these organizations helps offset the Festival’s costs and sustain the Institute’s year round programs for independent artists. Please visit festival.sundance.org for more.
# # #
EDITOR NOTE: DIRECTOR DEMOGRAPHICS
The data we are sharing reflects information provided directly by the artists. Some artists chose not to self-identify in all data areas.
U.S. COMPETITION:
Dramatic: 40% or 4 of the 10 films in this year’s U.S. Dramatic Competition were directed by one or more filmmakers who identify as a woman; 10% or 1 of the 10 films were directed by one or more filmmakers who identify as nonbinary or gender-nonconforming; 50% or 5 of the 10 films were directed by one or more filmmakers who identify as a person of color; 25% or 2 of the 8 identify as LGBTQ+; 10% or 1 of the 10 films were directed by one or more filmmakers who identify as transgender; 10% or 1 of the 10 films were directed by one or more filmmakers who identify as a person with a disability.
Documentary: 50% or 5 of the 10 films in this year’s U.S. Documentary Competition were directed by one or more filmmakers who identify as a woman; 60% or 6 of the 10 films were directed by one or more filmmakers who identify as a person of color; 10% or 1 of the 10 identify as LGBTQ+.
WORLD COMPETITION:
Dramatic: 60% or 6 of the 10 films in the World Dramatic Competition were directed by one or more filmmakers who identify as a woman; 10% or 1 of the 10 films were directed by one or more filmmakers who identify as nonbinary or gender-nonconforming; 70% or 7 of the 10 films were directed by one or more filmmakers who identify as a person of color; 44% or 4 of the 9 films were directed by one or more filmmakers who identify as LGBTQ+; 10% or 1 of the 10 films were directed by one or more filmmakers who identify as transgender; 13% or 1 of the 8 were directed by one or more filmmakers who identify as a person with a disability.
Documentary: 67% or 6 of the 9 films in the World Documentary Competition were directed by one or more filmmakers who identify as a woman; 56% or 5 of the 9 films were directed by one or more filmmakers who identify as a person of color; 40% or 2 of the 5 films were directed by one or more filmmakers who identify as LGBTQ+.
EPISODICS
Episodic projects were selected from 573 submissions. Of the eight-project section announced today, 63% or 5 of the 8 were directed by one or more filmmakers who identify as a woman; 38% or 3 of the 8 were directed by one or more filmmakers who identify as a person of color; 33% or 2 of the 6 were directed by one or more filmmakers who identify as LGBTQ+.
FEATURE FILM SUBMISSIONS: Of the 4,410 feature film submissions, 1,679 were from the U.S. and 2,741 were international; 1,302 (30%) were directed by one or more filmmakers who identify as women; 95 (2%) were directed by one or more filmmakers who identify as nonbinary or gender-nonconforming individuals; 2,038 (46%) were directed by one or more filmmakers who identify as people of color; 567 (13%) were directed by one or more filmmakers who identify as LGBTQ+; 35 (<1%) were directed by one or more filmmakers who identify as transgender; 196 (4%) were directed by one or more filmmakers who identify as having a disability.
ALL FEATURES: Of the 82 feature films announced so far, 38 (47%) were directed by one or more filmmakers who identify as women; 4 (5%) were directed by one or more filmmakers who identify as nonbinary individuals; 36 (45%) were directed by one or more filmmakers who identify as people of color; 15 (23%) were directed by one or more filmmakers who identify as LGBTQ+; 5 (7%) were directed by one or more filmmakers who identify as transgender; 4 (6%) were directed by one or more filmmakers who identify as a person with a disability.
# # #
MEDIA CONTACTS: Tammie Rosen, tammie_rosen@sundance.org; Tiffany Duersch, tiffany_duersch@sundance.org; Sylvy Fernàndez, sylvy_fernandez@sundance.org; Sarah Faruqui, sarah_faruqui@sundance.org
IMAGES AVAILABLE HERECLIPS AVAILABLE HERE
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correct_birth_00056
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FactBench
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3
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https://www.umusicpub.com/us/Artists/M/Mary-J-Blige.aspx
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correct_birth_00056
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FactBench
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1
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https://www.billboard.com/music/music-news/no-pains-no-gains-mary-j-blige-1047156/
|
en
|
No ‘Pains,’ No Gains: Mary J. Blige
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2007-12-03T05:00:00+00:00
|
Bringing out a new Mary J. Blige album is a big challenge.
|
en
|
Billboard
|
https://www.billboard.com/music/music-news/no-pains-no-gains-mary-j-blige-1047156/
|
Bringing out a new Mary J. Blige album is a big challenge. That’s because Blige, anointed “the Queen of Hip-Hop Soul” in 1992, is on a 15-year multiplatinum run as one of the most electric performers in the urban world, with a wide-ranging crossover base that straddles the R&B, hip-hop, pop and even AC markets.
Her last two studio albums, 2003’s “Love & Life” and 2005’s “The Breakthrough,” debuted at No. 1 on The Billboard 200. Even last year’s “Reflections—A Retrospective” opened in the top 10.
For “Growing Pains,” due Dec. 18 via Geffen, it started in late September with the online release of the single “Just Fine.” In October and November, Blige completed a whirlwind international promo tour to get audiences ready, and just before Thanksgiving, another new song began appearing in an Apple ad for iTunes and iPod.
The Bronx-born singer/songwriter’s ninth album is already stirring things up with the uptempo “Just Fine.” But as far as Blige is concerned, the music is the key component in maintaining that success. She says, “I started out with this concept of growing pains because that’s how I was feeling during the [2007] Grammys: ‘Am I good enough for this; do I really deserve all this in my life?’ But something in my head said, ‘Yes, you are. Now you’re forced to rapidly grow up in this area in order to achieve and get the things you want.’ “
Featuring collaborations with Ne-Yo (who wrote the track “Fade Away” from a poem by Blige), Timbaland, Akon, the Dream and Tricky Stewart (the team behind Rihanna’s “Umbrella”), Bryan-Michael Cox and the Clutch, among others, “Growing Pains” finds Blige coming to terms with her success, particularly in the wake of the last album’s three Grammy Award wins.
It’s been a hard-fought battle, through well-chronicled personal travails in romance and substance addictions, and coming out victorious has been an adjustment. As she sings in “Just Fine”: “No time for moping around, are you kidding?/No time for negative vibes, ’cause I’m winning.”
This is just the work to get to that part—where nothing bothers you and nothing is stressing you out,” says Blige, who also gets help from rapper Ludacris on “Grown Woman” and adopts her strident Brook-Lynn alter ego on the track “Nowhere Fast.” “That’s where I’m headed and that’s where I am, but there’s a whole other level of that that I have to get to. That might take a lifetime, but that’s where I’m headed.”
Collaborating with Stewart, the Dream and Jazze Pha on “Just Fine” helped set the tone. “When I heard the beat, I was like, ‘OK, this is hot. This is making my body move, and I’m having fun,’ ” says Blige. “It sounded like something that needed to be more uplifting than, ‘Woe is me’ [laughs]. So I tried to make the song about how I appreciate the good days I do have and where I’m at right now, even though I still have challenges.”
Geffen’s GM Jeff Harleston says bringing out an album as anxiously awaited as “Growing Pains” can be just fine for the label, too—but this year it faces some unexpected obstacles in marketing the release.
Usually, Harleston says, the strategy for Blige revolves around a combination of strong radio and personal appearances performing on TV. But the writers’ strike has put the talk and variety shows Blige would perform on in dry-dock, limiting those TV opportunities for her, although Harleston says Geffen still plans on an aggressive campaign once the strike is settled.
The label is exploring several other avenues. Radio remains a major component, with “Just Fine” already No. 36 on The Billboard Hot 100 after six weeks. The song’s Chris Applebaum-directed video had the rare distinction of debuting simultaneously on BET, iTunes, MTV and VH1 Oct. 25. Blige performed Nov. 18 at the American Music Awards and Nov. 20 at the Nokia Theatre in Los Angeles, which Harleston describes as “a celebration of the completion of her album.”
Some partnerships will also help Blige and Geffen launch “Growing Pains.” The singer is continuing her relationship with Chevrolet that will include broadcast and Internet ads and at least one print campaign for the new version of the carmaker’s Malibu—which incorporates a lyric from “Just Fine” (“I like what I see when I’m looking at me when I’m walking past the mirror”).
Blige also plans to maintain her relationship with the NFL, which will place her music, and possibly the singer herself, into game broadcasts during December and January.
The Apple campaign, which features “Work That,” should drive sales from the get-go. By comparison, digital downloads of Feist’s “1, 2, 3, 4,” which appeared in an early-fall iPod ad, soared from 6,800 to 128,000 in its first three weeks of exposure, according to Nielsen SoundScan.
Blige will also embark on a short promotional tour starting the second week of December, visiting Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., and possibly San Francisco. She’ll visit radio stations and “try to have a special event,” such as an appearance or performance, “in each of the markets,” according to Harleston.
Blige’s Web site has been redesigned to support “Growing Pains,” and Geffen is lining up some online promotions, including programming with AOL and Yahoo that Harleston says will be “a little sexier than a standard ‘Sessions’ kind of performance . . . We’ll make sure she’s very present in the digital retail space.” Geffen is also working on plans for “exclusive content for various retailers,” both terrestrial and Internet-based.
There’s also a “huge international component” in the “Growing Pains” marketing strategy, Harleston says. Blige went to Africa in mid-October for a series of dates, having gone to South Africa last year to help open the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls there and being “really taken by the experience.” She also went to Europe and briefly returned to the United States before a two-week tour of Japan in early November.
In Europe, “The Breakthrough” went top 10 in Switzerland, while the single “Be Without You” achieved the same distinction in Switzerland and Holland.
“I’m probably in the best shape that I’ve ever been in in my life,” says Blige, whose stamina will surely be tested in the run-up to the new album. “I’m really healthy. I make sure I’m not stressed out over a lot of things.”
Blige is also expected to hit Europe in December, and Andrea Nelson Meigs, her talent agent at ICM, says she’s looking to fit in feature film work in first-quarter 2008. Blige has appeared on such TV shows as “The Jamie Foxx Show,” “Ghost Whisperer,” “Entourage” and “America’s Next Top Model,” and she’s long been linked to a Nina Simone biopic.
On top of all this, Blige is also operating her own label, Matriarch Records. R&B singer Dave Young—who co-wrote “No One Will Do,” “Baggage” and “MJB Da MVP” on “The Breakthrough”—is slated to be the imprint’s first release, though a date has not yet been set. “He’s got a voice that’s been missing in R&B,” Blige says. “It’s incredibly soulful: He’s like our Donny [Hathaway] that we don’t have, our Marvin Gaye, Sam Cooke, Tyrone Davis.”
More than anything, however, she’s anxious to get her “Growing Pains” out to the public and continue what Blige says has been a career-long dialogue with her audience.
“My fans are like shrinks for me,” Blige says. “Any time a person listens to you, they’re helping you, and there’s 5 million people out there listening to me. I’m like, ‘Wow, thank y’all for listening.'”
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correct_birth_00056
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FactBench
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2
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https://www.miamilivingmagazine.com/post/fresh-off-her-triumphant-superbowl-performance-mary-j-blige
|
en
|
Fresh off her Triumphant Superbowl Performance, Mary J. Blige
|
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2022-03-11T14:13:26.483000+00:00
|
Superbowl 2022 enjoyed an electrifying performance by the incomparable Mary J. Blige who brought the hip-hop heat to a star studded, fast paced, powerful halftime show, joined by legends Snoop Dog and Doctor Dre. Blige, who recently released her album “Good Morning Gorgeous” to critical acclaim, will reprise her high energy show at the 15th Annual Jazz in the Gardens (JITG) Music Festival, which takes place on March 12 and 13, 2022. The R&B megastar, who also stars in the riveting Starz series “
|
en
|
https://static.parastorage.com/client/pfavico.ico
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Miami Living
|
https://www.miamilivingmagazine.com/post/fresh-off-her-triumphant-superbowl-performance-mary-j-blige
|
Superbowl 2022 enjoyed an electrifying performance by the incomparable Mary J. Blige who brought the hip-hop heat to a star studded, fast paced, powerful halftime show, joined by legends Snoop Dog and Doctor Dre. Blige, who recently released her album “Good Morning Gorgeous” to critical acclaim, will reprise her high energy show at the 15th Annual Jazz in the Gardens (JITG) Music Festival, which takes place on March 12 and 13, 2022. The R&B megastar, who also stars in the riveting Starz series “Power Book II”, is the only headline artist to perform three times in the festival’s 15-year history. Affectionally known as “the Queen of Hip-Hop Soul”, Blige was invited back after thousands of fans clamored for her return to the country’s fastest growing jazz/R&B festival, presented by the City of Miami Gardens, the largest Black city in Florida.
Jazz in the Gardens (JITG) full line up is Mary J. Blige, H.E.R, Rick Ross, The Isley Brothers, SWV, The Roots with special guest T-Pain, Stokely, Johnathan McReynolds, Mike Phillips and Mark Allen Felton, with local performers still to be announced. Syndicated radio host and comedian Rickey Smiley will return as the host for the 2022 JITG.
In 2020, in the wake of the global pandemic, Jazz in the Gardens was forced to cancel just two days before the doors were slated to open. Now, almost two years later, the 2022 festival represents an impressive comeback as the City of Miami Gardens’ signature event and is anticipated to be an even better experience for the thousands of loyal and eager ticket buyers who hail from all over the world. Entrants will be required to show a valid COVID-19 vaccination card or a negative COVID-19 test. Social distancing protocols will be observed and face masks will be strongly encouraged.
““Not only are we excited for the return of Jazz in the Gardens, but we are also honored to host Mary J. Blige once again in the great City of Miami Gardens,” said Mayor Rodney Harris. “Mary J is an outstanding artist who consistently delivers a soulful and entertaining performance for her audience. We are happy to welcome her back to Miami Gardens, and to share the experience with
all the Jazz in the Gardens fans.”
“As a manager, my clients have played this festival several times over the past decade” said Shawn Gee, President of Live Nation Urban, “so when presented with the opportunity to work alongside the city to produce the event this year, I was super excited. Jazz in the Gardens is one of the most important live events in the culture of Jazz & R&B music, globally. Our goal is not only to produce a stellar event, but to let the world know about the hidden gem that City of Miami Gardens has with this event”.
‘We are honored to partner with Mayor Harris and the City of Miami Gardens on the 15th Anniversary of Jazz in the Gardens”, said Brittany Flores, President of Live Nation Florida. “The event is staple here in South Florida and we are beyond excited to help continue the tradition and usher in the next chapter of this amazing event”.
The 15th Annual Jazz in the Gardens also showcases an eclectic mix of goods and great buys in the Merchandise Village and delicious, exotic cuisine in the Food Village
Tickets on-sale now at www.jazzinthegardens.com - Follow @jazzinthegardens
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List of people from the Bronx
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_from_the_Bronx
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This is a list of people who were either born or have lived in the Bronx, a borough of New York City, at some time in their lives. Many of the early historical figures lived in that part of Westchester County which later became part of the Bronx.
This is a dynamic list and may never be able to satisfy particular standards for completeness. You can help by adding missing items with reliable sources.
Academics and science[edit]
Arts[edit]
Architecture, art and photography[edit]
Journalists and writers[edit]
Sholem Aleichem (1859–1916) – author
William Henry Appleton (1814–1899) – publisher
Army Archerd (1922–1999) – columnist for Variety
James Baldwin (1924–1987) – playwright and essayist
Harold Bloom (1930–2019) – literary critic
Leslie Brody (born 1952) – non-fiction author
Robert Caro (born 1935) – non-fiction author of biographies of Robert Moses and Lyndon Johnson
Jerome Charyn (born 1937) – prolific novelist and author of several memoirs
Mary Higgins Clark (1927–2020) – best-selling author of suspense novels
Avery Corman (born 1935) – novelist; author of The Old Neighborhood, set in the Bronx
Don DeLillo (born 1936) – novelist
E. L. Doctorow (1931–2015) – author
Will Eisner (1917–2005) – author of A Contract with God and other graphic novels and instruction books
Jules Feiffer (born 1929) – cartoonist (primarily in The Village Voice); playwright, screenwriter
Bill Finger (1917–1974) – writer co-creator of Batman comic book[43]
Vivian Gornick (born 1935) – American critic, journalist, essayist, and memoirist
Marilyn Hacker (born 1942) – poet, critic, reviewer
Phil Hall (born 1964) – film critic
Hy Hollinger (1918–2015) – journalist for Variety and The Hollywood Reporter[44]
Max Kadushin (1895–1980) – rabbi, theologian and author at Conservative Synagogue Adath Israel of Riverdale
Bel Kaufman (1911–2014) – novelist author of Up the Down Staircase about NYC schools in the 1950s[45]
William Melvin Kelley (1937–2017) – novelist, short-story writer, university professor
Annie Lanzillotto (born 1963) – poet, author, dramatist, songwriter
Stan Lee (1922–2018) – leading creator of Marvel Comics
Paul Levinson (born 1947) – science fiction and non-fiction author
Anthony Lewis (1927–2013) – New York Times legal reporter, specializing in coverage of the U.S. Supreme Court[46]
Eleazar Lipsky (1911-1993) – lawyer, novelist, playwright, president of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Miles Marshall Lewis (born 1970) – pop-culture critic
Kenneth Lonergan (born 1962) – playwright and screenwriter[47]
Lynda Lopez (born 1971) – journalist, multiple broadcast networks
Ray Marcano – medical reporter and music critic
John Matteson (born 1961) – Pulitzer Prize–winning biographer
Judith Merril (1923–1997) – science-fiction editor and author
Steve Mirsky – Scientific American columnist
Nicholasa Mohr (born 1938) – Nuyorican writer about Puerto Rican women in New York
Mwalim (born 1968) – playwright, composer, and novelist
Davi Napoleon (born 1946) – theater historian and arts journalist
Clifford Odets (1906–1963) – playwright, co-founder of the Group Theatre
Cynthia Ozick (born 1928) – award-winning novelist and short-story writer
Grace Paley (1922–2007) – award-winning short-story writer[48]
Michael Pearson (born 1949) – Old Dominion University English professor and author of several books, including his memoir, Dreaming of Columbus: A Boyhood in the Bronx
David J. Pecker (born 1951) – CEO of American Media, publisher of National Enquirer, US Weekly, Men's Fitness[49]
Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849) – author and poet
Chaim Potok (1929–2002) – author[50]
Richard Price (born 1949) – novelist and screenwriter
Chris Regan (born 1967) – television writer and author
Charles Rice-González (born 1964) – novelist and playwright[51]
Spider Robinson (born 1948) – science-fiction writer of novels and short stories
Joanna Russ (1937–2011) – feminist science-fiction writer
Oliver Sacks (1933–2015) – neurologist and author
Douglas Sadownick – gay fiction writer, journalist and psychotherapist
William Safire (1929–2009) – journalist, speech writer, literary stylist[52]
Tony Santiago (born 1950) – military historian[53]
Kate Simon (1912–1990) – memoirist and popular travel guide author[54]
Arthur Spiegelman (1940–2008) – journalist {not the author of Maus}[55]
William Steig (1907–2003) – cartoonist and author[56]
Mark Twain (1835–1910) – author[57]
Dorothy Uhnak (1930–2006) – mystery writer who drew upon her past experience as a NYPD detective
Ben Wattenberg (1933–2015) – political/demographic analysis author (The Real Majority)[58]
Al Wasserman (1921–2005) – documentary filmmaker
Barry Wellman (born 1942) – sociologist of community, networks and the Internet, co-author Networked
Gene Weingarten (born 1951) – Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, author and cartoonist
Herman Wouk (1915–2019) – author
Film, television, radio, dance and theatre[edit]
Charlie Ahearn (born 1951) – film director of Wild Style[59]
Danny Aiello (1933–2019) – actor[60]
Alan Alda (born 1936) – actor
Nancy Allen (born 1950) – actress
Woody Allen (born 1935) – film director and actor[61]
June Allyson (1917–2006) – actress[62]
Bruce Altman (born 1955) – actor[63]
Christopher Aponte – ballet dancer and choreographer
Arthur Aviles (born 1963) – dancer and choreographer
Emanuel Azenberg (born 1934) – theatrical producer
Lauren Bacall (1924–2014) – actress[64]
Martin Balsam (1919–1996) – film actor
Anne Bancroft (1931–2005) – actress[65]
Ellen Barkin (born 1954) – actress[66]
Joseph Bassolino (Joey Boots) (1967–2016) – comedian who popularized the phrase "Baba Booey" on the Howard Stern Show[67]
Peter S. Beagle (born 1939) – fantasy and science fiction author
Tyson Beckford (born 1970) – model and actor
Ahmed Best (born 1973) – Jar Jar Binks
Joey Bishop (1918–2007) – entertainer[68]
Irving Brecher (1914–2008) – radio, television and film comedy writer[10]
Martin Brest (born 1951) – film director, producer, and writer
Joy Bryant (born 1976) – actress
Cara Buono (born 1971) – actress
Red Buttons (1919–2006) – comedian and actor[69]
James Caan (1940–2022) – actor[70]
Steven Canals (born 1980) – television screenwriter and producer.[71]
George Carlin (1937–2008) – comedian
Eddie Carmel, born Oded Ha-Carmeili (1936–1972) – Israeli-born entertainer with gigantism and acromegaly, popularly known as "The Jewish Giant"
Paddy Chayefsky (1923–1981) – screenwriter[72]
Dominic Chianese (born 1931) – actor
Sanford "Sandy" Climan (born 1956) – film producer[73]
Lee J. Cobb (1911–1976) – actor
Kevin Corrigan (born 1969) – actor
Tony Curtis (1925–2010) – actor[74]
Stacey Dash (born 1966/1967) – actress
Michael DeLorenzo (born 1959) – actor
Desus (born 1983) – comedian, former host of Viceland's Desus and Mero and current host of Showtime's Desus & Mero[75]
The Kid Mero (born 1983) – comedian, former host of Viceland's Desus and Mero and current host of Showtime's Desus & Mero[75]
Richard Dubin (born 1945) – television writer, director and producer
Peter Falk (1927–2011) – actor[76]
Jon Favreau (born 1966) – film and television director and actor[77]
Joe Franklin (1926–2015) – TV host of Joe Franklin's Memory Lane[74]
Cuba Gooding, Jr. (born 1968) – actor
Howard Gottfried (1923–2017) – film producer of academy awarding winning Network and The Hospital[78]
Don Gregory (1934–2015) – Broadway theatrical producer[79]
Mortimer Halpern (1909–2006) – Broadway stage manager
Jonathan Harris (1914–2002) – actor
Moss Hart (1904–1961) – playwright and theatre director
Amy Heckerling (born 1954) – film director
Bernard Herrmann (1911–1975) – film composer[80]
Richard Hunt (1951–1992) – Muppet puppeteer
Jharrel Jerome (born 1997) – actor
Robert Klein (born 1942) – comedian
Yaphet Kotto (1939–2021) – actor
Stanley Kubrick (1928–1999) – film director
Saul Landau (1936–2013) – documentary filmmaker, journalist
Annie Lanzillotto (born 1963) – actor, performance artist, director
Tom Leykis (born 1956/1957) – radio host
Hal Linden (born 1931) – actor, director, and musician[81]
Lindsay Lohan (born 1986) – actress[82]
Louis Lombardi (born 1968) – actor
Domenick Lombardozzi (born 1976) – actor
Kenneth Lonergan (born 1962) – screenwriter, director, playwright[83]
Jennifer Lopez (born 1969) – singer, actress and dancer
Linda Lovelace (1949–2002) – porn actor and anti-porn activist
Melissa Manchester (born 1951) – singer
Sonia Manzano (born 1950) – actress, Maria Figueroa Rodriguez on Sesame Street
Garry Marshall (1934–2016) – television and film director[84]
Bernard McGuirk (1957-2022) – American radio personality
Penny Marshall (1943–2018) – actor and director[84]
Lea Michele (born 1986) – actor
Sal Mineo (1939–1976) – actor
Tracy Morgan (born 1968) – actor and comedian[85]
Romeo Muller (1928–1992) – television writer
Robert Mulligan (1925–2008) – film director[86]
Jan Murray (1916–2006) – comedian
Mwalim (born 1968) – playwright, actor, director; spoken-word artist; co-founder of the Urban Expressionists Lab
Bess Myerson (1924–2014) – actor; best known as first Jewish Miss America[87]
Carroll O'Connor (1924–2001) – actor
Okwui Okpokwasili (born 1972) – dancer, actor[88]
Jerry Orbach (1935–2004) – actor
Toby Orenstein (born 1937) – founder and director of the Columbia Center for Theatrical Arts, the Young Columbians, and Toby's Dinner Theatre[89]
Ronnie Ortiz-Magro (born 1985) – participant on MTV's reality-television series Jersey Shore[citation needed]
Al Pacino (born 1940) – actor
Chazz Palminteri (born 1952) – actor[90]
Vincent Pastore (born 1946) – actor
Ron Perlman (born 1950) – film actor; Hellboy, etc.
