What was Mary J. Blige like before she was crowned the hip-hop queen of soul?
And how has she changed from her early days?
This is the stunning transformation of Mary J. Blige.
Mary J. Blige certainly wasn't born with a silver spoon in her mouth.
Blige was raised in the public housing projects in Yonkers, New York, mostly by a single mother.
She shared in a 2018 interview with Vulture,
"I always forget to mention that my dad is a Vietnam vet.
So by the time I was born, he was out of Vietnam, but he wasn't all the way there.
I guess him leaving us at an early age was a part of him wanting to escape a lot of things."
But despite the hardships that come with poverty, Blige was an avid fan of music, which helped
her to shape her identity.
She told the Guardian in 2017,
"Everything was about how you look.
Although you didn't have, it was about how you looked.
So when Salt-N-Pepa had the blond hair, it was about that, it was about the sneakers,
it was about the jackets.
Then I became Mary J Blige, and it was really about that."
And that's how it all began.
With her father gone and her single mother working as a nurse for long hours, Mary J.
Blige and one of her sisters were left to their own devices in the projects.
That wasn't exactly the safest of scenarios, as Blige once told Oprah Winfrey.
Blige told the talk show host that she was targeted by a family friend and became a survivor
of childhood sexual abuse at a very young age.
This experience led her to later turn to drugs and alcohol for comfort, in order to block
out what had happened to her.
She once told the Hollywood Reporter,
"I just wanted to forget that episode from five, and then I wanted to forget what happened
at nine, and then I wanted to forget what happened at 16.
And then I wanted to forget everything that just kept happening."
"It took me a very long time to even wear make-up and tight clothes, because, y'know,
I'd been through so much."
If you or anyone you know has been a victim of sexual assault, help is available.
Visit the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network website or contact RAINN's National Helpline
at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673).
In addition to dealing with the trauma of sexual abuse and the weight of poverty, Mary
J. Blige also struggled to connect with her family members.
She revealed in an interview with Oprah Magazine,
"When I was a girl, relatives teased me about my feet, my lips, my butt, the way I walked.
They said, 'You'll never finish high school.'
And I wanted them to love me so much."
She added that she would do whatever she could to get their approval, such as smoke a cigarette
for attention, but Blige never found real connection.
Because of all of the stress in Blige's life, she wound up cultivating a defensive attitude
in order to cope with her surroundings.
She also struggled to find academic success, despite her best efforts.
She told the magazine,
"Before I dropped out of high school, the principal once asked me why I'd gotten in
trouble.
I said, 'Because I don't take no s--t.'
One night earlier, I'd heard my mother say that very sentence — and it was that attitude
that later destroyed me."
While there was indeed a lot of chaos in Mary J. Blige's young life, underneath it all,
there was raw talent and a deep love of music.
By the time Blige was 7 years old, she had already won a talent show, in which she sang
an Aretha Franklin song, according to Vulture.
But that was the beginning of her now-legendary musical journey.
Then, when Blige was 17 years old, she went to the mall and recorded herself singing Anita
Baker.
This was long before there were cell phones and YouTube, so getting yourself out there
was much trickier than it is today.
But as luck would have it, the tape made its way into the hands of her mother's boyfriend,
who passed it onto a co-worker who had a deal with Uptown Records.
The record company was impressed with what they heard, and, shortly thereafter, they
signed Blige with a record deal of her own.
On the heels of getting signed to Uptown Records, Mary J. Blige quickly caught the attention
of one of the most in-demand producers around: Sean Combs, aka Puff Daddy.
Right away he could tell she wasn't the usual diva, as she had tomboyish ways and a genuine
backstory, and he knew she was going to be a star.
She told Vulture,
"What I loved about Puff is he immediately saw [me].
I mean, instead of a tight dress, he put a baggy Armani suit on me with some Teflon boots."
Combs didn't let Blige rest on her laurels, either, as he pushed her to be her best.
Blige added,,
"I was never as ambitious as he is.
He wanted it so much more.
And so because he would push, I would push.
I was a dreamer and wanted things, but I never was as ambitious as Puff."
Still, the collaboration proved to be a success, as her debut album was born of those sessions.
And what a debut it was.
On July 22, 1992, Mary J. Blige released her debut album, "What's the 411?."
By all metrics, it was a massive success, with several hit singles like "Real Love,"
"You Remind Me," "Love No Limit," and "Reminisce."
Selling 3 million copies, "What's the 411?"
also catapulted Blige into super stardom, and it cemented her as hip hop's newest "It"
girl.
But while the album was a game changer for the hip hop industry, Blige didn't realize
it at the time.
She told NPR,
"I wasn't conscious that I was doing something different in that moment.
I just knew that I loved hip-hop and R&B, and I was doing what I loved.
And I didn't realize what we had done 'til later, like 'Wow, we created a whole genre
of music.'"
Blige also had a hard time adjusting to newfound fame, and she self-medicated with drugs and
alcohol to handle both her celebrity and her past.
Still, there's no doubt that the music she was making was phenomenal.
Two years after releasing "What's the 411?," Mary J. Blige dropped her second album, "My
Life."
With Sean Combs at her side and her love life in shambles, Blige summoned all of that pain
and channeled it into her music, the result being an R&B masterpiece.
