Mary J Blige is the Queen of hip-hop soul
Mary J Blige: Is her latest album her swansong? Hoefully not. Her latest album is ‘Gratitude’, and that’s what we owe her.
The new album is very much a back to basics affair, with Mary J Blige singing over hip-hop beats and featuring legendary rappers such as Jadakiss, Fabolous, Fat Joe and A$AP Ferg. It’s a formula that helped explode not only hip-hop but also r&b into the mainstream 30 years ago, and it’s worth ing Mary J Blige was the chief proponent of this style in an era which many young singers and rappers are still trying to recapture. Let’s take it back.
The early 90s were a revolutionary time in music. Hip-hop had moved out of its genesis state and into the mainstream and the likes of Run DMC, Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince, N.W.A., De La Soul, Salt N Pepa and others, had made inroads commercially as the 80s turned to the new decade. Big huge commercial stars like MC Hammer and Vanilla Ice suddenly had huge hits, but hip-hop found itself at a crossroads in the early 90s, and r&b was also about to change direction. New Jack Swing was the music of the day, and many of the best producers and artists were making some great music that also married hip-hop’s swagger with the soul of r&b. But it was Mary J Blige who really heralded the new generation.
This was an artist who brought the spirit of Chaka Khan directly to the hip-hop generation, and as the music tempos slowed down from the high energy of New Jack Swing, she was the artist who most helped combine that late 70s organic soul and jazz sensibility with a very forward thinking 90s vibe that involved the best players of the day. Her early work on Uptown records ushered in this new wave with the stunning “What’s the 411” album, which remains one of the best r&b albums of any decade. The subsequent remix album went further in marrying hip-hop and r&b, and it helped bring the legendary Biggie Smalls further into the mainstream too, while “My Life” in 1994 took her career even further, with Mary J Blige now writing most of her own tracks too.
She had teamed up with powerful Sean Combs Bad Boy camp at this stage, and while the disgraced music mogul often takes most of the credit for the production, his Hitmen team created incredible music for Mary in an era where she became the undisputed Queen of a rapidly rising soul and r&b movement. By this time, many youngsters had come on the scene, and Aaliyah, Brandy, Usher, Monica and many others were all hugely influenced by Mary J Blige, who’s sound dominated the 90s.
Mary was not only a victim of abuse as a child, but she also later struggled with alcohol and drug addiction, plus an abusive relationship, and she poured her struggles into some powerful lyrics which continued to resonate beyond the 90s into the numerous albums that followed. The music occasionally went in and out of fashion, but Mary J Blige always remained consistent, and even her most recent albums have a few wonderful nuggets. Perhaps her biggest hit, “Family Affair”, in the early 2000s, remains one of the biggest r&b club jams of all time, and as always, it showed that Mary could work with the hottest producers of any era, (this time Dr Dre and his team), and it’s a pattern that continues right up until today. On the new album Kaytranada provides a banger called “Beautiful People”.
From a personal point of view Mary J Blige provided my own soundtrack as a DJ over the years too. I started DJing around the time of “What’s the 411” and she supplied many of the bangers which soundtracked the back bar of Sir Henry’s through the 90s and beyond. It was apt that when our time in Sir Henry’s came to an end in November 2001, “Family Affair” was the biggest tune of the time, and “You Remind me” was the last track I played there. On radio and in clubs, I owe Mary J Blige a massive gratitude, and if it is her last album, I’d like to thank her for an amazing career!