Regis Philbin (1931–2020) – media personality and television talk-show host
Carl Reiner (1922–2020) – comedian and film director
Rob Reiner (born 1945) – actor and film director
Kristina Reyes (born 1994) – actress and bass guitarist
Martin Richards (1932–2012) – theater and movie producer[91]
Martin Ritt (1914–1990) – Academy Award-nominated movie director
Tanya Roberts (1949–2021) – actor[92]
Leon Robinson (born 1962) – actor
Géza Röhrig (born 1967) – poet and film star of Son of Saul[93]
George Romero (1940–2017) – horror film director[94]
Saoirse Ronan (born 1994) – film actor[95]
Andre Royo (born 1968) – actor
Harmony Santana (born ?) – transgender film actress starred in Gun Hill Road[96]
Mike Savage (born 1942) – radio talk-show host[97]
Robert Schimmel (1950–2010) – comedian
Daniel Schorr (1918–2010) – journalist
Ben Schwartz (born 1981) – actor and comedian
John Patrick Shanley (born 1950) – playwright
Maggie Siff (born 1974) – actor
Neil Simon (1927–2018) – playwright and screenwriter
Wesley Snipes (born 1962) – actor
Peter Sohn (born 1977) – animated film director and voice actor at Pixar
Lionel Stander (1908–1994) – actor
Arnold Stang (1918–2009) – actor
Joseph Stein (1912–2010) – playwright[98]
Renée Taylor (born 1933) – actress
Rachel Ticotin (born 1958) – actress[99]
Tony Vitale (born 1964) – film writer, producer and director
Kerry Washington (born 1977) – actress
Douglas Watt (1914–2009) – theater critic[100]
Fred Weintraub (1928–2017) – founder and impresario of the Bitter End 1960s hippie club; producer of movies about Woodstock, Bruce Lee
Burt Wolf (born 1938) – travel reporter and writer for CNN and ABC networks
Malik Yoba (born 1967) – actor
Music[edit]
Government and politics[edit]
Robert Abrams (born 1938) – Assemblyman, Bronx Borough President, New York State Attorney General
Bella Abzug (1920–1998) – Congresswoman and international feminist leader
Brian G. Andersson (born 1957) – former New York City Commissioner of Records & Information Services.[117]
Herman Badillo (1929–2014) – former New York City housing official, Bronx Borough President, Congressman and CUNY board of trustees chair
Oxiris Barbot (born 1965/1966) – Commissioner of Health of the City of New York
Mario Biaggi (1917–2015) – decorated policeman and US Congressman
Adolfo Carrión, Jr. (born 1961) – former Bronx Borough President appointed by President Barack Obama to be Director of the White House Office of Urban Affairs
Darcel Clark (born 1962) – first female Bronx County District Attorney
Gray Davis (born 1942) – former Governor of California
Rubén Díaz Jr. (born 1973) – Bronx borough president and former New York State assembly member
Louis Farrakhan (born 1933) – Black Muslim leader[66]
Luis A. Gonzalez[118] – first Latino to be named Presiding Justice of the New York State Appellate Division, First Judicial Department
Alan Grayson (born 1958) – Democratic Congressman, Florida[119]
Eric Holder (born 1951) – first African American-appointed United States Attorney General
Scott Israel (born 1956/57) – Police Chief of Opa-locka, former Sheriff of Broward County
Martin Jezer (1940–2005) – progressive activist in New York and Vermont; leader of stutterers' self-help movement
Lazarus Joseph (1891–1966) – NY State Senator and New York City Comptroller.
Benjamin Kaplan (1911–2010) – law professor, judge, crafter of Nuremberg Trials indictments[120]
John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) – 35th President of the United States; U.S. Senator from Massachusetts (born in Brookline, Massachusetts)[121]
Bernard Kerik (born 1955) – former Commissioner of Police and of Corrections, New York City.[122]
Ed Koch (1924–2013) – politician; former U.S. Representative who became a three-term Mayor of New York City
Kenneth Kronberg (1948–2007) – leading member of LaRouche Movement
Fiorello H. La Guardia (1882–1947) – former Mayor of New York City
Nita Lowey (born 1937) – Congresswoman served from 1989 to 2021 whose Westchester district once included parts of the Bronx and Queens
Beatrice Lumpkin (born 1918) – union organizer
Norman Marcus – former general counsel, New York City Planning Commission[123]
Francis W. Martin (1878–1947) – first Bronx County District Attorney
Garry McCarthy (born 1959) – Chief of Police of Willow Springs, Illinois; former Superintendent of the Chicago Police Department; 2019 candidate for mayor of Chicago
Gouverneur Morris (1752–1816) – revolutionary war statesman
Michael Mukasey (born 1941) – former U.S. judge and U.S. Attorney General (under George W. Bush)
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (born 1989) – youngest woman ever elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, 2018
Colin Powell (1937–2021) – former United States Secretary of State
Anthony Romero (born 1965) – executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union
Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) – U.S. president who spent boyhood summers at Wave Hill in the Riverdale section of The Bronx, New York City
Frank Shannon (born 1961) – native of the Kingsbridge section of the Bronx, conservative activist, political analyst, columnist, and candidate for the Florida State House
Larry Sharpe (born 1968) – 2018 Libertarian nominee for Governor of New York; 2016 Libertarian vice-presidential candidate
Sonia Sotomayor (born 1954) – federal appeals court judge, New York; appointed by President Barack Obama to the Supreme Court of the United States
Eliot Spitzer (born 1959) – politician and television talk-show host; former New York State Attorney General (1999–2006); Governor of New York (2007–2008)
John Timoney (police officer) (1948–2016) – Philadelphia police commissioner; Miami police chief; New York City deputy police commissioner[124]
Leon Trotsky (1879–1940) – Soviet revolutionary and political theorist[125][126]
Charles J. Urstadt (1928–2020) – gubernatorial advisor and appointee noted for development of Battery Park City and as namesake of contentious Urstadt Law[127][128]
Sports[edit]
Nate Archibald (born 1948) – former NBA player
Albert Axelrod (1921–2004) – Olympic medalist foil fencer
Elías Larry Ayuso (born 1977) – Puerto Rican basketball player
Harrison Bader (born 1994) – MLB outfielder
Margaret Bailes (born 1951) – Olympic gold medalist
Iran Barkley (born 1960) – boxer
Saquon Barkley (born 1997) – NFL player, 2018 NFL Offensive Rookie of the Year[129]
Ronnie Belliard (born 1975) – former MLB player
Bobby Bonilla (born 1963) – former MLB player
Willie Cager (1942–2023) – player on 1966 Texas Western University NCAA basketball championship team[130]
Rod Carew (born 1945) – Baseball Hall of Famer signed by the Minnesota Twins in the Bronx[131]
Rocky Colavito (born 1933) – former MLB player
Willie Colon (born 1983) – former NFL player
Cus D'Amato (1908–1985) – boxing manager
Aaron Davis (born 1967) – boxer
Bizunesh Deba (born 1987) – marathoner[132]
Art Donovan (1924–2013) – former NFL football tackle
Mike "SuperJew" Epstein (born 1943) – MLB first baseman
Chris Eubank (born 1966) – boxer
Harry Feldman (1919–1962) – former MLB pitcher
Frankie Frisch (1897–1973) – former MLB player
Lou Gehrig (1903–1941) – Baseball Hall of Famer and New York Yankees first baseman
Marty Glickman (1917–2001) – athlete and sports announcer
Mitch Green (born 1957) – boxer
Hank Greenberg (1911–1986) – MLB Hall of Famer
Paul Heyman (born 1965) – WWE manager
John Holland (born 1988) – American-Puerto Rican basketball player for Hapoel Tel Aviv of the Israeli Basketball Premier League
Eric Holtz (born 1965) – Head Coach of the Israel national baseball team
Daryl Homer (born 1990) – Olympic fencer[133]
Nat Holman (1896–1995) – Hall of Fame basketball player and coach
Jay Horwitz (born 1945) – New York Mets executive
Jonathan Isaac (born 1997) – basketball player, Orlando Magic forward
Cullen Jones (born 1984) – swimmer
Max Kellerman (born 1973) – sports-radio host
Ed Kranepool (born 1944) – former Major League Baseball player; New York Mets
Marie Kruckel (1924–2012) – All-American Girls Professional Baseball League player
Jake LaMotta (1921–2017) – boxer
Fred Lewis (born 1947) – American-handball player
Anibal Lopez (born 1942) – bodybuilder
Frank Malzone (1930–2015) – former MLB player
Doug Marrone (born 1964) – NFL coach
Floyd Mayweather Sr. (born 1952) – boxing trainer
Shep Messing (born 1949) – Olympic soccer goalkeeper and current broadcaster
Nat Militzok (1923–2009) – basketball player
Marvin Miller (1917–2012) – founder, Major League Baseball Players Association[134]
Davey Moore (1959–1988) – WBA world middleweight champion boxer
Mike Nagy (born 1948) – former MLB player
Bernard Opper (1915–2000) – All-American basketball player for the Kentucky Wildcats and professional player
Juan Orozco (born 1993) – champion gymnast, 2012 Olympian[135]
Justin Pierce (1975–2000) – skateboarder
Ed Pinckney (born 1963) – basketball player, Villanova Wildcats Championship Team; 13-year NBA; Current Lead Assistant Coach, Minnesota Timberwolves
Bill Polian (born 1942) – NFL executive
Damian Priest (born 1982) - WWE Wrestler of Puerto Rican descent; Former WWE United States Champion; Currently a leader of The Judgment Day[136]
Alex Ramos (born 1961) – boxer
Tubby Raskin (1902–1981) – basketball player and coach
T. J. Rivera (born 1988) – New York Mets infielder[137]
Michele A. Roberts (born 1956) – executive director of NBA players' union[138]
Lennie Rosenbluth (born 1933) – basketball player
Dolph Schayes (1928–2015) – Hall of Fame NBA basketball player and coach
Babe Scheuer (1913–1997) – football player
Stephen A. Smith (born 1967) – commentator, ESPN First Take
Vin Scully (1927–2022) – sportscaster
Amanda Serrano (born 1988) – IBF Female World Super Featherweight champion boxer
Nevil Shed (born 1943) – player on 1966 Texas Western University NCAA basketball championship team[130]
Benjamin (Benji) Ungar (born 1986) – fencer
Kemba Walker (born 1990) – basketball player; New York Knicks point guard
Hilton White (1933–1990) – basketball coach and community leader[130]
Andrew Velazquez (born 1994) – MLB infielder
Name givers[edit]
Activists[edit]
Business[edit]
Attorneys[edit]
William Barr (born 1950) – U.S. Attorney General under Donald Trump[162]
Pat Cipollone (born 1966) – Trump lawyer in impeachment case and elsewhere[163]
Larry Fleisher (1930–1989) – sports agent, helped found the National Basketball Association Players Association
Hal Kant (1931–2008) – specializing in representing musical groups, spent 35 years as principal lawyer and general counsel for the Grateful Dead
Irving Picard (born 1941) – known for his recovery of funds from the Madoff investment scandal
Gerald Shur (1933–2020) – founder of the United States Federal Witness Protection Program[164]
Melvyn Weiss (1935–2018) – co-founded plaintiff class action law firm Milberg Weiss
Infamous[edit]
See also[edit]
Biography portal
Lists portal
New York City portal
List of people from New York City
List of people from Brooklyn
List of people from Queens
List of people from Staten Island
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https://indahousemedia.com/2024/05/the-queen-of-hip-hop-soul-mary-j-blige-pepsi-joined-by-50-cent-taraji-p-henson-fat-joemethod-man-robert-glasper-jill-scottangie-martinez-marsai-martin-and-morefor-the/
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HOP SOUL, MARY J. BLIGE & PEPSI ® JOINED BY 50 CENT, TARAJI P. HENSON, FAT JOE,METHOD MAN, ROBERT GLASPER, JILL SCOTT,ANGIE MARTINEZ, MARSAI MARTIN AND MOREFOR THE THIRD ANNUAL STRENGTH OF A WOMAN FES
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2024-05-14T08:20:56+00:00
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The three-day event featured iconic moments including a concert at Barclays Center, full-day summit, produced by MVD Inc, at The Glasshouse, a Jazz show,Mother’s Day brunch and Gospel concert NEW YORK, NY, May 13, 2024 – Over the weekend, GRAMMY and Emmy Award-winning and Oscar-nominated artist, actress, producer, and entrepreneur Mary J. Blige, PEPSI®, Live Nation Urban […]
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In Da House Media
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https://indahousemedia.com/2024/05/the-queen-of-hip-hop-soul-mary-j-blige-pepsi-joined-by-50-cent-taraji-p-henson-fat-joemethod-man-robert-glasper-jill-scottangie-martinez-marsai-martin-and-morefor-the/
|
The festival kicked off on Friday, May 10th with an intimate welcome party hosted byMary J. Blige at Corner Social in Harlem. Guests enjoyed cocktails and passed hors d’oeuvres, while dancing the night away to the sounds of Hot 97’s Funkmaster Flex. The evening continued downtown in Greenwich Village at Blue Note with two sold-out jazz shows headlined by 5x GRAMMY-winning artist Robert Glasper at the legendary Blue Note. Taking the stage, Glasper performed a medley of songs for the intimate crowd in attendance. The evening concluded with Mary J. Blige gracing the stage with Glasper where the pair shared anecdotes before leaving the audience with an inspiring mantra: “Each one, teach one, help one.” Additional notable celebrities in attendance included Tiffany Haddish, Tasha Smith, Rapsody, and Bryan Michael Cox.
On Saturday, the morning commenced with over 4,000 attendees for the Strength of a Woman Summit held at The Glasshouse. The highly-anticipated summit kicked off with a motivational prayer from Tasha Smith and welcome remarks from The Breakfast Club co-host and comedian Jess Hilarious. The star-studded panels included “Girl Talk with MJB,” an unfiltered conversation that celebrated the magical bond of Black women’s friendships with Mary J. Blige, and her celebrity besties Angie Martinez, Taraji P. Henson, and Tasha Smith. The summit also included an “Our Men Honor the Strength of a Woman” panel, a dynamic men’s discussion led by the cast of Starz’s hit series’, Method Man, Larenz Tate, Michael Rainey Jr., Da’Vinchi,and Mekai Curtis. Additional notable key speakers that contributed to the program’s captivating sessions included Marsai Martin, Pinky Cole Hayes, Crystal Renee Hayslett, Misa Hylton, Bevy Smith, Claire Sulmers, Simone I. Smith, Kim Kimble,Tunde Oyeneyin, and more. Co-hosted by comedian and co-host of The Breakfast Club, Jess Hilarious and award-winning on-air talent, journalist and podcaster, Gia Peppers, the incredible event, which was free for the public with registration, featured a total of nine panels highlighting the festival’s mission and purpose of empowerment, elevation, education, and equity to life with inspiring programming, pivotal panels, and experiences, focused on wellness, culture, finance and entrepreneurship, style, beauty, podcasts and much more.
The panels are only one star-studded component of the Summit. Activations included a tooth gem station by Get Gem’d, a myriad of memorable photo moments, and a lush build-your-own bouquet bar. Guests were also welcomed to explore “Mary’s Living Room,” a comfortable sanctuary featuring the varietals of the Sun Goddess wine collection, Sister Love’s bold jewelry designs and the specially made Strength of a Woman merchandise. Additionally, guests were invited to immerse themselves in the music and memories of Mary J. Blige’s “My Life” album in a custom listening booth, created as a special tribute to the 30th anniversary of the iconic album.
PEPSI®, the festival’s returning partner, offered Summit attendees delicious food, custom cocktails, mocktails and complimentary beverages at the Pepsi Dig In Village, capturing the diverse flavors of the major foodie city. Pepsi Dig In, the brand’s platform designed to drive access, business growth, and awareness for Black-owned restaurants, featured dishes from five female-owned restaurants: Slutty Vegan,Melba’s,2 Girls & A Cookshop, Aunts Et Uncles and Je T’aime Patisserie.“Pepsi returned as co-presenting partner for the Mary J. Blige Strength of a Woman Festival and Summit, this time bringing our shared vision to elevate, educate and empower women to New York City – our own backyard and Mary’s hometown. Pepsi Dig In, the brand’s platform to support Black-owned restaurants, also returned to feature five local female-owned restaurants at the Pepsi Dig In Village to spotlight these businesses at the Summit to drive visibility and awareness to their incredible dishes. The weekend’s sold-out events and continued success is a testament to Mary’s impact,” said Kent Montgomery, Senior Vice President, PepsiCo Industry Relations and Multicultural Development.