Blige posted about the album on Instagram in 2019, writing,
"I didn't know what it would do or how successful it would be.
I was in so much pain and was ready to check out and I know I needed to say these things
to get them off my chest."
The album was a smashing success, dominating the charts and connecting Blige to fans who
found release in her songwriting.
Blige added on Instagram,
"I released this album to the world and it opened the doors to people who were in pain
just like me.
It touched so many people's lives in the world and it gave me confirmation that I wasn't
alone."
All in all, "My Life" spent eight weeks at the top of the charts, had a number of hit
singles, and helped crown Blige the hip hop queen of soul.
On December 7, 2003, it looked like Mary J. Blige had finally found the real love she'd
been looking for when she married record producer Kendu Isaacs, who also became her manager,
as noted by People magazine.
The couple married in a low-key ceremony at her home in New Jersey, with only 50 people
in attendance and a family-prepared, home-cooked feast.
The pair even skipped out on a honeymoon, as they were preparing to go on tour for Blige's
sixth studio album, "Love & Life."
After that, Blige appeared to be happy and content, crediting her husband with helping
her cope with life and become a better person.
On an episode of "Behind the Music," she said that she "felt safe for the first time" with
Isaacs and "had never felt truly loved" before him.
Blige was also lifted out of a deep depression, and she found within herself a newfound strength.
And, for a while, all was well.
"I'm smart, I'm beautiful, I'm strong, I'm loved, I'm protected."
At some point along the way in her journey, Mary J. Blige made the decision to stop abusing
drugs and alcohol.
First came the realization that there's often a reason for abusing those substances.
She explained in an interview with Self,
"We numb ourselves with drugs and alcohol and people and shopping and s--t, to cover
up what's really going on inside.
You're taking drugs so you can go out and feel courageous, or go out and feel beautiful
or whatever.
You're doing it to cover up something."
Blige also began to realize that, if she kept going the way she was, it wasn't going to
end well for her.
She told the magazine,
"I've seen visions of what I would look like if I kept doing drugs.
If I saw myself almost dying, or if I almost died, or almost O.D.'d, why would I do that
again?"
"I cut it off, like, I stopped, immediately, when I realized that I could lose my voice
over this, I could lose my career over this."
Although Mary J. Blige's marriage to Kendu Isaacs had seemed so promising in the beginning,
Blige filed for divorce from him in 2016, after 13 years of marriage.
As Blige tells it, Isaacs was unfaithful to her, and the fallout from her marriage made
her cautious.
As it turned out, the solution for Blige wasn't to stew in her anger or to drown her sorrows.
Rather she took the high road and opted to cultivate peace.
She told Self,
"I had to forgive myself for being so stupid.
I had to forgive him for everything he did."
That's not to say that her relationship with Isaacs didn't scar her, however.
She confessed in an interview with Variety,
"I'm not happy about a lot of things.
I thought someone loved me, right?
Turns out, he was a con artist and he didn't, and now he's coming after me for all my money."
In 2017, the world finally got to see just how much of a talented actress Mary J. Blige
is when she starred in the film "Mudbound" as Florence Jackson.
And for the role, Blige had to have a natural look, something that was not easy for her
to do.
She told Vulture,
"I'm used to my nails now, and I'm addicted to lashes.
I'm Mary J. Blige.
I mean, like, this is what I do.
I wear wigs, I wear bob wigs."
In 2019, viewers of the Netflix original series "The Umbrella Academy" were pleasantly surprised
to see that Mary J. Blige had stepped into the role of Cha-Cha, a time-traveling assassin.
Blige spent a total of five months on set in Toronto to work on the series, inhabiting
a role that she was fascinated by.
She told GQ,
"[Cha-Cha] didn't have a conscience, she didn't care about anything.
She was very focused on what her job was — and that was to kill people."
In 2020, she starred in no less than four different projects.
In 2021, she played Dinah Washington in "Respect."
And from 2020 to 2021, she took on the role of Money in "Power Book II: Ghost," a crime
series on Starz.
As of February 2022, she is also set to appear in the animated series "Lost Ollie."
In February 2022, Mary J. Blige released a brand new album called "Good Morning Gorgeous."
But even though Blige has released plenty of music over the years, this album will be
brand new territory for her.
When asked about how she feels about her new album during an interview on the "Tamron Hall"
show, she replied,
"I'm not cocky, I'm not arrogant, but I earned the right to say some things.
I earned the right to say I feel amazing."
She went on to explain she couldn't reveal too many details about the content of the
album, but she did reveal it will "blow everybody's mind."
What with Mary J. Blige's acting roles and her new album, 2022 is shaping up to be a
pretty busy year for the singer — and as if all of that weren't enough, she's also
set to appear in a star-studded Super Bowl halftime show in February.
She will be appearing alongside other hip-hop legends such as Dr. Dre, Snoop Dog, Eminem,
and Kendrick Lamar.
For Blige, it marks not only an important moment in her career, but also an important
moment in the history of hip-hop.
She told ET Canada,
"Hip hop was never on that stage [...] This is hip-hop history."
In another interview on "Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen," Blige revealed that
she didn't feel too nervous about the appearance.
Plus, unlike her first Super Bowl appearance, this time, Blige confirmed that she will not
just be "in the background."
"I'm the Queen of Hip-Hop Soul."
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