Additional partners with onsite activations included, Mielle Organics, who provided an onsite hairstylist and giveaways of their must-have beauty and haircare products, andVerizon Business, who invited attendees to delve into the brand’s suite of small business offerings while also enjoying complimentary charging services of their mobile devices. Additional sponsors for this year’s summit included ASCAP and Starz.
Following the Summit, New Yorkers flocked to the Barclays Center in Brooklyn for a concert headlined by newly-inducted Rock and Roll Hall of Famer and Strength of a Woman founder Mary J. Blige, with additional performances by 50 Cent, Jill Scott, Fat Joe, Jadakiss, Lola Brooke, Honey Bxby, and Funk Flex. The evening was hosted by “the voice of New York,” Angie Martinez and kicked off with a special tribute to “Hip Hop Moms,” featuring Mama Jones (Jim Jones’ mother), Audrey Jackson (Pop-Smoke’s mother), Debbie Phillips (Jadakiss’s mother) and Athena Dubose (A. Boogie’s mother.) Rising sibling quartet, WanMor, made up of singer Wanya Morris’ four sons, surprised their mother, Traci Nash, by serenading her with the song “A Song for Mama,” made famous by their father’s group, Boyz II Men.
In between sets, Funkmaster Flex kept the party going with lively DJ sets that kept the crowd on their feet. Honey Bxby took the stage first, kicking off her set with “Basic.” Next up was Brooklyn’s own Lola Brooke – who started her set by thanking her mother for allowing her to pursue her dreams. Legendary rapper Jadakissperformed and surprised the crowd when he brought out Styles P and Sheek Louchof his group The Lox to perform three of their hits. 50 Cent made a grand entrance as he was lifted onto the stage to start his performance. During his set, he performed fan-favorite track “Big Rich Town,” and was joined not only by G-Unit’s Tony Yayo and Uncle Murda, but he also brought out cast members of three of his hit Starz series, including Michael Rainey Jr. (Power Book II: Ghost), Larenz Tate (Power Book II: Ghost) and Da’vinchi (BMF), while Mekai Curtis (Power Book III: Raising Kanan) surprised concertgoers by hopping on the drums during 50 Cent’s song “In Da Club.”50 Cent made the days of a few lucky fans when he launched the Givenchy varsity jacket and orange leather vest he was wearing into the crowd. For the main event,Mary J. Blige rose up onto the stage and joined 50 Cent to sing “Hate It Or Love It.” Throughout the evening, she performed her hits including “You Remind Me,” “Love No Limit,” “I Can Love You,” “Mary Jane (All Night Long),” “I’m Going Down,” “Still Believe In Love,” and featured surprise performances from Vado, A. Boogie and Method Man. The night continued with Jill Scott, Jadakiss, Fat Joe with special guest Remy Ma, and WanMor each performing their own sets for the crowd. To close out the evening of an already iconic night of performances, Blige returned to the stage – with her third stunning outfit change of the night – to sing some of her greatest hits, including fan-favorite “Just Fine” and “Family Affair.” If that wasn’t enough, Blige then shocked the crowd by announcing the long-anticipated “The Mary Boot,” her new boot collaboration with Giuseppe Zanotti, which is now on sale.
On the final day of the event-filled weekend, the festival continued with a sold-out Mother’s Day Brunch Experience hosted by Mary J. Blige, held at Brooklyn Chop House in Times Square. With sounds provided by Funk Flex and DJ Smooth Ski, the event featured a pre-fixe brunch menu for guests to enjoy. Notable attendees in attendance included, Taraji P. Henson, Misa Hylton, and Mekai Curtis. Mary provided concluding remarks, including a quote from The Intruders classic hit song, “I’ll Always Love My Mama,” before wishing the excited audience a Happy Mother’s Day. Following the brunch, the festival made its way to the Brooklyn Paramount for an uplifting gospel concert presented by Femme It Forward, featuring uplifting performances by the legendary gospel group, The Clark Sisters and Jane Handcock,who opened the show.
This year’s festival expanded its footprint across the New York City boroughs, bringing the event’s purpose of empowerment, elevation, and education to life for the community. On Thursday, April 25, Pepsi launched the Pepsi x Mary J. Blige Strength of a Woman Community Fund, with $100,000 available as grants to local organizations whose work elevates and educates underserved women in Mary’s hometown of Yonkers, NY.
|
|||||
correct_birth_00056
|
FactBench
|
1
| 10
|
https://www.storagepost.com/locations/new-york/bronx/blog/3-best-neighborhoods-bronx
|
en
|
3 Best Neighborhoods in The Bronx, New York
|
https://www.storagepost.com/themes/custom/storagepost/favicon.ico
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If you need a place to stash your belongings while you decide where to set up a home, or you have too much extra stuff for your new space, check out Storage Post locations in The Bronx.
|
en
|
/themes/custom/storagepost/favicon.ico
|
https://www.storagepost.com/locations/new-york/bronx/blog/3-best-neighborhoods-bronx
|
The Bronx is one of the five boroughs in New York, located north of Manhattan, and it’s brash, loud and unapologetic. The Bronx is home to the New York Yankees (and their ruthless, loyal fans, the Bleacher Creatures), the Bronx Zoo and Pelham Bay Park which is (almost three times larger than Central Park).
Crime boss John Gotti and celebrities like Billy Joel and Jennifer Lopez (when she was just Jenny from the block) have all called The Bronx home. Edgar Allan Poe wrote his poem, “Annabelle Lee” while living in The Bronx, and you can still visit his cottage.
The Bronx is the birthplace of rap/hip hop where artists like Cardi B, Grandmaster Flash and Mary J. Blige got their start. Lewis Morris signed the Declaration of Independence, and his half-brother Governor Morris drafted much of the Constitution of the United States—and they lived in The Bronx.
To determine the best neighborhoods in The Bronx, we took things like crime, demographics, diversity, transportation and attractions into account. Home to 1.3 million people, AddressReport.com cites expenses in The Bronx are 22% higher than the national average.
Most people rent, and the risk of crime is 12% lower than the national average. The neighborhoods of The Bronx are as unique as their reputation. Let’s take a look at some of its best areas. (in alphabetical order)
Co-Op City
Nestled between the I-95 and the Hutchinson River Parkway in the northeast section of the Bronx, Co-Op (short for co-operative) City was originally an amusement park in the 1960s called Freedomland, USA before it was converted to the largest co-op housing project in the world.
The development is home to over 15,000 families through a series of apartment complexes and townhomes. Niche.com gives Co-Op City an overall rating of A-, with high marks for diversity, outdoor activities, good for families and health and fitness. It earns B+ in cost of living and jobs and a C+ for crime.
The median housing price is $25,700, and most people rent. Fifty-nine percent of residents with high school and some college, 17% of the families have children, and median family income is approximately $55,000.
According to Niche, crime in Co-Op City earns a C+, with theft far and away the biggest challenge. However, AddressReport states that the chance of all different types of crime is lower than the national average.
A typical commute south to downtown NYC is an average 40-minute subway ride, 25-minute train ride, or a 15-minute taxi ride that will cost you between $75 to $90 and possibly a couple of gray hairs.
Fieldston
Fieldston is a private neighborhood located on land originally owned by Major Joseph Delafield and is a designated historic district by the New York Landmarks Preservation Society.
The boundaries are Manhattan College Parkway to the south, Henry Hudson Parkway to the west, 250th Street to the north, and Broadway to the east. Covering just 140 acres total, the design was intended to preserve the natural beauty, so streets meander around hills and trees.
The land is owned and maintained by Fieldston Property Owners Association, Inc. and charges annual dues to the 250 residents of the area to cover snow removal costs, sewer repair, street repair, and caring for the 1,000 trees in the area. They also run private security patrols. To maintain its privately owned status, the streets are closed to non-residents once a year, and parking is always restricted to residents and their guests.
Before moving to Fieldston, remember there are annual dues based on the lot size and strict rules and regulations to abide by for things like parking, open houses,and what to plant where. Most of the homes also fall under the historic designation, which frowns on extensive renovations.
Median household income in Fieldston is $97,000 and median house prices are $382,000. Niche reports a 50/50 split between people who own and rent. Niche gives Fieldston an overall rating of A, with A+ for health and fitness and nightlife, A for diversity, outdoor activities and good for families.
Twenty-eight percent of residents have a masters’ degree or more, 28% have a bachelor’s degree and 19% have some college or university.
Not surprisingly, Fieldston is also the home of two of the three prestigious "Hill Schools," the Horace Mann School, an Ivy League private preparatory school with a yearly tuition of $53,200 and the Ethical Culture Fieldston School, another Ivy League private preparatory school around since 1878 which focuses on ethics and social justice, with tuition of $55,500.
Crime is lower than many areas because, in addition to the 50th precinct of the NYPD, Fieldston has its own private security company to patrol.
A typical commute south to downtown NYC is an average 45-minute subway ride, the bus will take 1 hour 10 minutes, and it will take you 15 minutes by car or taxi. But if you’re driving, make sure you have change, because the Henry Hudson Parkway is a toll road, unless your driver knows a shortcut.
Spuyten Duyvil
Spuyten Duyvil (pronounced SPYton DIEvul) is named after the creek of the same name and is snuggled in between the Hudson River to the west and the Harlem River to the south. The name is Dutch in origin and loosely translates to “spouting devil,” which is thought to refer to the strong tidal currents in the area.
The Henry Hudson Park, named after the explorer who landed in New York harbour in 1609, is in the southern part of the neighborhood, providing green space, sports pads and walking trails that end up along the shores of both rivers.
Niche gives Spuyten Duyvil an A+ in terms of best neighborhoods to live in The Bronx. It earns A+ for health and fitness, an A for diversity, nightlife, outdoor activities and good for families.
With a median family income of $97,000, 61% of residents in Spuyten Duyvil own their own homes and the area is considered dense urban, with many apartments and condos in addition to housing. The median house price is $321,000, and the average rent is approximately $1,800 per month. Twenty percent of the residents have children.
As far as crime goes, Niche.com ranks it B-, with most crimes falling in the theft category, followed by burglary and assault.
A typical commute to downtown NYC is an average 30-minute train ride, the bus and subway will both take 1 hour 10 minutes, and it will take you 15 minutes by car or taxi, not counting the tolls.
The neighborhoods in The Bronx are unapologetic and unique, just like the borough they are located in.
If you need a place to stash your belongings while you decide where to set up a home, or you have too much extra stuff for your new space, check out Storage Post locations in The Bronx.
|
|||
correct_birth_00056
|
FactBench
|
2
| 12
|
https://www.bet.com/photo-gallery/ah48r1/gotta-love-new-york-celebs-from-the-big-apple/pcaqaz
|
en
|
Mary J. Blige - - Image 2 from Gotta Love New York: Celebs From the Big Apple
|
https://images.paramount.tech/uri/mgid:arc:imageassetref:bet.com:35390c9c-542b-11e8-a442-0e40cf2fc285?quality=0.7&gen=ntrn&format=jpg&width=1200&height=630&crop=true
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https://images.paramount.tech/uri/mgid:arc:imageassetref:bet.com:35390c9c-542b-11e8-a442-0e40cf2fc285?quality=0.7&gen=ntrn&format=jpg&width=1200&height=630&crop=true
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[
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[] | null |
85835896 - Some of the greats to come from the concrete jungle.
|
en
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/favicon.ico
|
BET
|
https://www.bet.com/photo-gallery/ah48r1/gotta-love-new-york-celebs-from-the-big-apple/pcaqaz
|
By clicking Subscribe, you confirm that you have read and agree to our Terms of Use and acknowledge our Privacy Policy. You also agree to receive marketing communications, updates, special offers (including partner offers) and other information from BET and the Paramount family of companies. You understand that you can unsubscribe at any time.
|
||
correct_birth_00056
|
FactBench
|
2
| 86
|
https://nj1015.com/is-this-a-3m-dump-no-one-wants-mary-j-bliges-nj-mansion-opinion/
|
en
|
Is this a $3M dump? No one wants Mary J. Blige’s NJ mansion (Opinion)
|
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[] |
[] |
[
"mary j. blige house for sale in nj",
"mary j blige nj house",
"deminski & doyle",
"talking about ..."
] | null |
[
"Jeff Deminski"
] |
2022-01-07T19:03:43+00:00
|
It’s been for sale for two and a half years. No takers. Why?
|
en
|
https://townsquare.media/site/385/files/2020/05/favicon.ico
|
New Jersey 101.5
|
https://nj1015.com/is-this-a-3m-dump-no-one-wants-mary-j-bliges-nj-mansion-opinion/
|
Singer Mary J. Blige was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame last year. She’s won nine Grammy awards, been nominated for Oscars and sold over 100 million records.
Yet real estate deals have not been kind to her.
In 2008, she purchased a 13,000-square-foot mansion in Saddle River. She spent a decade on and off trying to sell it and it finally sold in 2020 for $5.5 million, an almost $7 million loss.
Then there’s this one.
She still owns a home in Cresskill. It’s another mansion, with more than 7,000 square feet. The description sounds amazing: six bedrooms, eight full bathrooms, two half baths, three fireplaces. Guest quarters. Has its own gym.
But no one wants it.
It’s been for sale for two and a half years. No takers. Why? Well, tell me if you’d be suspicious about a property advertised where none of the photos show the inside of the home. Take a look.
On Zillow.com there’s this sole picture of the home’s exterior.
Here’s everything that follows.
Yes, only pics to show that the house is indeed in Cresskill. Word has it Mary J. Blige’s home has fallen into disrepair. Something you always suspect when the seller doesn’t want to show you pictures. But not what you’d expect from a property for which they are asking $3 million.
The craziest thing is it first went on the market in the summer of 2019 for an ask of $2.25 million. Then in mid 2021, with no takers, she raised the price to $2.75 million. Again no takers. By October the price was again increased to $3 million where it remains today.
Not sure she’s understanding the supply and demand concept.
Opinions expressed in the post above are those of New Jersey 101.5 talk show host Jeff Deminski only.
You can now listen to Deminski & Doyle — On Demand! Hear New Jersey’s favorite afternoon radio show any day of the week. Download the Deminski & Doyle show wherever you get podcasts, on our free app, or listen right now:
|
||||
correct_birth_00056
|
FactBench
|
2
| 69
|
https://www.looktothestars.org/news/20983-stars-to-join-mary-j-blige-for-third-annual-strength-of-a-woman-summit
|
en
|
Stars to Join Mary J. Blige For Third Annual Strength of a Woman Summit
|
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[
"Mary J. Blige",
"Taraji P. Henson",
"celebrity",
"charity",
"news"
] | null |
[] |
2024-05-10T11:30:00+00:00
|
Mary J. Blige, PEPSI, Live Nation Urban and MVD Inc. announce the talent, official sponsors and exclusive experiences offered at the third annual Strength of a Woman Summit, being held Saturday, May 11th at The Glasshouse in New York City.
|
en
|
/images/apple-touch-icon-144-precomposed-1702826935.png
|
Look to the Stars
|
https://www.looktothestars.org/news/20983-stars-to-join-mary-j-blige-for-third-annual-strength-of-a-woman-summit
|
Mary J. Blige, PEPSI, Live Nation Urban and MVD Inc. announce the talent, official sponsors and exclusive experiences offered at the third annual Strength of a Woman Summit, being held Saturday, May 11th at The Glasshouse in New York City.
This year’s event will be co-hosted by comedian and co-host of The Breakfast Club, Jess Hilarious and award-winning on-air talent, journalist and podcaster, Gia Peppers. The event is free for everyone who completes the registration form HERE.
The Strength of a Woman Summit is the ultimate destination that brings the festival’s mission and purpose of empowerment, elevation, education, and equity to life with inspiring programming, pivotal panels, keynote speakers, workshops and experiences, focused on wellness, culture, finance and entrepreneurship, style, beauty, podcasts and much more. Notable key speakers, for the free event, include Taraji P. Henson, Tasha Smith, Method Man, Marsai Martin, Larenz Tate, Angie Martinez, Pinky Cole Hayes, Crystal Renee Hayslett, Misa Hylton, Bevy Smith, Claire Sulmers, Michael Rainey Jr. and more. GRAMMY and Emmy award-winning and Oscar-nominated artist, actress, producer, entrepreneur and founder of Strength of a Woman Festival and Summit, Mary J. Blige will also participate in one of the panel conversations. Blige’s intention for the Summit is not only to bring incredible talent to the stage, but to provide the New York community with resources that will help uplift, inspire, and equip attendees to achieve success in each of the focus areas.
The Strength Of A Woman Summit is free for attendees, due to the tremendous support of its official sponsors Mielle Organics, Verizon Business, Starz, and ASCAP.
PEPSI, the festival’s returning partner, will be on-site to offer attendees delicious food, custom cocktails and mocktails and complimentary beverages at the Pepsi Dig In Village, capturing the diverse flavors of the major foodie city. Pepsi Dig In, the brand’s platform designed to drive access, business growth, and awareness for Black-owned restaurants, will spotlight and feature dishes from five female-owned restaurants: Slutty Vegan, Melba’s, 2 Girls & A Cookshop, Aunts Et Uncles and Je T’aime Patisserie.The food will be available for purchase throughout the day to go towards supporting these businesses.
Guests can make every bite better with Pepsi and pair their flavorful meals with Pepsi-inspired craft cocktails and mocktails created by mixologist Camille Harris, as well as with refreshing beverages including Pepsi, Pepsi Zero Sugar, Pepsi Wild Cherry, Pepsi Zero Sugar Wild Cherry, Starry, Starry Zero Sugar, bubly sparkling water, and LIFEWTR.
Additional Sponsored Activations and Experience Offerings Include:
The panels are only one star-studded component of the Summit. Activations include a tooth gem station where more daring visitors can Get Gem’d and add a little sparkle to their smiles, as well as a myriad of memorable photo moments to capture them. A lush build-your-own bouquet bar allows the romantics to hand pick their favorite blooms from an array of seasonal flowers and verdant accents to create distinct floral arrangements reflective of their unique style.
Guests can explore “Mary’s Living Room,” a welcoming sanctuary featuring the varietals of the Sun Goddess wine collection, Sister Love’s bold jewelry designs and the specially made Strength of a Woman merch. They’ll also immerse themselves in the music and memories of Mary J. Blige’s “My Life” in our custom listening booth, created as a special tribute to the 30th anniversary of the iconic album.
In addition to Pepsi’s Dig In Village, Mielle’s beauty carousel boasts hair demos and services with an onsite hairstylist and giveaways of their must-have products. Verizon Business is also inviting attendees to delve into the brand’s suite of small business offerings while also enjoying complimentary charging services of their mobile devices.
Created and curated by the iconic GRAMMY award-winning singer and songwriter, Mary J. Blige, Strength of a Woman Festival and Summit is the only festival experience in the market, brought to you exclusively by an all-Black, female team, and will arrive this spring to the birthplace of Hip-Hop, New York City. After selling out in less than 72 hours last year, the festival will bring, what is sure to be, iconic moments with three incredible nights of music and entertainment.
|
||||
correct_birth_00056
|
FactBench
|
3
| 25
|
https://www.infoplease.com/biographies/art-entertainment/mary-j-blige
|
en
|
Mary J. Blige Biography
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[
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] | null |
[
"Infoplease"
] |
2017-02-07T23:17:11-05:00
|
Mary J. Bligehip-hop singerBorn: 1971Birthplace: Bronx, New York Raised in New York's housing projects, her singing talent fueled her interest in music, and she began to do solo performances at her church choir.
|
en
|
/themes/ip/favicon.ico
|
InfoPlease
|
https://www.infoplease.com/biographies/art-entertainment/mary-j-blige
|
Current Events
View captivating images and news briefs about critical government decisions, medical discoveries, technology breakthroughs, and more. From this page, you'll see news events organized chronologically by month and separated into four categories: World News, U.S. News, Disaster News, and Science & Technology News.
We also collect a summary of each week's events, from one Friday to the next, so make sure you check back every week for fascinating updates on the world around to help keep you updated on the latest happenings from across the globe!
Current Events 2023
Check out the November News and Events Here:
|
||||
correct_birth_00056
|
FactBench
|
0
| 27
|
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/celebrity/mary_j_blige
|
en
|
Mary J. Blige
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Explore the filmography of Mary J. Blige on Rotten Tomatoes! Discover ratings, reviews, and more. Click for details!
|
en
|
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/assets/pizza-pie/images/favicon.ico
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Rotten Tomatoes
|
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/celebrity/mary_j_blige
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Mary J. Blige made an immediate impression with her 1992 debut What's the 411?, and has remained one of R&B's more consistent artists in the decades since. Born in the Bronx, Blige had a tumultuous childhood; her father was a Vietnam vet with post-traumatic stress disorder; and Blige was molested by a family friend at a young age. She found solace in singing in church, but by age 16 had dropped out of school and was abusing various drugs. She was however still singing, and a cassette demo of her covering Anita Baker's "Caught Up in the Rapture" began making the rounds-- initially through her mother who was dating an Uptown Record executive. She was signed to the label and teamed with producer Sean Combs (then Puff Daddy), who oversaw much of the debut. A semi-autobiographical album, What's the 411? was framed with recordings from Blige's answering machine. Combs' production drew from modern hip-hop but allowed Blige to shine as a vocalist, She paid tribute to one role model, Chaka Khan, with a cover of Rufus' "Sweet thing" which joined "You Remind Me" and "Real Love:" as the album's hit singles. However Blige's newfound success coincided with one of her toughest personal periods, as she spiraled into depression and further drug use; it was also reported that she was in an abusive relationship with Jodeci member K-Ci Hailey. All of this was channeled into her second album, My Life, which was hailed as a modern R&B landmark. This time the classic soul influence was stronger than the hip=hop, and Blige had a hand in writing every song. Blige's personal life continued to inform her music; 1997's more upbeat Share My World celebrated her kicking both the drugs and the relationship with Hailey. She mined the same personal territory in 2001's No More Drama which produced her greatest hit, the Number One single "Family Affair." Meanwhile she launched an acting career, initially with music-related TV guest roles, but in 2004 she acted Off Broadway in the drama The Exonerated, playing a woman serving time for a crime she didn't commit. This led to her playing a variety of musical and dramatic roles, including starring as a supervillain in the Netflix series "The Umbrella Academy" (2019). She briefly hosted an Apple Music webcast, The 411, and surprised the first guest Hillary Clinton by singing a highly topical Bruce Springsteen song. As a recording artist Blige remains enormously popular; as of 2019 each of her thirteen studio albums has hit the Top Ten. During 2018 she was nominated for Academy Awards for the film "Mudbound," both as supporting actress and performer of the title song. She has become an entrepreneur, starting the Matriarch label and releasing her own brands of perfume and sunglasses. During 2019 she toured with Nas; the two also collaborated on the single "Thriving" which continued Blige's longtime message of personal strength.
|
||||
correct_birth_00056
|
FactBench
|
3
| 7
|
https://www.mylifetime.com/movies/mary-j-bliges-real-love/pages/mary-j-blige-facts
|
en
|
A+E Networks EMEA
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2024-07-10T08:00:00+00:00
|
Welcome to A+E Networks EMEA is global broadcaster who reach audiences in over 100 countries, including the UK, Nordics, Benelux, Central & Eastern Europe, Spain, Italy and Germany, Africa, and the Middle East.
|
en
|
A+E Networks EMEA
|
https://www.aenetworks.tv/
|
Our culture
Personalities shine at A+E Networks EMEA. Our culture embraces individuals, in all their daring, passionate, ambitious glory. Our people are our strength, and our differences are celebrated. We challenge each other, collaborate and come together, just as a family does; winning as a team and celebrating as one too. Everyone has a voice and should feel proud and free to run with their ideas, enjoying their successes and journey with us. And in such an evolving industry, tomorrow is always today. We anticipate change, identify future opportunities and are excited by the potential that tomorrow brings.
Our purpose
We want to be famous for creating and sharing stories that matter – unique, trusted, entertaining, everywhere. Whether our stories challenge and inspire intellectually or simply entertain, we know that we are making a positive contribution to our audiences across the many diverse regions and countries in the UK, Europe, The Middle East and Africa. Striving to always do so requires passion. And it’s with just as much passion that we strive to gain new audiences with our creativity and by using innovative technology, by partnering with leading and emerging local platforms.
Partnerships
With our diverse line-up of original, high-quality programming, our distribution partners across EMEA recognise the benefits of offering A+E Networks EMEA's distinctive, high quality brands on their platforms and services. We understand the opportunity to grow engagement with new audiences of all ages and through new partnerships with Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok and Snapchat, along with our podcasts and on-demand SVOD services, we ensure our programming and unique stories reach audiences across the full demographic spectrum.
Careers
Join our global team of talent. At A+E Networks EMEA you’ll find a team of innovative, creative and collaborative people who embrace change and want to continually try new things. With offices in London, Rome, Madrid, Warsaw, Munich and Johannesburg, we are a truly international company that celebrates difference and diversity. We offer a range of benefits such as a generous pension plan, life assurance and holiday allowance, and there are useful local perks in various offices, and summer Fridays across the whole company. But most of all, we will support you to develop and grow throughout your time with us. Learning is part of the journey at A+E Networks EMEA and you’ll be offered personal and professional development opportunities throughout your career with us. We’ll do everything we can to see you thrive and grow.
|
|||||
correct_birth_00056
|
FactBench
|
0
| 31
|
https://www.amazon.com/prime-video/actor/Mary-J-Blige/amzn1.dv.gti.9c669057-5968-48b5-9b26-4cb9fbfc4066/
|
en
|
Mary J. Blige: Movies, TV, and Bio
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Browse Mary J. Blige movies and TV shows available on Prime Video and begin streaming right away to your favorite device.
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https://www.amazon.com/prime-video/actor/Mary-J-Blige/amzn1.dv.gti.9c669057-5968-48b5-9b26-4cb9fbfc4066/
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Mary J. Blige was born on January 11, 1971 in The Bronx, New York City, New York, USA. She is a music artist and actress, known for Mudbound (2017), The Help (2011) and Rock of Ages (2012). She was previously married to Kendu Isaacs.
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FactBench
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2
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https://www.thehypemagazine.com/2024/01/mary-j-blige-gone-forever-video-hosted-by-dream-hospitality-group-is-special/
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en
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Mary J. Blige ‘Gone Forever’ Video Hosted by Dream Hospitality Group is Special
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"Dr. Jerry Doby"
] |
2024-01-17T17:57:52+00:00
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News From Hip Hop To Hollywood! www.thehypemagazine.com
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en
|
The Hype Magazine
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https://www.thehypemagazine.com/2024/01/mary-j-blige-gone-forever-video-hosted-by-dream-hospitality-group-is-special/
|
Hey, Hype enthusiasts! Get ready for a visual feast as we dive into Queen Mary J. Blige‘s latest music video, “Gone Forever,” featuring music powerhouses Remy Ma & DJ Khaled. The video currently sits at #21 on YouTube’s “Trending for Music” after its release six days ago. The DP did his thing on this, as the visuals physically move you…put it all together and it’s just not fair to the rest of the industry. This masterpiece was filmed at the stunning Harbor and The Stafford Room, courtesy of the team at the Dream Hospitality Group.
The Setting: Harbor and The Stafford Room by Dream Hospitality Group
In this visual, you get to immerse yourself in the luxurious backdrop of Harbor and The Stafford Room, where Mary J. Blige brings “Gone Forever” to life. Picture floor-to-ceiling windows framing breathtaking views of the Hudson River, creating a mesmerizing fusion of urban sophistication and chic nightlife vibes. This is more than just a music video; it’s a visual journey set against the backdrop of two of New York City’s most iconic venues. In a production of this level, every detail is important While matching the powerful presences of the Queen, and Remy is pressure, the Dream team (my article, I can be corny if I want to), delivered their part of the magic in no uncertain terms.
All Bases Covered: Dive into the Vibes
Catch the official “Gone Forever” music video below and let Mary J. Blige, Remy Ma, and DJ Khaled transport you to a world of rhythm and style. I’m repeating myself but…man!!!
A Different World of Creativity
Mary J. Blige, Remy, and Khaled are always on some extra gear stuff musically, but I just wanted to throw this out for up-and-comers looking for a career angle within the entertainment industry. Maybe you won’t be in front of the mic or camera but some paths behind the scenes give amazing opportunities to excel and be a part of this multi-billion dollar industry. To that end, I just wanted to give a brief highlight of the hospitality group that played a key role in this production. The hospitality industry covers more than hotel and restaurant-type services…it’s a massive world! Meet George Karavias, the driving force behind Dream Hospitality Group who played host for this spectacular piece of work.
Dream Hospitality Group: Elevating Experiences with George Karavias
George Karavias and Dream Hospitality Group played a pivotal role in curating this exceptional setting. As a premier hospitality company, Dream Hospitality Group stands at the forefront of creating unforgettable happenings in the vibrant landscape of New York City.
About Dream Hospitality Group: Redefining Luxury Standards
George Karavias is the visionary behind Dream Hospitality Group. His passion for hospitality shines through in every venue, ensuring each establishment reflects a commitment to excellence and innovation. Dream Hospitality Group’s venues redefine luxury standards, seamlessly blending innovation with tradition to craft spaces that captivate the senses.
Stay tuned to The Hype Magazine for more updates on your favorite artists and the latest happenings in the music world. Until next time, keep the music alive!
Featured Image: Mary J Blige – Gone Forever (YouTube)
Tweet
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correct_birth_00056
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FactBench
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0
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https://kids.kiddle.co/Mary_J._Blige
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en
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Mary J. Blige facts for kids
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Learn Mary J. Blige facts for kids
|
en
|
/images/wk/favicon-16x16.png
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https://kids.kiddle.co/Mary_J._Blige
|
Mary Jane Blige ( blyzhe; born January 11, 1971) is an American singer, songwriter, and actress. Often referred to as the "Queen of Hip-Hop Soul" and "Queen of R&B", Blige has won 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. She has been nominated for three Golden Globe Awards and two Academy Awards, including one for her supporting role in the film Mudbound (2017) and another for its original song "Mighty River", becoming the first person nominated for acting and songwriting in the same year.
Her career began in 1988 when she was signed to Uptown Records by its founder Andre Harrell. During this time, Blige performed background vocal work for other artists on the label such as Father MC and Jeff Redd. 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 are featured on the Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time list, and the latter on Time magazine's All-Time 100 Albums. Throughout her career, Blige went on to release 14 studio albums, including four Billboard 200 number-one albums. Her biggest hits include "Real Love", "You Remind Me", "I'm Goin' Down", "Not Gon' Cry", "Be Without You", "Just Fine" and the Billboard Hot 100 number-one single "Family Affair".
Blige has also made a successful transition to both the television and movie screen, with supporting roles in films such as Prison Song (2001), Rock of Ages (2012), Betty and Coretta (2013), Black Nativity (2013), her Oscar and Golden Globe-nominated breakthrough performance as Florence Jackson in Mudbound (2017), Trolls World Tour (2020), Body Cam (2020), The Violent Heart (2021) and co-starring as jazz singer Dinah Washington in the Aretha Franklin biopic Respect (2021). In 2019, Blige starred as Cha-Cha on the first season of the Netflix television series The Umbrella Academy. She currently stars as Monet Tejada in the spin-off of the highly-rated TV show drama Power in Power Book II: Ghost.
She received a Legends Award at the World Music Awards in 2006, and the Voice of Music Award from ASCAP in 2007. Billboard ranked Blige as the most successful female R&B/Hip-Hop artist of the past 25 years. In 2017, Billboard magazine named her 2006 song "Be Without You" as the most successful R&B/Hip-Hop song of all time, as it spent an unparalleled 15 weeks atop the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart and over 75 weeks on the chart. VH1 ranked Blige as the 80th greatest artist of all time in 2011 and ninth in "The 100 Greatest Women in Music" list in 2012. In 2023, Rolling Stone ranked her as the 25th greatest singer of all-time. In 2024, Blige was selected for induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Early life and music career
1971–1991: Early life and career beginnings
Blige was born January 11, 1971, in Fordham Hospital in the borough of the Bronx, New York City. She was born to mother Cora, a nurse, and father Thomas Blige, a jazz musician. She is the second of four children. She has an elder sister, LaTonya Blige-DaCosta, a younger half-brother, Bruce Miller, and a younger half-sister, Jonquell.
She 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.
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 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, also known as Puff Daddy. 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? nevertheless established Blige as a dynamic storyteller whose performances of love narrative drew upon both her musical influences and her lived experiences as a hip-hop-generation woman. 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 Weekly's 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. 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 Blender's 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 Time's 100 greatest albums of all-time list.
Blige involved herself in several outside projects, recording a cover of Aretha Franklin's "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman" for the soundtrack to the FOX series New York Undercover, and "Everyday It Rains" (co-written by R&B singer Faith Evans) 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 (1996) 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 (1996) 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.
1997–2000: Share My World and Mary
On April 22, 1997, MCA Records (parent company to Uptown Records, which was in the process of being dismantled) released Blige's third album, Share My World. By then, she and Combs had dissolved their working relationship. In his place were the Trackmasters, who executive-produced the project along with Steve Stoute. Sharing production duties were producers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, R. Kelly, Babyface and Rodney Jerkins. Blige tried to make more upbeat, happier music. As a result, songs such as "Love Is All We Need" and "Share My World" were made. Share My World debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 and spawned five hit singles: "Love Is All We Need" (featuring Nas), "I Can Love You" (featuring Lil' Kim), "Everything", "Missing You" (UK only) and "Seven Days" (featuring George Benson). In February 1997, Blige performed her hit at the time, "Not Gon' Cry", at the 1997 Grammy Awards, which gained her a third Grammy Award nomination, her first for Best Female R&B Vocal Performance, as Blige was recording the follow-up to My Life. In early 1998, Blige won an American Music Award for "Favorite Soul/R&B Album". That summer, she embarked on the Share My World Tour, which resulted in a Gold-certified live album released later that year, simply titled The Tour. The album spawned one single, "Misty Blue".
On August 17, 1999, Blige's fourth album, titled Mary was released. It marked a departure from her more familiar hip hop-oriented sound; this set featured a more earthy, whimsical, and adult contemporary-tinged collection of songs, reminiscent of the 1970s to early 1980s soul. She also appeared on In Concert: A Benefit for the Crossroads Centre at Antigua with Eric Clapton in 1999. On December 14, 1999, the album was re-released as a double-disc set. The second disc was enhanced with the music videos for the singles "All That I Can Say" and "Deep Inside" and included two bonus tracks: "Sincerity" (featuring Nas, Andy Hogan and DMX) and "Confrontation" (a collaboration with hip hop duo Funkmaster Flex & Big Kap originally from their 1999 album The Tunnel). The Mary album was critically praised, becoming her most nominated release to date, and was certified double platinum. It was not as commercially successful as Blige's prior releases, though all of the singles: "All That I Can Say", "Deep Inside", "Your Child", and "Give Me You" performed considerably on the radio. In the meantime, MCA used the album to expand Blige's demographic into the nightclub market, as club-friendly dance remixes of the Mary singles were released. The club remix of "Your Child" peaked at number-one on the Billboard's Hot Dance Club Play chart in October 2000. In 2001, a Japan-only compilation, Ballads, was released. The album featured covers of Stevie Wonder's "Overjoyed", and previous recordings of Aretha Franklin's "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman" and Dorothy Moore's "Misty Blue". In 1999, George Michael and Mary J. Blige covered the song 'As' written by Stevie Wonder, and worldwide outside of the United States, it was the second single from George Michael's greatest hits album Ladies & Gentlemen: The Best of George Michael. It became a top ten UK pop hit, reaching number four on the chart. It was not released on the U.S. version of the greatest hits collection or as a single in the U.S.
In January 2001, Blige performed as a special guest in the Super Bowl XXXV halftime show.
2001–2004: No More Drama and Love & Life
On August 28, 2001, MCA released Blige's fifth studio album, No More Drama. The album's first single, "Family Affair" (produced by Dr. Dre) became her first and only number-one single on the Billboard Hot 100, where it remained for six consecutive weeks. It was followed by two further hit singles, the European only single "Dance for Me" featuring Common with samples from "The Bed's Too Big Without You" by The Police, and the Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis-produced title track (originally recorded for the Mary album), which sampled "Nadia's Theme", the piano-driven theme song to the daytime drama The Young and the Restless. Though the album sold nearly two million copies in the U.S., MCA was underwhelmed by its sales, and subsequently repackaged and re-released the album on January 29, 2002. The No More Drama re-release featured a new album cover, deleted three of the songs from the original tracklisting, while adding two brand-new songs—one of which was the fourth single and top twenty Hot 100 hit "Rainy Dayz", (featuring Ja Rule), plus two remixes; one of the title track, serviced by Sean Combs/Puff Daddy and the single version of "Dance for Me" featuring Common. Blige won a Grammy for 'Best Female R&B Vocal Performance' for the song "He Think I Don't Know". In April 2002, Blige performed with Shakira with the song "Love Is a Battlefield" on VH1 Divas show live in Las Vegas, she also performed "No More Drama" and "Rainy Dayz" as a duet with the returning Whitney Houston.
On July 22, 2002, MCA released Dance for Me, a collection of club remixes of some of her past top hits. This album was released in a limited edition double pack 12" vinyl for DJ-friendly play in nightclubs.
On August 26, 2003, Blige's sixth album Love & Life was released on Geffen Records (which had absorbed MCA Records.) Blige heavily collaborated with her one-time producer Sean Combs for this set. Due to the history between them on What's the 411? and My Life, which is generally regarded as their best work, and Blige having just come off of a successful fifth album, expectations were high for the reunion effort.
Despite the album debuting at number one on the Billboard 200 and becoming Blige's fourth consecutive UK top ten album, Love & Life's lead-off single, the Diddy-produced "Love @ 1st Sight", which featured Method Man, barely cracked the top ten on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs, while altogether missing the top twenty on the Hot 100 (although peaking inside the UK top twenty). The following singles, "Ooh!", "Not Today" featuring Eve, "Whenever I Say Your Name" featuring Sting on the international re-release, and "It's a Wrap" fared worse. Although the album was certified platinum, it became Blige's lowest-selling at the time. Critics and fans alike largely panned the disc, citing a lack of consistency and noticeable ploys to recapture the early Blige/Combs glory. Blige and Combs reportedly struggled and clashed during the making of this album, and again parted ways upon the completion of it.
The album became Blige's first album in six years to debut at number one on the Billboard 200, selling 285,298 copies in first week. Love & Life received mixed reviews from music critics. AllMusic gave it 4 stars and said the album "beamed with joy" and Rolling Stone gave it three stars, saying "You may not always love Blige's music, but you will feel her". The album was eventually certified Platinum by the RIAA for shipping over 1,000,000 copies in the US. The album was nominated for the Best Contemporary R&B Album at the 46th Grammy Awards.
2005–2006: The Breakthrough and Reflections – A Retrospective
Geffen Records released Blige's seventh studio album, The Breakthrough on December 20, 2005. For the album, Blige collaborated with J.U.S.T.I.C.E. League, Rodney Jerkins, will.i.am, Bryan-Michael Cox, 9th Wonder, Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, Raphael Saadiq, Cool and Dre, and Dre & Vidal. The cover art was photographed by Markus Klinko & Indrani. It debuted at number one on both the Billboard 200 and Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums charts. Selling 727,000 copies in its first week, it became the biggest first-week sales for an R&B solo female artist in SoundScan history, the fifth largest first-week sales for a female artist, and the fourth largest debut of 2005.
The lead-off single, "Be Without You", peaked at number three on the Billboard Hot 100, while peaking at number one on the R&B chart for a record-setting fifteen consecutive weeks; it remained on the chart for over sixteen months. "Be Without You" found success in the UK (peaking in the lower end of the top forty) it became Blige's longest charting single on the UK Singles Chart. It is her second longest charting single to date. The album produced three more singles including two more top-five R&B hits—"Enough Cryin'", which features Blige's alter ego Brook-Lynn (as whom she appeared on the remix to Busta Rhymes's "Touch It" in 2006); and "Take Me as I Am" (which samples Lonnie Liston Smith's "A Garden of Peace"). Blige's duet with U2 on the cover of their 1992 hit, "One" gave Blige her biggest hit to date in the UK, peaking at number two on the UK Singles Chart eventually being certified one of the forty highest-selling singles of 2006; it was her longest charting UK single. The success of The Breakthrough won Blige nine Billboard Music Awards, two American Music Awards, two BET Awards, two NAACP Image Awards, and a Soul Train Award. She received eight Grammy Award nominations at the 2007 Grammy Awards, the most of any artist that year. "Be Without You" was nominated for both "Record of the Year" and "Song of the Year". Blige won three: "Best Female R&B Vocal Performance", "Best R&B Song" (both for "Be Without You"), and "Best R&B Album" for The Breakthrough. Blige completed a season sweep of the "big three" major music awards, having won two American Music Awards in November 2006 and nine Billboard Music Awards in December 2006.
In December 2006, a compilation called Reflections (A Retrospective) was released. It contained many of Blige's greatest hits and four new songs, including the worldwide lead single "We Ride (I See the Future)". In the UK, however, "MJB da MVP" (which appeared in a different, shorter form on The Breakthrough) was released as the lead single from the collection. The album peaked at number nine in the U.S, selling over 170,000 copies in its first week, while reaching number forty in the UK In 2006, Blige recorded a duet with rapper Ludacris, "Runaway Love", which is the third single on his fifth album, Release Therapy. It reached the top five on the Billboard Hot 100 and the R&B chart. Blige was featured with Aretha Franklin and the Harlem Boys Choir on the soundtrack to the 2006 motion picture Bobby, on the lead track "Never Gonna Break My Faith" written by Bryan Adams. The song was nominated for a Golden Globe and won the Grammy Award for Best Gospel Performance at the 50th Annual Grammy Awards.
2007–2008: Growing Pains
Blige's eighth studio album, Growing Pains, was released on December 18, 2007, debuting at number two on the Billboard 200 and at number one on the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart. It sold 629,000 copies in its first week, marking the third time since Nielsen SoundScan began collecting data in 1991 that two albums sold more than 600,000 copies in a week in the United States. In its second week, the album climbed to number one, making it Blige's fourth number-one album. The lead single, "Just Fine", peaked at number twenty-two on the Billboard Hot 100 and at number three on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart. "Just Fine" was nominated for the Grammy Award for "Best Female R&B Vocal Performance", and Blige won "Best R&B Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals" for the Chaka Khan duet "Disrespectful" (featured on Khan's album Funk This) which Blige wrote.
Growing Pains was not released in the UK until February 2008, where it became Blige's fifth top ten and third-highest-charting album.The Breakthrough and Reflections (A Retrospective) were released in the Christmas rush and therefore settled for lower peaks, although both selling more than her top five album Mary. "Just Fine" returned Blige to the UK singles chart top 20 after her previous two singles failed to chart highly. Subsequent singles from Growing Pains include "Work That", which accompanied Blige in an iTunes commercial, and "Stay Down".
Blige was featured on 50 Cent's 2007 album, Curtis, in the song "All of Me". In March 2008, she toured with Jay-Z in the Heart of the City Tour. They released a song called "You're Welcome". In the same period, cable network BET aired a special on Blige titled The Evolution of Mary J. Blige, which showcased her career. Celebrities such as Method Man and Ashanti gave their opinions about Blige and her music. Blige is featured on singles by Big Boi, and Musiq Soulchild. Growing Pains was nominated for and won the Grammy Award for "Best Contemporary R&B Album", at the 51st Grammy Awards held on February 8, 2009, earning Blige her 27th Grammy nomination, in a mere decade. Blige went on the Growing Pains European Tour, her first tour there in two years. A tour of Australia and New Zealand was scheduled for June but was postponed due to "weariness from an overwhelming tour schedule" and then eventually canceled entirely.
On August 7, 2008, it was revealed Blige faced a US$2 million federal suit claiming Neff-U wrote the music for the song "Work That", but was owned by Dream Family Entertainment. The filing claimed that Dream Family never gave rights to use the song to Blige, Feemster or Geffen Records. Rights to the lyrics of the song used in an iPod commercial are not in question.
2009–2010: Stronger with Each Tear
Blige returned to performing in January 2009 by performing the song "Lean on Me" at the Presidential Inauguration Committee's, "We Are One: The Obama Inaugural Celebration at the Lincoln Memorial". Blige also performed her hit 2007 single, "Just Fine", with a new intro at the Neighborhood Inaugural Ball after Barack Obama was sworn in on January 20, 2009. Blige appeared as a marquee performer on the annual Christmas in Washington television special.
Blige's ninth studio album, Stronger with Each Tear, was released on December 21, 2009, debuting at number two on the Billboard 200 and at number one on the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart, selling 332,000 units in its first week of release. It became her fifth album not to take the top spot in the United States. Blige recorded "Stronger", as the lead single from the soundtrack to the basketball documentary "More than a Game" in August 2009. The second single from Stronger with Each Tear, "I Am", was released in December 2009 and reached number fifty-five on the Hot 100. The third international single from the album, "Each Tear", was remixed with different featured artists from different countries, then being released in February 2010. The single failed to chart anywhere except in the UK where it reached number one-hundred-eighty-three and in Italy where it reached number one. The album's third U.S. single, "We Got Hood Love" featuring Trey Songz, was released in March 2010 and reached number tw25 on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Singles chart though it failed to reach the Hot 100. One of Blige's representatives reported to Us Weekly magazine that a tour in support of Stronger with Each Tear would begin in the fall of 2010. In March 2010, Blige released Stronger with Each Tear in the United Kingdom, as well as in the European markets. The album performed modestly in the United Kingdom, debuting at number 33 on the UK Albums Chart and at number four on the UK R&B Chart. It reached the top 100 in other countries.
Blige was honored at the 2009 BET Honors Ceremony and was paid tribute by Anita Baker and Monica. On November 4, 2009, Blige sang The Star-Spangled Banner at Yankee Stadium before the New York Yankees and Philadelphia Phillies played the last game (game 6) of the World Series. Blige performed two songs from her ninth album as well as her previous hits, "No More Drama" and "Be Without You" along with the song "Color", which was featured on the Precious soundtrack. Blige appeared as a guest judge on the ninth season of American Idol on January 13, 2010.
On January 23, 2010, Blige released a track "Hard Times Come Again No More" with the Roots as well as performing it at the Hope for Haiti Now telethon. At the 2010 Grammy Awards, Blige and Andrea Bocelli performed" Bridge over Troubled Water". Blige also performed on BET's SOS Help For Haiti, singing "Gonna Make It" with Jazmine Sullivan and "One." Blige also took part in February 2010's We Are the World 25 for Haiti, singing the solo originally sung by Tina Turner in the original 1985 We Are the World version. At the 41st NAACP Image Awards Blige won Outstanding Female Artist and Outstanding Album for Stronger with Each Tear. On November 18, 2010, Billboard revealed Mary J. Blige as the most successful female R&B/hip hop artist on the Top 50 R&B/Hip Hop Artists of the Past 25 Years list. She came in at number 2 overall.
2011–2013: My Life II... The Journey Continues (Act 1) and A Mary Christmas
In January 2011, Hot 97 premiered Blige's teaser track "Someone to Love Me" featuring vocals by Lil Wayne. In July 2011, Blige released the song "The Living Proof" as the lead single to the soundtrack of the film The Help. On July 24, VH1 premiered their third Behind the Music that profiled her personal and career life. In August 2011, Blige released her first single off the album, "25/8". Blige's tenth studio album, My Life II... The Journey Continues (Act 1), was released in November 2011. The album, primarily recorded in Los Angeles and New York City, saw Blige looking toward the future while acknowledging the past. "From me to you, My Life II... Our journey together continues in this life", the singer explained. "It's a gift to be able to relate and identify with my fans at all times. This album is a reflection of the times and lives of people all around me." The album features production by Kanye West and the Underdogs. The second single "Mr. Wrong" featuring Canadian rapper Drake was the most successful single from the album, peaking at number 10 on Billboard's R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart. The rest of the songs released, including lead single "25/8" achieved only moderate success, peaking within the top 40 on R&B/Hip-Hop Songs. The album itself debuted at No. 5 on the Billboard 200, selling 156,000 copies in the first week; it was eventually certified Gold in 2012 and has sold 763,000 in the US.
On February 28, 2012, Blige performed "Star Spangled Banner" at the 2012 NBA All-Star Game. Blige appeared as guest mentor on American Idol on March 7, 2012, and performed "Why" on the results show the following night. On September 23, 2012, Blige was a performer at the iHeartRadio Music Festival at the MGM Grand Las Vegas. Blige was featured on the song "Now or Never" from Kendrick Lamar's album Good Kid, M.A.A.D City, released on October 22, 2012.
In early 2013, reports surfaced that Blige was recording a Christmas album. The album, titled, A Mary Christmas was released on October 15, 2013, through Matriarch and Verve Records, her first release with the latter. The album includes collaborations with Barbra Streisand, the Clark Sisters, Marc Anthony and Jessie J. In early December, A Mary Christmas became Blige's 12th top ten album after it rose to No. 10 in its eight week.
On October 23, 2013, Blige sang the national anthem before Game 1 of the 2013 World Series.
2014–2019: The London Sessions and Strength of a Woman
On February 5, 2014, a remix of Disclosure's "F for You" featuring guest vocals from Mary was released.
It was announced May 30, 2014, that Think Like a Man Too (Music from and Inspired by the Film), released June 17 on Epic Records, would introduce new songs by Mary J. Blige, including the single "Suitcase". Blige recorded a collection of music from and inspired by the film. In the United States, Think Like a Man Too debuted at number 30 on the Billboard 200, with 8,688 copies sold in its first week, becoming the lowest sales debut of any of her studio albums. On Billboard's R&B/Hip-Hop chart, the soundtrack album charted at number six, marking Blige's 16th top ten entry on the chart, tying her with Mariah Carey for the second-most top tens by a female artist.
June 2, 2014 saw Blige pairing up with another English musician with the release of a re-worked version of Sam Smith's "Stay with Me". A live visual to the song was released on the same day.
Following her concert date at the Essence Festival, on July 9, 2014, it was announced Blige would move to London to experiment with a new sound for her new album. Blige spent a month in London recording her album in RAK Studios with a host of young British acts, including Disclosure, Naughty Boy, Emeli Sandé and Sam Smith. Ten new songs, co-written and recorded by the singer, were released on November 24, 2014, on an album titled The London Sessions. That same month, she announced that she left Geffen and Interscope and signed with Capitol Records.
In August 2016, Blige was recruited to perform the new theme song for the ABC Daytime talk show The View for its twentieth season titled "World's Gone Crazy" written by Diane Warren. A music video was also shot for the new theme song with co-hosts Whoopi Goldberg, Joy Behar, Candace Cameron Bure, Raven-Symoné, Paula Faris, Sara Haines, Sunny Hostin and Jedediah Bila. Blige also appeared on The View alongside Maxwell during its premiere week on September 9, 2016, to discuss their joint tour and theme song.
On September 30, 2016, Blige premiered a new show, The 411, on Apple Music. On its debut episode, she interviewed Hillary Clinton. A trailer was released online with Blige singing a cover of Bruce Springsteen's "American Skin" to a bewildered Clinton. The exchange received mixed and negative reaction on social media. Two weeks later, a studio version, this time featuring a verse from American rapper Kendrick Lamar was released online.
Following her highly publicized divorce from Kendu Issacs, Blige released two songs within October, "Thick of It" and "U + Me (Love Lesson)". On April 28, 2017, her thirteenth studio album, Strength of a Woman, was released. It peaked at number three on the Billboard 200, number two on the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart and topped the R&B Albums chart. On July 12, 2018, Blige released the single "Only Love" on Republic Records, following her exit from Capitol Records.
On April 16, 2019, Blige announced that she is co-headlining a North American summer tour with Nas titled The Royalty Tour. On May 8, Blige released the single "Thriving" featuring Nas. During an interview with Ebro Darden on Beats 1 for the premiere of "Thriving", Blige announced that her next studio album would be released before July. On June 23, at the BET Awards 2019, she was honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award for her extraordinary contributions to music industry. On June 25, The New York Times Magazine listed Mary J. Blige among hundreds of artists whose material was destroyed in the 2008 Universal fire.
2021–present: The Super Bowl, Good Morning Gorgeous and endeavors with Dr. Dre
In June 2021, Blige celebrated the 25th anniversary of her album My Life with the release of the Amazon Studios documentary Mary J. Blige's My Life, directed by Vanessa Roth.
In December 2021, it was announced that Blige had formed her own label Mary Jane Productions, in conjunction with 300 Entertainment. Along with the news came the release of two new singles, "Good Morning Gorgeous" and "Amazing" featuring DJ Khaled. The songs appear on Blige's fourteenth studio album, also titled Good Morning Gorgeous, which was released on February 11, 2022.
In January 2022, Blige released an additional song from Good Morning Gorgeous titled "Rent Money" featuring Dave East.
On February 13, 2022, Blige performed at the Super Bowl LVI halftime show alongside fellow American rappers Dr. Dre, Eminem, Kendrick Lamar, Snoop Dogg, 50 Cent, and Anderson .Paak. Days later, on February 17, Blige said on the radio show The Breakfast Club that she is working on an album entirely produced by Dr. Dre. On March 7, 2022, Blige and Pepsi announced the inaugural Strength of a Woman Festival and Summit, a three-day festival in Atlanta, in partnership with Live Nation Urban.
In May 2022, Blige was listed as one of the 100 most influential people in the world by TIME. In September 2022, she was awarded the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Variety Special (Live) for Super Bowl LVI halftime show.
Acting career
1998–2016: Early works
In 1998, Blige made her acting debut on the sitcom The Jamie Foxx Show, playing the apparently southern Ola Mae, a preacher's daughter who wanted to sing more than gospel music. Her father was portrayed by Ronald Isley of the Isley Brothers. In 2001, Blige starred opposite rapper Q-Tip in the independent film Prison Song. That same year, Blige made a cameo on the Lifetime network series, Strong Medicine; playing the role of Simone Fellows, the lead singer of a band who was sick, but would not seek treatment. In 2000, Blige was featured in a superhero web cartoon in junction with Stan Lee. Blige used the cartoon as part of her performance while on her 2000 Mary Show Tour. In 2004, Blige starred in an Off-Broadway play, The Exonerated. In late 2005, it was reported that Blige landed the starring role in the upcoming MTV Films biopic on American singer/pianist and civil rights activist, Nina Simone. By spring of 2010, Blige was slated to star as Simone with British actor David Oyelowo portraying her manager Clifton Henderson. Blige later dropped out of the role due to financial issues and the role was subsequently recast with actress Zoe Saldana as Simone in Nina, released in 2016.
In February 2007, Blige guest-starred on Ghost Whisperer, in the episode "Mean Ghost", as the character Jackie Boyd. The episode features many of Blige's songs. In August 2007, Blige was a guest star on Entourage, in the role of herself, as a client of Ari Gold's agency. In October 2007, Blige was also a guest star on America's Next Top Model, as a creative director for a photoshoot by Matthew Rolston. In May 2009, Mary made a guest appearance on 30 Rock, as an artist recording a benefit song for a kidney. Blige also had a supporting role in Tyler Perry's movie I Can Do Bad All by Myself, which was released in September 2009.
Blige starred alongside Tom Cruise, Julianne Hough, and Alec Baldwin in the film adaptation of the 1980s jukebox hit musical Rock of Ages. Blige played Justice Charlier, the owner of a Sunset Strip gentlemen's club. Production began in May 2011 and the film was released in June 2012.
Blige starred in the Lifetime movie Betty and Coretta alongside Angela Bassett, Malik Yoba and Lindsay Owen Pierre. She played Dr. Betty Shabazz, the widow of Malcolm X. The film premiered in February 2013. In December 2015, she portrayed Evillene, the Wicked Witch of the West in NBC's The Wiz Live!. In October 2016, Blige guest-starred on ABC legal drama How to Get Away with Murder as an old acquaintance of Annalise Keating played by Viola Davis.
2017–present
In 2017, Blige starred in the period drama film Mudbound directed by Dee Rees. Playing Florence Jackson, the matriarch of her family, she received praise such as Variety's review: "Mary J. Blige, as the mother of the Jackson family, gives a transformative performance that will elevate the acting career of the R&B star." For her performance in Mudbound, Blige was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress, the Critics' Choice Movie Award for Best Supporting Actress, the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role, and the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. As she was also nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song (with Taura Stinson and Raphael Saadiq), she became the first person nominated for an Academy Award for acting and original song in the same year. Her nomination also made Dee Rees the first black woman to direct a film for which an actor was nominated for an Academy Award.
Blige voiced Irene in the 2018 animated film Sherlock Gnomes, and in 2020 voiced Queen Essence in the animated musical film Trolls World Tour. In 2018, it was announced that Blige was cast as Sherry Elliot in Scream: Resurrection, the third season of the slasher television series Scream. The season premiered on VH1 on July 8, 2019. In 2019, Blige starred in the role of Cha-Cha, a main antagonist in the Netflix superhero series The Umbrella Academy.
In 2020, Blige played a leading role in the horror film Body Cam. She also starred in the independent drama film Pink Skies Ahead. Blige currently stars as Monet Stewart Tejada in Power Book II: Ghost, the first spin-off for the highly rated Starz cable drama Power which premiered in September 2020. Blige played singer Dinah Washington in the biographical drama film Respect about life and career of Aretha Franklin. The film was released theatrically on August 13, 2021.
In 2023, Blige was cast in the drama film Rob Peace, a film adaptation of The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace, written and directed by Chiwetel Ejiofor.
Personal life
In the 1990s, Blige spent six years in a relationship with singer Cedric "K-Ci" Hailey of the R&B group Jodeci. During a 1995 interview on the UK television show The Word, Blige confirmed the two were engaged; Hailey denied that they were going to get married. Their turbulent relationship inspired Blige's album My Life. Following her break-up with Hailey, Blige developed a relationship with singer Case, which dwindled due to his involvement with other women. She also briefly dated rapper Nas.
Blige married her manager, Martin "Kendu" Isaacs, on December 7, 2003. At the time, Isaacs had two children, Nas and Jordan, with his first wife, and an older daughter, Briana, from a teenage relationship. In July 2016, Blige filed for divorce, citing "irreconcilable differences". Blige and Isaacs' divorce was finalized on June 21, 2018.
Blige is a Democrat and performed for Barack Obama at the 2012 Democratic National Convention.
..... She is also a childfree person, proclaiming in a February 2022 interview with E! News, "I have nieces and nephews forever, and I'm always watching how people are scrambling around for babysitters. I don’t want to go through that. I like my freedom. I like being able to get up and go and move and do what I want to do."
Blige is a close friend to Taraji P. Henson, Missy Elliott, Simone Smith (wife of rapper LL Cool J), and fashion stylists June Ambrose and Misa Hylton, as well as former radio personality Angie Martinez, whose son, Niko Ruffin, is Blige's godson.
Other ventures
Blige has had endorsement contracts with Reebok, Air Jordan, Pepsi, Coca-Cola, Gap, Target, American Express, AT&T Inc., M·A·C, Apple Inc., Burger King and Chevrolet. She has also been a spokesperson for Carol's Daughter beauty products and Citibank's Citi Card program (alongside Nickelback).
In 2004, Blige launched her own record label, Matriarch Records, distributed through Interscope. In 2012, she discovered girl group Just'Us, making the group the first ladies of the label. At the time, Blige said, "These are my little Mary's; they each remind me of myself at different points in my life." Blige was reportedly working with the group on their debut album, but it never materialized, and Just'Us has since disbanded.
In 2009, Blige's production company, along with William Morris Endeavor, was working on several TV and film projects.
In July 2010, in partnership with the Home Shopping Network (HSN) and Carol's Daughter, Blige launched her first perfume, My Life (through Carol's Daughter), exclusively on HSN. The fragrance broke HSN sales records in hours, by selling 50,000 bottles during its premiere, and has been awarded two prestigious FIFI awards from the Fragrance Foundation, including the "Fragrance Sales Breakthrough" award. In August 2011, another scent called My Life Blossom was launched exclusively to HSN.
In October 2010, Blige released "Melodies by MJB", a line of sunglasses. The first Melodies collection featured four styles with a total of 20 color options. Each style represented a specific facet of Blige's life. In the spring of 2011, Essence magazine reported that "Melodies by MJB" had extended their collection to offer more styles.
In late 2020, Blige and her close friend, Simone Johnson-Smith, a cancer survivor and wife of rapper LL Cool J, co-founded Sister Love, a jewelry line for women. Blige also announced the 2019 formation of a film and television production label, Blue Butterfly Productions. On December 16, 2022, the label signed a first-look lucrative deal with BET for scripted and non-scripted content; its first under the partnership was Blige's talk show, The Wine Down with Mary J. Blige, which premiered in early 2023.
She has founded two companies: Mary Jane Productions, which she co-founded with her former manager, Steve Stoute, in 1994, and an independent record label, Beautiful Life Productions, in 2023. She signed Boyz II Men affiliate group, WanMor to the former in August 2023 and New York rapper Vado to the latter in May 2024.
Legacy
Main article: List of awards and nominations received by Mary J. Blige
Called the "Queen of Hip-Hop Soul", Blige is credited with influencing the musical marriage of hip hop and R&B. Ethan Brown of The New Yorker says that albums "What's the 411?" and "My Life", in hindsight, invented "the sample-heavy sound that reinvigorated R&B radio and became a blueprint for nineties hip-hop and R&B". Tom Horan of The Daily Telegraph comments that Blige, being an immensely influential figure in popular music, "invented what is now called R&B by successfully combining female vocals with muscular hip hop rhythm tracks. All over the world, that recipe dominates today's charts." Called one of the "most explosive, coming-out displays of pure singing prowess" and "one of the most important albums of the nineties", What's the 411? saw Blige pioneer "the movement that would later become neo soul, generating gripping songs that were also massive radio hits".
African American scholars have noted the implications of Blige's presentation and representation of black womanhood and femininity in the typically male-dominated and centric sphere of hip hop. Blending the vocal techniques of rapping in hip hop with aspirational messages in R&B, Blige is credited with articulating black women's experiences in a "more factual and objective" manner than typical stereotypes and tropes of black women in the media. With particular attention on her single "Real Love", critics note how the song is "a performative text, declaratively demand[ing] recognition of Blige's full humanity and, more broadly, that of hip-hop-generation women."
Blige has received notable awards and achievements. In 2010, she was ranked 80th on VH1's list of the 100 Greatest Artist of All Time. Blige was listed as one of the 50 most influential R&B singers by Essence. In 2003, Rolling Stone magazine ranked My Life at number 279 on its list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. The album was also included on Time's list of the 100 Greatest albums of All Time. In 2020, both What's the 411? and My Life were featured in a rebooted list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, at 271 and 126 respectively. Alternately called the "Queen of R&B" for her success in the realm of R&B, Blige has amassed ten number one albums on the R&B/Hip Hop Albums chart . Blige is also the only artist to have won Grammys in the R&B, hip hop, pop, and gospel fields.
Blige and her work have influenced several recording artists, including Beyoncé, Adele, Taylor Swift, Monica, Layton Greene, Keyshia Cole, Bryson Tiller, Cheryl, Teyana Taylor Keke Palmer, Jess Glynne, Sam Smith, and Alexandra Burke.
As an actress, Blige received the Breakthrough Performance Award at the 2018 Palm Springs International Film Festival for her role in Mudbound.
In 2020, Kamala Harris, the first Black and South Asian female Vice President-elect on a major party, walked out to "Work That" at the 2020 Democratic National Convention, campaign events (including her own presidential campaign), and her victory speech.
Discography
Main article: Mary J. Blige discography
Studio albums
What's the 411? (1992)
My Life (1994)
Share My World (1997)
Mary (1999)
No More Drama (2001)
Love & Life (2003)
The Breakthrough (2005)
Growing Pains (2007)
Stronger with Each Tear (2009)
My Life II... The Journey Continues (Act 1) (2011)
A Mary Christmas (2013)
The London Sessions (2014)
Strength of a Woman (2017)
Good Morning Gorgeous (2022)
Tours
Headlining
Share My World Tour (1997–98)
The Mary Show Tour (2000)
No More Drama Tour (2002)
Love & Life Tour (2004)
The Breakthrough Experience Tour (2006)
Growing Pains European Tour (2008)
Love Soul Tour (2008)
Music Saved My Life Tour (2010–11)
The London Sessions Tour (2015)
Strength of a Woman Tour (2017)
Good Morning Gorgeous Tour (2022)
Co-headlining
Heart of the City Tour (with Jay-Z) (2007)
The Liberation Tour (with D'Angelo) (2012–13)
King and Queen of Hearts World Tour (with Maxwell) (2016)
The Royalty Tour (with Nas) (2019)
Supporting
Humpin' Around the World Tour (with Bobby Brown) (1992–1993)
Filmography
Main article: Mary J. Blige videography
Film
Year Title Role Notes 2001 Prison Song Mrs. Butler 2009 I Can Do Bad All by Myself Tanya 2010 Chico and Rita - (voice) 2012 Rock of Ages Justice Charlier 2013 Betty & Coretta Dr. Betty Shabazz TV movie Black Nativity Angel 2014 Champs Herself 2015 The Wiz Live! Evillene TV movie 2017 Mudbound Florence Jackson 2018 Sherlock Gnomes Irene (voice) 2020 Trolls World Tour Queen Essence (voice) Body Cam Renee Lomito-Smith The Violent Heart Nina Pink Skies Ahead Doctor Monroe 2021 Respect Dinah Washington 2024 Rob Peace Jackie Peace
Television
Year Title Role Notes 1992 Soul Train Herself Episode: "Al Jarreau/Mary J. Blige/Pete Rock & C.L. Smooth" In Living Color Herself Episode: "Men on Cooking" Out All Night Herself Episode: "Smooth Operator" The Uptown Comedy Club Herself Episode: "Episode #1.11" 1992-01 Showtime at the Apollo Herself Recurring Guest 1993 MTV Unplugged Herself Episode: "Uptown Unplugged" 1993-06 Saturday Night Live Herself Recurring Guest 1995 New York Undercover Herself Guest Cast: Seasons 1-2 1997 All That Herself Episode: "Mary J. Blige" 1997-06 Top of the Pops Herself Recurring Guest 1998 The Jamie Foxx Show Ola Mae Episode: "Papa Don't Preach" 1999 Moesha Herself Episode: "Good Vibrations?" 2000 The Greatest Herself Episode: "100 Greatest Rock & Roll Moments on TV" 2001 Behind the Music Herself Episode: "Sean 'P. Diddy' Combs" Journeys in Black Herself Episode: "Patti LaBelle" Access Granted Herself Episode: "Mary J. Blige: Family Affair" Strong Medicine Simone Fellows Episode: "History" 2001-04 Intimate Portrait Herself Recurring Guest 2002 The Nick Cannon Show Herself Episode: "Nick Takes Over Music" 2005 Soul Deep: The Story of Black Popular Music Herself Episode: "From Ghetto to Fabulous" Access Granted Herself Episode: "Lil Kim: Lighters Up" 2006 The Life & Rhymes of... Herself Episode: "Mary J. Blige" Dancing with the Stars Herself Episode: "Final Results" 2006-08 One Life to Live Herself Recurring Cast 2006-12 American Idol Herself Recurring Guest 2007 Classic Albums Herself Episode: "Jay Z: Reasonable Doubt" America's Next Top Model Herself Episode: "The Girl Who Gets a Mango" Ghost Whisperer Jackie Boyd Episode: "Mean Ghost" Entourage Herself Episode: "Gary's Desk" 2008 Live from Abbey Road Herself Episode: "Episode #2.1" Dancing with the Stars Herself Episode: "Round 6: Results" Imagine Herself Episode: "Jay-Z: He Came, He Saw, He Conquered" 2009 Extreme Makeover: Home Edition Herself Episode: "Ward Family" So You Think You Can Dance Herself Episode: "Finale: Winner Announced" 30 Rock Herself Episode: "Kidney Now!" 2011 The Marriage Ref Herself Episode: "Episode #2.4" & "#2.5" 2011-13 The X Factor USA Herself Episode: "Episode #1.22" & "#3.26" 2012 Life After Herself Episode: "Andre Harrell" Tamar & Vince Herself Episode: "Meet the Herberts" Great Performances Herself Episode: "Rod Stewart: Merry Christmas, Baby" The Voice Herself/Adviser Recurring Adviser: Season 3 2013 The X Factor UK Herself Episode: "Episode #10.12" & "#10.26" 2015 Lip Sync Battle Herself Episode: "Terrence Howard vs. Taraji P. Henson, Part 1" The Voice Herself/Adviser Episode: "The Battles Premiere" Empire Angie Episode: "Sins of the Father" Black-ish Mirabelle Chalet Episode: "Pops' Pops' Pops" 2016 Inside the Label Herself Episode: "Uptown Records, Part I & II" How to Get Away with Murder Ro Guest Star: Season 3 2019 The Umbrella Academy Cha-Cha Main Cast: Season 1 Scream: Resurrection Sherry Elliot Recurring Cast: Season 3 2020 Peace of Mind with Taraji Herself Episode: "Episode 3, Part 1: Holiday Blues with Mary J. Blige" 2020- Power Book II: Ghost Monet Stewart Tejada Main Cast 2021 The ... Questionnaire Herself Episode: "Mary J. Blige" Celebrity IOU: Joyride Herself Episode: "Don't Go Ham" 2022 Earnin' It Herself Main Guest Lost Ollie Rosy (voice) Main Cast 2023 The Wine Down with Mary J. Blige Herself/Host Main Host
Documentary
Year Title Notes 2001 It's Only Rock and Roll 2004 Urban Soul: The Making of Modern R&B Mary J. Blige: Queen of Hip Hop Soul Fade to Black 2005 All We Are Saying 2010 Teenage Paparazzo 2011 Beats, Rhymes & Life: The Travels of A Tribe Called Quest 2012 Be Inspired: The Life of Heavy D 2017 Can't Stop, Won't Stop: A Bad Boy Story Welcome to My Life George Michael Freedom 2018 Quincy 2021 Mary J. Blige's My Life 2023 Thriller 40
See also
In Spanish: Mary J. Blige para niños
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Mary J. Blige facts for kids
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Mary Jane Blige ( blyzhe; born January 11, 1971) is an American singer, songwriter, and actress. Often referred to as the "Queen of Hip-Hop Soul" and "Queen of R&B", Blige has won 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. She has been nominated for three Golden Globe Awards and two Academy Awards, including one for her supporting role in the film Mudbound (2017) and another for its original song "Mighty River", becoming the first person nominated for acting and songwriting in the same year.
Her career began in 1988 when she was signed to Uptown Records by its founder Andre Harrell. During this time, Blige performed background vocal work for other artists on the label such as Father MC and Jeff Redd. 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 are featured on the Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time list, and the latter on Time magazine's All-Time 100 Albums. Throughout her career, Blige went on to release 14 studio albums, including four Billboard 200 number-one albums. Her biggest hits include "Real Love", "You Remind Me", "I'm Goin' Down", "Not Gon' Cry", "Be Without You", "Just Fine" and the Billboard Hot 100 number-one single "Family Affair".
Blige has also made a successful transition to both the television and movie screen, with supporting roles in films such as Prison Song (2001), Rock of Ages (2012), Betty and Coretta (2013), Black Nativity (2013), her Oscar and Golden Globe-nominated breakthrough performance as Florence Jackson in Mudbound (2017), Trolls World Tour (2020), Body Cam (2020), The Violent Heart (2021) and co-starring as jazz singer Dinah Washington in the Aretha Franklin biopic Respect (2021). In 2019, Blige starred as Cha-Cha on the first season of the Netflix television series The Umbrella Academy. She currently stars as Monet Tejada in the spin-off of the highly-rated TV show drama Power in Power Book II: Ghost.
She received a Legends Award at the World Music Awards in 2006, and the Voice of Music Award from ASCAP in 2007. Billboard ranked Blige as the most successful female R&B/Hip-Hop artist of the past 25 years. In 2017, Billboard magazine named her 2006 song "Be Without You" as the most successful R&B/Hip-Hop song of all time, as it spent an unparalleled 15 weeks atop the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart and over 75 weeks on the chart. VH1 ranked Blige as the 80th greatest artist of all time in 2011 and ninth in "The 100 Greatest Women in Music" list in 2012. In 2023, Rolling Stone ranked her as the 25th greatest singer of all-time. In 2024, Blige was selected for induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Early life and music career
1971–1991: Early life and career beginnings
Blige was born January 11, 1971, in Fordham Hospital in the borough of the Bronx, New York City. She was born to mother Cora, a nurse, and father Thomas Blige, a jazz musician. She is the second of four children. She has an elder sister, LaTonya Blige-DaCosta, a younger half-brother, Bruce Miller, and a younger half-sister, Jonquell.
She 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.
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 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, also known as Puff Daddy. 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? nevertheless established Blige as a dynamic storyteller whose performances of love narrative drew upon both her musical influences and her lived experiences as a hip-hop-generation woman. 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 Weekly's 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. 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 Blender's 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 Time's 100 greatest albums of all-time list.
Blige involved herself in several outside projects, recording a cover of Aretha Franklin's "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman" for the soundtrack to the FOX series New York Undercover, and "Everyday It Rains" (co-written by R&B singer Faith Evans) 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 (1996) 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 (1996) 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.
1997–2000: Share My World and Mary
On April 22, 1997, MCA Records (parent company to Uptown Records, which was in the process of being dismantled) released Blige's third album, Share My World. By then, she and Combs had dissolved their working relationship. In his place were the Trackmasters, who executive-produced the project along with Steve Stoute. Sharing production duties were producers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, R. Kelly, Babyface and Rodney Jerkins. Blige tried to make more upbeat, happier music. As a result, songs such as "Love Is All We Need" and "Share My World" were made. Share My World debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 and spawned five hit singles: "Love Is All We Need" (featuring Nas), "I Can Love You" (featuring Lil' Kim), "Everything", "Missing You" (UK only) and "Seven Days" (featuring George Benson). In February 1997, Blige performed her hit at the time, "Not Gon' Cry", at the 1997 Grammy Awards, which gained her a third Grammy Award nomination, her first for Best Female R&B Vocal Performance, as Blige was recording the follow-up to My Life. In early 1998, Blige won an American Music Award for "Favorite Soul/R&B Album". That summer, she embarked on the Share My World Tour, which resulted in a Gold-certified live album released later that year, simply titled The Tour. The album spawned one single, "Misty Blue".
On August 17, 1999, Blige's fourth album, titled Mary was released. It marked a departure from her more familiar hip hop-oriented sound; this set featured a more earthy, whimsical, and adult contemporary-tinged collection of songs, reminiscent of the 1970s to early 1980s soul. She also appeared on In Concert: A Benefit for the Crossroads Centre at Antigua with Eric Clapton in 1999. On December 14, 1999, the album was re-released as a double-disc set. The second disc was enhanced with the music videos for the singles "All That I Can Say" and "Deep Inside" and included two bonus tracks: "Sincerity" (featuring Nas, Andy Hogan and DMX) and "Confrontation" (a collaboration with hip hop duo Funkmaster Flex & Big Kap originally from their 1999 album The Tunnel). The Mary album was critically praised, becoming her most nominated release to date, and was certified double platinum. It was not as commercially successful as Blige's prior releases, though all of the singles: "All That I Can Say", "Deep Inside", "Your Child", and "Give Me You" performed considerably on the radio. In the meantime, MCA used the album to expand Blige's demographic into the nightclub market, as club-friendly dance remixes of the Mary singles were released. The club remix of "Your Child" peaked at number-one on the Billboard's Hot Dance Club Play chart in October 2000. In 2001, a Japan-only compilation, Ballads, was released. The album featured covers of Stevie Wonder's "Overjoyed", and previous recordings of Aretha Franklin's "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman" and Dorothy Moore's "Misty Blue". In 1999, George Michael and Mary J. Blige covered the song 'As' written by Stevie Wonder, and worldwide outside of the United States, it was the second single from George Michael's greatest hits album Ladies & Gentlemen: The Best of George Michael. It became a top ten UK pop hit, reaching number four on the chart. It was not released on the U.S. version of the greatest hits collection or as a single in the U.S.
In January 2001, Blige performed as a special guest in the Super Bowl XXXV halftime show.
2001–2004: No More Drama and Love & Life
On August 28, 2001, MCA released Blige's fifth studio album, No More Drama. The album's first single, "Family Affair" (produced by Dr. Dre) became her first and only number-one single on the Billboard Hot 100, where it remained for six consecutive weeks. It was followed by two further hit singles, the European only single "Dance for Me" featuring Common with samples from "The Bed's Too Big Without You" by The Police, and the Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis-produced title track (originally recorded for the Mary album), which sampled "Nadia's Theme", the piano-driven theme song to the daytime drama The Young and the Restless. Though the album sold nearly two million copies in the U.S., MCA was underwhelmed by its sales, and subsequently repackaged and re-released the album on January 29, 2002. The No More Drama re-release featured a new album cover, deleted three of the songs from the original tracklisting, while adding two brand-new songs—one of which was the fourth single and top twenty Hot 100 hit "Rainy Dayz", (featuring Ja Rule), plus two remixes; one of the title track, serviced by Sean Combs/Puff Daddy and the single version of "Dance for Me" featuring Common. Blige won a Grammy for 'Best Female R&B Vocal Performance' for the song "He Think I Don't Know". In April 2002, Blige performed with Shakira with the song "Love Is a Battlefield" on VH1 Divas show live in Las Vegas, she also performed "No More Drama" and "Rainy Dayz" as a duet with the returning Whitney Houston.
On July 22, 2002, MCA released Dance for Me, a collection of club remixes of some of her past top hits. This album was released in a limited edition double pack 12" vinyl for DJ-friendly play in nightclubs.
On August 26, 2003, Blige's sixth album Love & Life was released on Geffen Records (which had absorbed MCA Records.) Blige heavily collaborated with her one-time producer Sean Combs for this set. Due to the history between them on What's the 411? and My Life, which is generally regarded as their best work, and Blige having just come off of a successful fifth album, expectations were high for the reunion effort.
Despite the album debuting at number one on the Billboard 200 and becoming Blige's fourth consecutive UK top ten album, Love & Life's lead-off single, the Diddy-produced "Love @ 1st Sight", which featured Method Man, barely cracked the top ten on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs, while altogether missing the top twenty on the Hot 100 (although peaking inside the UK top twenty). The following singles, "Ooh!", "Not Today" featuring Eve, "Whenever I Say Your Name" featuring Sting on the international re-release, and "It's a Wrap" fared worse. Although the album was certified platinum, it became Blige's lowest-selling at the time. Critics and fans alike largely panned the disc, citing a lack of consistency and noticeable ploys to recapture the early Blige/Combs glory. Blige and Combs reportedly struggled and clashed during the making of this album, and again parted ways upon the completion of it.
The album became Blige's first album in six years to debut at number one on the Billboard 200, selling 285,298 copies in first week. Love & Life received mixed reviews from music critics. AllMusic gave it 4 stars and said the album "beamed with joy" and Rolling Stone gave it three stars, saying "You may not always love Blige's music, but you will feel her". The album was eventually certified Platinum by the RIAA for shipping over 1,000,000 copies in the US. The album was nominated for the Best Contemporary R&B Album at the 46th Grammy Awards.
2005–2006: The Breakthrough and Reflections – A Retrospective
Geffen Records released Blige's seventh studio album, The Breakthrough on December 20, 2005. For the album, Blige collaborated with J.U.S.T.I.C.E. League, Rodney Jerkins, will.i.am, Bryan-Michael Cox, 9th Wonder, Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, Raphael Saadiq, Cool and Dre, and Dre & Vidal. The cover art was photographed by Markus Klinko & Indrani. It debuted at number one on both the Billboard 200 and Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums charts. Selling 727,000 copies in its first week, it became the biggest first-week sales for an R&B solo female artist in SoundScan history, the fifth largest first-week sales for a female artist, and the fourth largest debut of 2005.
The lead-off single, "Be Without You", peaked at number three on the Billboard Hot 100, while peaking at number one on the R&B chart for a record-setting fifteen consecutive weeks; it remained on the chart for over sixteen months. "Be Without You" found success in the UK (peaking in the lower end of the top forty) it became Blige's longest charting single on the UK Singles Chart. It is her second longest charting single to date. The album produced three more singles including two more top-five R&B hits—"Enough Cryin'", which features Blige's alter ego Brook-Lynn (as whom she appeared on the remix to Busta Rhymes's "Touch It" in 2006); and "Take Me as I Am" (which samples Lonnie Liston Smith's "A Garden of Peace"). Blige's duet with U2 on the cover of their 1992 hit, "One" gave Blige her biggest hit to date in the UK, peaking at number two on the UK Singles Chart eventually being certified one of the forty highest-selling singles of 2006; it was her longest charting UK single. The success of The Breakthrough won Blige nine Billboard Music Awards, two American Music Awards, two BET Awards, two NAACP Image Awards, and a Soul Train Award. She received eight Grammy Award nominations at the 2007 Grammy Awards, the most of any artist that year. "Be Without You" was nominated for both "Record of the Year" and "Song of the Year". Blige won three: "Best Female R&B Vocal Performance", "Best R&B Song" (both for "Be Without You"), and "Best R&B Album" for The Breakthrough. Blige completed a season sweep of the "big three" major music awards, having won two American Music Awards in November 2006 and nine Billboard Music Awards in December 2006.
In December 2006, a compilation called Reflections (A Retrospective) was released. It contained many of Blige's greatest hits and four new songs, including the worldwide lead single "We Ride (I See the Future)". In the UK, however, "MJB da MVP" (which appeared in a different, shorter form on The Breakthrough) was released as the lead single from the collection. The album peaked at number nine in the U.S, selling over 170,000 copies in its first week, while reaching number forty in the UK In 2006, Blige recorded a duet with rapper Ludacris, "Runaway Love", which is the third single on his fifth album, Release Therapy. It reached the top five on the Billboard Hot 100 and the R&B chart. Blige was featured with Aretha Franklin and the Harlem Boys Choir on the soundtrack to the 2006 motion picture Bobby, on the lead track "Never Gonna Break My Faith" written by Bryan Adams. The song was nominated for a Golden Globe and won the Grammy Award for Best Gospel Performance at the 50th Annual Grammy Awards.
2007–2008: Growing Pains
Blige's eighth studio album, Growing Pains, was released on December 18, 2007, debuting at number two on the Billboard 200 and at number one on the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart. It sold 629,000 copies in its first week, marking the third time since Nielsen SoundScan began collecting data in 1991 that two albums sold more than 600,000 copies in a week in the United States. In its second week, the album climbed to number one, making it Blige's fourth number-one album. The lead single, "Just Fine", peaked at number twenty-two on the Billboard Hot 100 and at number three on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart. "Just Fine" was nominated for the Grammy Award for "Best Female R&B Vocal Performance", and Blige won "Best R&B Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals" for the Chaka Khan duet "Disrespectful" (featured on Khan's album Funk This) which Blige wrote.
Growing Pains was not released in the UK until February 2008, where it became Blige's fifth top ten and third-highest-charting album.The Breakthrough and Reflections (A Retrospective) were released in the Christmas rush and therefore settled for lower peaks, although both selling more than her top five album Mary. "Just Fine" returned Blige to the UK singles chart top 20 after her previous two singles failed to chart highly. Subsequent singles from Growing Pains include "Work That", which accompanied Blige in an iTunes commercial, and "Stay Down".
Blige was featured on 50 Cent's 2007 album, Curtis, in the song "All of Me". In March 2008, she toured with Jay-Z in the Heart of the City Tour. They released a song called "You're Welcome". In the same period, cable network BET aired a special on Blige titled The Evolution of Mary J. Blige, which showcased her career. Celebrities such as Method Man and Ashanti gave their opinions about Blige and her music. Blige is featured on singles by Big Boi, and Musiq Soulchild. Growing Pains was nominated for and won the Grammy Award for "Best Contemporary R&B Album", at the 51st Grammy Awards held on February 8, 2009, earning Blige her 27th Grammy nomination, in a mere decade. Blige went on the Growing Pains European Tour, her first tour there in two years. A tour of Australia and New Zealand was scheduled for June but was postponed due to "weariness from an overwhelming tour schedule" and then eventually canceled entirely.
On August 7, 2008, it was revealed Blige faced a US$2 million federal suit claiming Neff-U wrote the music for the song "Work That", but was owned by Dream Family Entertainment. The filing claimed that Dream Family never gave rights to use the song to Blige, Feemster or Geffen Records. Rights to the lyrics of the song used in an iPod commercial are not in question.
2009–2010: Stronger with Each Tear
Blige returned to performing in January 2009 by performing the song "Lean on Me" at the Presidential Inauguration Committee's, "We Are One: The Obama Inaugural Celebration at the Lincoln Memorial". Blige also performed her hit 2007 single, "Just Fine", with a new intro at the Neighborhood Inaugural Ball after Barack Obama was sworn in on January 20, 2009. Blige appeared as a marquee performer on the annual Christmas in Washington television special.
Blige's ninth studio album, Stronger with Each Tear, was released on December 21, 2009, debuting at number two on the Billboard 200 and at number one on the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart, selling 332,000 units in its first week of release. It became her fifth album not to take the top spot in the United States. Blige recorded "Stronger", as the lead single from the soundtrack to the basketball documentary "More than a Game" in August 2009. The second single from Stronger with Each Tear, "I Am", was released in December 2009 and reached number fifty-five on the Hot 100. The third international single from the album, "Each Tear", was remixed with different featured artists from different countries, then being released in February 2010. The single failed to chart anywhere except in the UK where it reached number one-hundred-eighty-three and in Italy where it reached number one. The album's third U.S. single, "We Got Hood Love" featuring Trey Songz, was released in March 2010 and reached number tw25 on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Singles chart though it failed to reach the Hot 100. One of Blige's representatives reported to Us Weekly magazine that a tour in support of Stronger with Each Tear would begin in the fall of 2010. In March 2010, Blige released Stronger with Each Tear in the United Kingdom, as well as in the European markets. The album performed modestly in the United Kingdom, debuting at number 33 on the UK Albums Chart and at number four on the UK R&B Chart. It reached the top 100 in other countries.
Blige was honored at the 2009 BET Honors Ceremony and was paid tribute by Anita Baker and Monica. On November 4, 2009, Blige sang The Star-Spangled Banner at Yankee Stadium before the New York Yankees and Philadelphia Phillies played the last game (game 6) of the World Series. Blige performed two songs from her ninth album as well as her previous hits, "No More Drama" and "Be Without You" along with the song "Color", which was featured on the Precious soundtrack. Blige appeared as a guest judge on the ninth season of American Idol on January 13, 2010.
On January 23, 2010, Blige released a track "Hard Times Come Again No More" with the Roots as well as performing it at the Hope for Haiti Now telethon. At the 2010 Grammy Awards, Blige and Andrea Bocelli performed" Bridge over Troubled Water". Blige also performed on BET's SOS Help For Haiti, singing "Gonna Make It" with Jazmine Sullivan and "One." Blige also took part in February 2010's We Are the World 25 for Haiti, singing the solo originally sung by Tina Turner in the original 1985 We Are the World version. At the 41st NAACP Image Awards Blige won Outstanding Female Artist and Outstanding Album for Stronger with Each Tear. On November 18, 2010, Billboard revealed Mary J. Blige as the most successful female R&B/hip hop artist on the Top 50 R&B/Hip Hop Artists of the Past 25 Years list. She came in at number 2 overall.
2011–2013: My Life II... The Journey Continues (Act 1) and A Mary Christmas
In January 2011, Hot 97 premiered Blige's teaser track "Someone to Love Me" featuring vocals by Lil Wayne. In July 2011, Blige released the song "The Living Proof" as the lead single to the soundtrack of the film The Help. On July 24, VH1 premiered their third Behind the Music that profiled her personal and career life. In August 2011, Blige released her first single off the album, "25/8". Blige's tenth studio album, My Life II... The Journey Continues (Act 1), was released in November 2011. The album, primarily recorded in Los Angeles and New York City, saw Blige looking toward the future while acknowledging the past. "From me to you, My Life II... Our journey together continues in this life", the singer explained. "It's a gift to be able to relate and identify with my fans at all times. This album is a reflection of the times and lives of people all around me." The album features production by Kanye West and the Underdogs. The second single "Mr. Wrong" featuring Canadian rapper Drake was the most successful single from the album, peaking at number 10 on Billboard's R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart. The rest of the songs released, including lead single "25/8" achieved only moderate success, peaking within the top 40 on R&B/Hip-Hop Songs. The album itself debuted at No. 5 on the Billboard 200, selling 156,000 copies in the first week; it was eventually certified Gold in 2012 and has sold 763,000 in the US.
On February 28, 2012, Blige performed "Star Spangled Banner" at the 2012 NBA All-Star Game. Blige appeared as guest mentor on American Idol on March 7, 2012, and performed "Why" on the results show the following night. On September 23, 2012, Blige was a performer at the iHeartRadio Music Festival at the MGM Grand Las Vegas. Blige was featured on the song "Now or Never" from Kendrick Lamar's album Good Kid, M.A.A.D City, released on October 22, 2012.
In early 2013, reports surfaced that Blige was recording a Christmas album. The album, titled, A Mary Christmas was released on October 15, 2013, through Matriarch and Verve Records, her first release with the latter. The album includes collaborations with Barbra Streisand, the Clark Sisters, Marc Anthony and Jessie J. In early December, A Mary Christmas became Blige's 12th top ten album after it rose to No. 10 in its eight week.
On October 23, 2013, Blige sang the national anthem before Game 1 of the 2013 World Series.
2014–2019: The London Sessions and Strength of a Woman
On February 5, 2014, a remix of Disclosure's "F for You" featuring guest vocals from Mary was released.
It was announced May 30, 2014, that Think Like a Man Too (Music from and Inspired by the Film), released June 17 on Epic Records, would introduce new songs by Mary J. Blige, including the single "Suitcase". Blige recorded a collection of music from and inspired by the film. In the United States, Think Like a Man Too debuted at number 30 on the Billboard 200, with 8,688 copies sold in its first week, becoming the lowest sales debut of any of her studio albums. On Billboard's R&B/Hip-Hop chart, the soundtrack album charted at number six, marking Blige's 16th top ten entry on the chart, tying her with Mariah Carey for the second-most top tens by a female artist.
June 2, 2014 saw Blige pairing up with another English musician with the release of a re-worked version of Sam Smith's "Stay with Me". A live visual to the song was released on the same day.
Following her concert date at the Essence Festival, on July 9, 2014, it was announced Blige would move to London to experiment with a new sound for her new album. Blige spent a month in London recording her album in RAK Studios with a host of young British acts, including Disclosure, Naughty Boy, Emeli Sandé and Sam Smith. Ten new songs, co-written and recorded by the singer, were released on November 24, 2014, on an album titled The London Sessions. That same month, she announced that she left Geffen and Interscope and signed with Capitol Records.
In August 2016, Blige was recruited to perform the new theme song for the ABC Daytime talk show The View for its twentieth season titled "World's Gone Crazy" written by Diane Warren. A music video was also shot for the new theme song with co-hosts Whoopi Goldberg, Joy Behar, Candace Cameron Bure, Raven-Symoné, Paula Faris, Sara Haines, Sunny Hostin and Jedediah Bila. Blige also appeared on The View alongside Maxwell during its premiere week on September 9, 2016, to discuss their joint tour and theme song.
On September 30, 2016, Blige premiered a new show, The 411, on Apple Music. On its debut episode, she interviewed Hillary Clinton. A trailer was released online with Blige singing a cover of Bruce Springsteen's "American Skin" to a bewildered Clinton. The exchange received mixed and negative reaction on social media. Two weeks later, a studio version, this time featuring a verse from American rapper Kendrick Lamar was released online.
Following her highly publicized divorce from Kendu Issacs, Blige released two songs within October, "Thick of It" and "U + Me (Love Lesson)". On April 28, 2017, her thirteenth studio album, Strength of a Woman, was released. It peaked at number three on the Billboard 200, number two on the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart and topped the R&B Albums chart. On July 12, 2018, Blige released the single "Only Love" on Republic Records, following her exit from Capitol Records.
On April 16, 2019, Blige announced that she is co-headlining a North American summer tour with Nas titled The Royalty Tour. On May 8, Blige released the single "Thriving" featuring Nas. During an interview with Ebro Darden on Beats 1 for the premiere of "Thriving", Blige announced that her next studio album would be released before July. On June 23, at the BET Awards 2019, she was honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award for her extraordinary contributions to music industry. On June 25, The New York Times Magazine listed Mary J. Blige among hundreds of artists whose material was destroyed in the 2008 Universal fire.
2021–present: The Super Bowl, Good Morning Gorgeous and endeavors with Dr. Dre
In June 2021, Blige celebrated the 25th anniversary of her album My Life with the release of the Amazon Studios documentary Mary J. Blige's My Life, directed by Vanessa Roth.
In December 2021, it was announced that Blige had formed her own label Mary Jane Productions, in conjunction with 300 Entertainment. Along with the news came the release of two new singles, "Good Morning Gorgeous" and "Amazing" featuring DJ Khaled. The songs appear on Blige's fourteenth studio album, also titled Good Morning Gorgeous, which was released on February 11, 2022.
In January 2022, Blige released an additional song from Good Morning Gorgeous titled "Rent Money" featuring Dave East.
On February 13, 2022, Blige performed at the Super Bowl LVI halftime show alongside fellow American rappers Dr. Dre, Eminem, Kendrick Lamar, Snoop Dogg, 50 Cent, and Anderson .Paak. Days later, on February 17, Blige said on the radio show The Breakfast Club that she is working on an album entirely produced by Dr. Dre. On March 7, 2022, Blige and Pepsi announced the inaugural Strength of a Woman Festival and Summit, a three-day festival in Atlanta, in partnership with Live Nation Urban.
In May 2022, Blige was listed as one of the 100 most influential people in the world by TIME. In September 2022, she was awarded the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Variety Special (Live) for Super Bowl LVI halftime show.
Acting career
1998–2016: Early works
In 1998, Blige made her acting debut on the sitcom The Jamie Foxx Show, playing the apparently southern Ola Mae, a preacher's daughter who wanted to sing more than gospel music. Her father was portrayed by Ronald Isley of the Isley Brothers. In 2001, Blige starred opposite rapper Q-Tip in the independent film Prison Song. That same year, Blige made a cameo on the Lifetime network series, Strong Medicine; playing the role of Simone Fellows, the lead singer of a band who was sick, but would not seek treatment. In 2000, Blige was featured in a superhero web cartoon in junction with Stan Lee. Blige used the cartoon as part of her performance while on her 2000 Mary Show Tour. In 2004, Blige starred in an Off-Broadway play, The Exonerated. In late 2005, it was reported that Blige landed the starring role in the upcoming MTV Films biopic on American singer/pianist and civil rights activist, Nina Simone. By spring of 2010, Blige was slated to star as Simone with British actor David Oyelowo portraying her manager Clifton Henderson. Blige later dropped out of the role due to financial issues and the role was subsequently recast with actress Zoe Saldana as Simone in Nina, released in 2016.
In February 2007, Blige guest-starred on Ghost Whisperer, in the episode "Mean Ghost", as the character Jackie Boyd. The episode features many of Blige's songs. In August 2007, Blige was a guest star on Entourage, in the role of herself, as a client of Ari Gold's agency. In October 2007, Blige was also a guest star on America's Next Top Model, as a creative director for a photoshoot by Matthew Rolston. In May 2009, Mary made a guest appearance on 30 Rock, as an artist recording a benefit song for a kidney. Blige also had a supporting role in Tyler Perry's movie I Can Do Bad All by Myself, which was released in September 2009.
Blige starred alongside Tom Cruise, Julianne Hough, and Alec Baldwin in the film adaptation of the 1980s jukebox hit musical Rock of Ages. Blige played Justice Charlier, the owner of a Sunset Strip gentlemen's club. Production began in May 2011 and the film was released in June 2012.
Blige starred in the Lifetime movie Betty and Coretta alongside Angela Bassett, Malik Yoba and Lindsay Owen Pierre. She played Dr. Betty Shabazz, the widow of Malcolm X. The film premiered in February 2013. In December 2015, she portrayed Evillene, the Wicked Witch of the West in NBC's The Wiz Live!. In October 2016, Blige guest-starred on ABC legal drama How to Get Away with Murder as an old acquaintance of Annalise Keating played by Viola Davis.
2017–present
In 2017, Blige starred in the period drama film Mudbound directed by Dee Rees. Playing Florence Jackson, the matriarch of her family, she received praise such as Variety's review: "Mary J. Blige, as the mother of the Jackson family, gives a transformative performance that will elevate the acting career of the R&B star." For her performance in Mudbound, Blige was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress, the Critics' Choice Movie Award for Best Supporting Actress, the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role, and the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. As she was also nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song (with Taura Stinson and Raphael Saadiq), she became the first person nominated for an Academy Award for acting and original song in the same year. Her nomination also made Dee Rees the first black woman to direct a film for which an actor was nominated for an Academy Award.
Blige voiced Irene in the 2018 animated film Sherlock Gnomes, and in 2020 voiced Queen Essence in the animated musical film Trolls World Tour. In 2018, it was announced that Blige was cast as Sherry Elliot in Scream: Resurrection, the third season of the slasher television series Scream. The season premiered on VH1 on July 8, 2019. In 2019, Blige starred in the role of Cha-Cha, a main antagonist in the Netflix superhero series The Umbrella Academy.
In 2020, Blige played a leading role in the horror film Body Cam. She also starred in the independent drama film Pink Skies Ahead. Blige currently stars as Monet Stewart Tejada in Power Book II: Ghost, the first spin-off for the highly rated Starz cable drama Power which premiered in September 2020. Blige played singer Dinah Washington in the biographical drama film Respect about life and career of Aretha Franklin. The film was released theatrically on August 13, 2021.
In 2023, Blige was cast in the drama film Rob Peace, a film adaptation of The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace, written and directed by Chiwetel Ejiofor.
Personal life
In the 1990s, Blige spent six years in a relationship with singer Cedric "K-Ci" Hailey of the R&B group Jodeci. During a 1995 interview on the UK television show The Word, Blige confirmed the two were engaged; Hailey denied that they were going to get married. Their turbulent relationship inspired Blige's album My Life. Following her break-up with Hailey, Blige developed a relationship with singer Case, which dwindled due to his involvement with other women. She also briefly dated rapper Nas.
Blige married her manager, Martin "Kendu" Isaacs, on December 7, 2003. At the time, Isaacs had two children, Nas and Jordan, with his first wife, and an older daughter, Briana, from a teenage relationship. In July 2016, Blige filed for divorce, citing "irreconcilable differences". Blige and Isaacs' divorce was finalized on June 21, 2018.
Blige is a Democrat and performed for Barack Obama at the 2012 Democratic National Convention.
..... She is also a childfree person, proclaiming in a February 2022 interview with E! News, "I have nieces and nephews forever, and I'm always watching how people are scrambling around for babysitters. I don’t want to go through that. I like my freedom. I like being able to get up and go and move and do what I want to do."
Blige is a close friend to Taraji P. Henson, Missy Elliott, Simone Smith (wife of rapper LL Cool J), and fashion stylists June Ambrose and Misa Hylton, as well as former radio personality Angie Martinez, whose son, Niko Ruffin, is Blige's godson.
Other ventures
Blige has had endorsement contracts with Reebok, Air Jordan, Pepsi, Coca-Cola, Gap, Target, American Express, AT&T Inc., M·A·C, Apple Inc., Burger King and Chevrolet. She has also been a spokesperson for Carol's Daughter beauty products and Citibank's Citi Card program (alongside Nickelback).
In 2004, Blige launched her own record label, Matriarch Records, distributed through Interscope. In 2012, she discovered girl group Just'Us, making the group the first ladies of the label. At the time, Blige said, "These are my little Mary's; they each remind me of myself at different points in my life." Blige was reportedly working with the group on their debut album, but it never materialized, and Just'Us has since disbanded.
In 2009, Blige's production company, along with William Morris Endeavor, was working on several TV and film projects.
In July 2010, in partnership with the Home Shopping Network (HSN) and Carol's Daughter, Blige launched her first perfume, My Life (through Carol's Daughter), exclusively on HSN. The fragrance broke HSN sales records in hours, by selling 50,000 bottles during its premiere, and has been awarded two prestigious FIFI awards from the Fragrance Foundation, including the "Fragrance Sales Breakthrough" award. In August 2011, another scent called My Life Blossom was launched exclusively to HSN.
In October 2010, Blige released "Melodies by MJB", a line of sunglasses. The first Melodies collection featured four styles with a total of 20 color options. Each style represented a specific facet of Blige's life. In the spring of 2011, Essence magazine reported that "Melodies by MJB" had extended their collection to offer more styles.
In late 2020, Blige and her close friend, Simone Johnson-Smith, a cancer survivor and wife of rapper LL Cool J, co-founded Sister Love, a jewelry line for women. Blige also announced the 2019 formation of a film and television production label, Blue Butterfly Productions. On December 16, 2022, the label signed a first-look lucrative deal with BET for scripted and non-scripted content; its first under the partnership was Blige's talk show, The Wine Down with Mary J. Blige, which premiered in early 2023.
She has founded two companies: Mary Jane Productions, which she co-founded with her former manager, Steve Stoute, in 1994, and an independent record label, Beautiful Life Productions, in 2023. She signed Boyz II Men affiliate group, WanMor to the former in August 2023 and New York rapper Vado to the latter in May 2024.
Legacy
Main article: List of awards and nominations received by Mary J. Blige
Called the "Queen of Hip-Hop Soul", Blige is credited with influencing the musical marriage of hip hop and R&B. Ethan Brown of The New Yorker says that albums "What's the 411?" and "My Life", in hindsight, invented "the sample-heavy sound that reinvigorated R&B radio and became a blueprint for nineties hip-hop and R&B". Tom Horan of The Daily Telegraph comments that Blige, being an immensely influential figure in popular music, "invented what is now called R&B by successfully combining female vocals with muscular hip hop rhythm tracks. All over the world, that recipe dominates today's charts." Called one of the "most explosive, coming-out displays of pure singing prowess" and "one of the most important albums of the nineties", What's the 411? saw Blige pioneer "the movement that would later become neo soul, generating gripping songs that were also massive radio hits".
African American scholars have noted the implications of Blige's presentation and representation of black womanhood and femininity in the typically male-dominated and centric sphere of hip hop. Blending the vocal techniques of rapping in hip hop with aspirational messages in R&B, Blige is credited with articulating black women's experiences in a "more factual and objective" manner than typical stereotypes and tropes of black women in the media. With particular attention on her single "Real Love", critics note how the song is "a performative text, declaratively demand[ing] recognition of Blige's full humanity and, more broadly, that of hip-hop-generation women."
Blige has received notable awards and achievements. In 2010, she was ranked 80th on VH1's list of the 100 Greatest Artist of All Time. Blige was listed as one of the 50 most influential R&B singers by Essence. In 2003, Rolling Stone magazine ranked My Life at number 279 on its list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. The album was also included on Time's list of the 100 Greatest albums of All Time. In 2020, both What's the 411? and My Life were featured in a rebooted list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, at 271 and 126 respectively. Alternately called the "Queen of R&B" for her success in the realm of R&B, Blige has amassed ten number one albums on the R&B/Hip Hop Albums chart . Blige is also the only artist to have won Grammys in the R&B, hip hop, pop, and gospel fields.
Blige and her work have influenced several recording artists, including Beyoncé, Adele, Taylor Swift, Monica, Layton Greene, Keyshia Cole, Bryson Tiller, Cheryl, Teyana Taylor Keke Palmer, Jess Glynne, Sam Smith, and Alexandra Burke.
As an actress, Blige received the Breakthrough Performance Award at the 2018 Palm Springs International Film Festival for her role in Mudbound.
In 2020, Kamala Harris, the first Black and South Asian female Vice President-elect on a major party, walked out to "Work That" at the 2020 Democratic National Convention, campaign events (including her own presidential campaign), and her victory speech.
Discography
Main article: Mary J. Blige discography
Studio albums
What's the 411? (1992)
My Life (1994)
Share My World (1997)
Mary (1999)
No More Drama (2001)
Love & Life (2003)
The Breakthrough (2005)
Growing Pains (2007)
Stronger with Each Tear (2009)
My Life II... The Journey Continues (Act 1) (2011)
A Mary Christmas (2013)
The London Sessions (2014)
Strength of a Woman (2017)
Good Morning Gorgeous (2022)
Tours
Headlining
Share My World Tour (1997–98)
The Mary Show Tour (2000)
No More Drama Tour (2002)
Love & Life Tour (2004)
The Breakthrough Experience Tour (2006)
Growing Pains European Tour (2008)
Love Soul Tour (2008)
Music Saved My Life Tour (2010–11)
The London Sessions Tour (2015)
Strength of a Woman Tour (2017)
Good Morning Gorgeous Tour (2022)
Co-headlining
Heart of the City Tour (with Jay-Z) (2007)
The Liberation Tour (with D'Angelo) (2012–13)
King and Queen of Hearts World Tour (with Maxwell) (2016)
The Royalty Tour (with Nas) (2019)
Supporting
Humpin' Around the World Tour (with Bobby Brown) (1992–1993)
Filmography
Main article: Mary J. Blige videography
Film
Year Title Role Notes 2001 Prison Song Mrs. Butler 2009 I Can Do Bad All by Myself Tanya 2010 Chico and Rita - (voice) 2012 Rock of Ages Justice Charlier 2013 Betty & Coretta Dr. Betty Shabazz TV movie Black Nativity Angel 2014 Champs Herself 2015 The Wiz Live! Evillene TV movie 2017 Mudbound Florence Jackson 2018 Sherlock Gnomes Irene (voice) 2020 Trolls World Tour Queen Essence (voice) Body Cam Renee Lomito-Smith The Violent Heart Nina Pink Skies Ahead Doctor Monroe 2021 Respect Dinah Washington 2024 Rob Peace Jackie Peace
Television
Year Title Role Notes 1992 Soul Train Herself Episode: "Al Jarreau/Mary J. Blige/Pete Rock & C.L. Smooth" In Living Color Herself Episode: "Men on Cooking" Out All Night Herself Episode: "Smooth Operator" The Uptown Comedy Club Herself Episode: "Episode #1.11" 1992-01 Showtime at the Apollo Herself Recurring Guest 1993 MTV Unplugged Herself Episode: "Uptown Unplugged" 1993-06 Saturday Night Live Herself Recurring Guest 1995 New York Undercover Herself Guest Cast: Seasons 1-2 1997 All That Herself Episode: "Mary J. Blige" 1997-06 Top of the Pops Herself Recurring Guest 1998 The Jamie Foxx Show Ola Mae Episode: "Papa Don't Preach" 1999 Moesha Herself Episode: "Good Vibrations?" 2000 The Greatest Herself Episode: "100 Greatest Rock & Roll Moments on TV" 2001 Behind the Music Herself Episode: "Sean 'P. Diddy' Combs" Journeys in Black Herself Episode: "Patti LaBelle" Access Granted Herself Episode: "Mary J. Blige: Family Affair" Strong Medicine Simone Fellows Episode: "History" 2001-04 Intimate Portrait Herself Recurring Guest 2002 The Nick Cannon Show Herself Episode: "Nick Takes Over Music" 2005 Soul Deep: The Story of Black Popular Music Herself Episode: "From Ghetto to Fabulous" Access Granted Herself Episode: "Lil Kim: Lighters Up" 2006 The Life & Rhymes of... Herself Episode: "Mary J. Blige" Dancing with the Stars Herself Episode: "Final Results" 2006-08 One Life to Live Herself Recurring Cast 2006-12 American Idol Herself Recurring Guest 2007 Classic Albums Herself Episode: "Jay Z: Reasonable Doubt" America's Next Top Model Herself Episode: "The Girl Who Gets a Mango" Ghost Whisperer Jackie Boyd Episode: "Mean Ghost" Entourage Herself Episode: "Gary's Desk" 2008 Live from Abbey Road Herself Episode: "Episode #2.1" Dancing with the Stars Herself Episode: "Round 6: Results" Imagine Herself Episode: "Jay-Z: He Came, He Saw, He Conquered" 2009 Extreme Makeover: Home Edition Herself Episode: "Ward Family" So You Think You Can Dance Herself Episode: "Finale: Winner Announced" 30 Rock Herself Episode: "Kidney Now!" 2011 The Marriage Ref Herself Episode: "Episode #2.4" & "#2.5" 2011-13 The X Factor USA Herself Episode: "Episode #1.22" & "#3.26" 2012 Life After Herself Episode: "Andre Harrell" Tamar & Vince Herself Episode: "Meet the Herberts" Great Performances Herself Episode: "Rod Stewart: Merry Christmas, Baby" The Voice Herself/Adviser Recurring Adviser: Season 3 2013 The X Factor UK Herself Episode: "Episode #10.12" & "#10.26" 2015 Lip Sync Battle Herself Episode: "Terrence Howard vs. Taraji P. Henson, Part 1" The Voice Herself/Adviser Episode: "The Battles Premiere" Empire Angie Episode: "Sins of the Father" Black-ish Mirabelle Chalet Episode: "Pops' Pops' Pops" 2016 Inside the Label Herself Episode: "Uptown Records, Part I & II" How to Get Away with Murder Ro Guest Star: Season 3 2019 The Umbrella Academy Cha-Cha Main Cast: Season 1 Scream: Resurrection Sherry Elliot Recurring Cast: Season 3 2020 Peace of Mind with Taraji Herself Episode: "Episode 3, Part 1: Holiday Blues with Mary J. Blige" 2020- Power Book II: Ghost Monet Stewart Tejada Main Cast 2021 The ... Questionnaire Herself Episode: "Mary J. Blige" Celebrity IOU: Joyride Herself Episode: "Don't Go Ham" 2022 Earnin' It Herself Main Guest Lost Ollie Rosy (voice) Main Cast 2023 The Wine Down with Mary J. Blige Herself/Host Main Host
Documentary
Year Title Notes 2001 It's Only Rock and Roll 2004 Urban Soul: The Making of Modern R&B Mary J. Blige: Queen of Hip Hop Soul Fade to Black 2005 All We Are Saying 2010 Teenage Paparazzo 2011 Beats, Rhymes & Life: The Travels of A Tribe Called Quest 2012 Be Inspired: The Life of Heavy D 2017 Can't Stop, Won't Stop: A Bad Boy Story Welcome to My Life George Michael Freedom 2018 Quincy 2021 Mary J. Blige's My Life 2023 Thriller 40
See also
In Spanish: Mary J. Blige para niños
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correct_birth_00056
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FactBench
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2
| 74
|
https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/mary-j-blige-real-love-191009097.html
|
en
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Mary J. Blige’s “Real Love” Slammed With Copyright Infringement Lawsuit
|
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https://s.yimg.com/ny/api/res/1.2/0Rc_92FemP5AVfw1g3AEQg--/YXBwaWQ9aGlnaGxhbmRlcjt3PTEyMDA7aD02NzM-/https://media.zenfs.com/en/vibe_128/16f776a752df189686de04deb9dbdb3c
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[
""
] | null |
[
"Mya Abraham"
] |
2024-04-08T19:10:09+00:00
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The hit record reportedly features unlicensed usage of a widely-sampled 1973 funk song.
|
en
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https://s.yimg.com/rz/l/favicon.ico
|
Yahoo Entertainment
|
https://www.vibe.com/music/music-news/mary-j-blige-real-love-copyright-infringement-lawsuit-1234868254/
|
Universal Music Group (UMG) has been hit with a copyright infringement lawsuit over Mary J. Blige’s 1992 classic, “Real Love.” Blige was not named in the lawsuit nor was she accused of any wrongdoing.
In the lawsuit filed by Tuff City Records in Manhattan federal court on Thursday (April 4), it’s been alleged that “Real Love” features an unlicensed sample of The Honey Dippers’ 1973 hit, “Impeach the President,” which had been sampled before in several Hip-Hop and R&B records, including J. Cole’s “Wet Dreamz,” Nas’ “I Can,” LL Cool J’s “Around The Way Girl,” and most recently, Doja Cat’s “Can’t Wait.”
Hillel Parness, an attorney representing the label, said in the complaint that they have “advised defendant repeatedly of the presence of the uncleared sample” in Blige’s “Real Love,” but UMG has not rectified the matter.
Parness added, “Defendant has repeatedly refused to engage plaintiff in substantive negotiations to rectify the foregoing, let alone agreed to compensate Plaintiff for the past infringement or on an ongoing basis.”
However, Tuff City claims that UMG Recordings—a UMG subsidiary and owner of the “Real Love” master—reached an agreement regarding the uncleared sample, but UMG has not.
Over the past 15 years, Tuff City has sued regarding uncleared samples or interpolations in songs from JAY-Z to Frank Ocean and more. In 2014, a judge dismissed their case regarding JAY-Z’s “Run This Town” after determining that the sample in question was “barely perceptible.” In 2018, Tuff City was ordered to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees to the Beastie Boys, who felt it was a case “clearly without merit.”
Tuff City first sued over an improper usage of “Impeach the President” back in 1991, claiming Marley Marl had illegally sampled the record on LL Cool J’s “Around The Way Girl” and “Six Minutes of Pleasure.”
It set precedence in Hip-Hop regarding sampling because up until then, rap artists rarely sought out proper licensing for their recordings. The case was later settled on confidential terms.
More from VIBE.com
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correct_birth_00056
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FactBench
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1
| 21
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https://www.postandcourier.com/charleston_scene/latest_headlines/mary-j-blige-the-queen-of-hip-hop-soul-still-seeks-to-inspire/article_d5d35c6d-5e85-5a63-b6d6-f25857b006a4.html
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en
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Mary J. Blige The 'Queen of Hip-Hop Soul' still seeks to inspire
|
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[
"Stratton Lawrence Special to The Post and Courier"
] |
2013-06-25T20:00:00
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Although she stands among the most successful and celebrated R&B singers of all time, Mary J. Blige is no stranger to adversity.
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https://www.postandcourier.com/content/tncms/site/icon.ico
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Post and Courier
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https://www.postandcourier.com/charleston_scene/latest_headlines/mary-j-blige-the-queen-of-hip-hop-soul-still-seeks-to-inspire/article_d5d35c6d-5e85-5a63-b6d6-f25857b006a4.html
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Although she stands among the most successful and celebrated R&B singers of all time, Mary J. Blige is no stranger to adversity.
Since her debut at age 21 with 1992’s “What’s the 411?” Blige has inflected her songs with raw emotion, drawing from both the joys and deep lows in her life. That first album sold 3 million copies and was followed by “My Life,” which immediately went to the top of the Billboard R&B charts.
But for Blige, the rise to being labeled the “Queen of Hip-Hop Soul” wasn’t always pretty. From an incident of sexual abuse as a young child to the departure of her father at age 9, the singer didn’t grow up with an idyllic childhood.
Her big break came after she sang a version of Anita Baker’s “Caught Up in the Rapture” at a mall recording booth, which her mother’s boyfriend passed to an artist on the Uptown Records label, which made the teenage Blige their youngest and first female artist.
Despite her success, Blige still subjected herself to abusive relationships and reliance on cocaine and alcohol, ultimately leading to extended bouts of depression. It wasn’t until the turn of the century that she began to permanently put her most serious internal struggles behind her.
The single “Family Affair” from her 2001 album “No More Drama” became her best-known song to date, and in 2003, she wed her husband, who now manages her career.
“When you’re trying to do the right thing in your life, you do the best you can do and be the best you can be, but there are always going to be trials and tribulations and opposition,” says Blige, on the phone from her home in New Jersey before departing on the final leg of her Liberation Tour, which visits the North Charleston Coliseum on Friday.
“I just want to encourage people to realize that they’re not the only one out their bustling, and just to be strong and keep going and keep moving.”
In 2011, Blige released “My Life II ... The Journey Continues (Act 1)” as a sequel to the original “My Life.”
Calling upon friends such as Drake, Nas and Busta Rhymes to contribute rhymes and vocals, the album runs the gamut from hip-hop (“Feel Inside”) to an arena-style electronic anthem (“Next Level”) that doesn’t require a remix to move a club full of dancers.
“Someone to Love Me (Naked),” featuring Diddy and Lil Wayne, sounds like classic soul/hip-hop Blige, while “The Living Proof” (included in the film “The Help”) plays more like a stripped down folk/soul song, embodying Blige’s self-identity as an example of how anyone can reach their full potential.
“When I first went into the studio to work on ‘My Life II,’ it occurred to me how strong I’ve become since then,” Blige says in a press release for the album. “What has made me strong is not just the joy and great things happening in my life but the trials and difficulties that cause you to want to move out of that uncomfortable place to get to the next stage. With the first ‘My Life’ album, I didn’t have that understanding. I just did not know why I was suffering so bad, why I was hurting.”
The inspiration to persevere is what Blige hopes fans will walk away from her concerts with: “Don’t give up on yourself, no matter what anyone says,” Blige implores. “If I can do it, you can do it. It’s not going to be easy, but don’t give up. That’s it.”
That’s a message Blige herself is taking to heart. She’s been back in the headlines for more than just her music this spring, due to money problems that include more than $3 million the IRS claims she owes in back taxes, and a lawsuit with banks over unpaid loans topping $2 million.
“ ‘Don’t give up on yourself’ is basically a theme of my life right now. Just keep going,” says Blige.
At her career’s onset, Blige served as a gritty, urban counterpart to the sleeker images of divas, including Mariah Carey and Janet Jackson.
A partnership with producer Sean “Puffy” Combs, now Diddy, on her first two albums proved providential. The music mogul’s influence helped Blige to bridge the worlds of R&B and hip-hop, pioneering the merger of two genres and a sound that’s still a model for stars such as Rihanna and Beyonce.
She’s since refined her image into a sophisticated stateswoman of R&B. But even though her songs are generally happier today, she still revisits the emotions behind her early lyrics each time they’re performed.
“When I sing a song like ‘Not Gon’ Cry,’ it’s just like reliving that. I go back to that moment every time,” says Blige. “Then, with songs like ‘My Life,’ it takes on a whole new meaning now.”
The Liberation Tour digs deep into Blige’s catalog, pulling tracks from most of her 10 albums, including 1999’s “Mary” and 2001’s “No More Drama.”
“We just want people to have a good time,” says Blige. “I have so many albums and so many songs, and we do a lot of them. I want my fans to be happy, and I believe that they will be.”
Performing in the Lowcountry is a homecoming of sorts for Blige. Although she was born in the Bronx borough of New York, her family hails from Richmond Hill, Ga., just outside Savannah.
“My mother and my father both are from Georgia, and my grandparents lived in Richmond Hill and Fleming,” Blige explains. “It was going down there every summer that kind of molded our manners, you know? It gave us the ‘Yes, ma’ams’ and ‘No ma’ams’ and the Southern hospitality, and how to treat people.”
Blige’s grandfather was a minister in a Pentecostal church, and she grew up attending and singing there. Outside of that music, she recalls hearing acts including Parliament, the Brothers Johnson and the Ivory Brothers during her trips to Georgia. Back in New York, those influences mingled with hip-hop to shape her musical direction.
“New York made us really street smart and tough, but the musical influence came from both the North and the South and from my grandparents,” says Blige, also citing her father’s bass playing and a guitar-playing uncle that stood out to her as a child. “I got a good mixture. I am what you see, and I am all of those things, as far as music is concerned.”
For her next project, Blige plans to release a holiday album dubbed “A Mary Christmas” this fall, featuring singers such as Jennifer Lopez, Marc Anthony and even Barbra Streisand, with whom she duets a “jazzy version” of “When You Wish Upon a Star.”
She’s also at work on her next studio album of original material. Although the initial plan was to follow “My Life II” with an “Act 2,” she’s decided to take a new approach for the collection.
“We’re in the process of beginning that. I’ve already come up with the title and started writing songs,” says Blige, emphasizing that penning new lyrics doesn’t just happen spontaneously.
“You really have to focus on it,” she says of the songwriting process. “For me, I have to be living what I’m saying. I have to be around what I’m writing about. Sometimes if a word comes to mind, you have to type it down into your Blackberry or on a piece of paper so you don’t forget it, but that’s the only thing that happens on the fly. As far as writing goes, you have to concentrate to be in it.”
Even with ongoing challenges in her life, Blige claims that the themes of her newest songs are rooted in a “consistency of strength.”
“Plenty of people are struggling who are trying to do good and do right every day, but they get attacked, I guess by the way the world is,” says Blige. “I want to inspire people to keep their dreams alive and keep their hope alive, and I can do that through songs — through happy songs and through sad songs — as long as I let people know you’ve just got to keep going.”
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Happy 52nd birthday to iconic singer Mary J. Blige
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2024-01-08T18:11:49+00:00
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Today we wish a very happy birthday to legendary singer Mary J. Blige, born on January 11, 1971. A Bronx, New York native, Blige is a Grammy Award-winning singer, songwriter, and actress renowned for her groundbreaking contributions to the R&B and hip-hop genres. She emerged in the early 1990s as the “Queen of Hip-Hop Soul,” […]
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en
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SoulTracks
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https://soultracks.com/birthday-mary-j-blige-2024/
|
Today we wish a very happy birthday to legendary singer Mary J. Blige, born on January 11, 1971.
A Bronx, New York native, Blige is a Grammy Award-winning singer, songwriter, and actress renowned for her groundbreaking contributions to the R&B and hip-hop genres. She emerged in the early 1990s as the “Queen of Hip-Hop Soul,” blending soulful vocals with gritty urban beats to create a sound that resonated with a diverse audience.
Blige’s 1992 debut album, What’s the 411? catapulted her to stardom, featuring hits like “Real Love” and “You Remind Me.” Her raw and emotive singing style, coupled with her introspective lyrics, set her apart in the music industry. Subsequent albums, including My Life (1994) and Share My World (1997), solidified her status as an artist who spoke to her audience in personal vulnerable ways that created incredibly close artist-fan bonds.
Known for infusing her personal experiences into her music, Blige’s work often explores themes of love, heartbreak, and empowerment. Her powerful, soul-stirring performances have earned her a basketful of Grammys, numerous career awards and an incredibly loyal following. Now more than 15 albums into her illustrious career, Mary J. Blige shows no signs of stopping. Happy Birthday!
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