100 Best Albums
- NOV 29, 1994
- 17 Songs
- No More Drama (Version 2) · 2001
- Share My World · 1997
- Share My World · 1995
- What's the 411? · 1992
- My Life (Bonus Track Version) · 1994
- The Breakthrough (Deluxe) · 2005
- Share My World · 1997
- My Life II...The Journey Continues (Act 1) [Deluxe] · 2011
- Growing Pains (Deluxe) · 2007
- Share My World · 1997
Essential Albums
- 1997’s Share My World marks the first major shift in Mary J. Blige’s career. She had switched labels, moved beyond the personal problems that plagued (and fueled) the recording of My Life, and come out from under the wing of Sean Combs, who had overseen her first two albums. Share My World features diverse contributions from some of the top minds of ‘90s R&B, and the album’s mood is considerably less downcast than My Life. The opening songs —“I Can Love You,” “Round and Round,” and “Share My World”— rise above the pain of old relationships, and focus instead on perseverance and optimism. Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis provide one of the album’s best tracks, “Everything,” a lush, hypnotic declaration of love. Despite Mary’s newfound optimism, her voice always provides undertones of sadness, even on the upbeat songs. Of course, that’s Blige’s great talent — she is too complex to portray human emotions in simple terms. The album’s closing song, “Not Goin’ Cry,” is a beautiful evocation of endurance that upholds strength without betraying a feeling of forlornness.
- With Mary J. Blige’s first album, What’s the 411?, the emerging “Queen of Hip-Hop Soul” had imbued diaristic R&B with a youthful hip-hop sensibility. For the follow-up, 1994’s career-defining My Life, the 23-year-old took it even more personal, drawing on her severe depression, struggles with drugs and alcohol, experiences with intimate partner violence, and the spiritual fortitude that carried her through it—all while trying to process her breakneck trajectory from a Yonkers housing project to worldwide fame. “I didn’t understand it then, because I didn’t feel like I was great in my heart,” she said in a 2021 documentary about the making of My Life. She cried in the recording booth making several of its songs, including “I Never Wanna Live Without You.” “It was pain and joy all at the same time,” she would later recall. “These are the things that I was feeling.” Chucky Thompson, scion of Bad Boy Records’ Hitmen production team, laced the beats with dapples of funk samples and street hits while Blige added gospel-informed grace and grit; the combination places this album among the best in her extensive discography. This aesthetic peaked on the sublime “My Life,” where she brings melancholy and reserved hope to a sample of Roy Ayers’ “Everybody Loves the Sunshine”; it’s also there on “I Love You” and “Mary Jane (All Night Long),” with their respective Isaac Hayes and Mary Jane Girls samples, and the Rose Royce cover “I’m Going Down.” But the album found its core in its penultimate track: “All I really want is to be happy,” Blige sang over a slap-bass nabbed from Curtis Mayfield’s “You’re So Good to Me.” “I don’t wanna have to worry about nothin’ no more.”
- Before What’s The 411? was released in 1992, commercial soul was largely saccharine—the polar opposite of the rugged hip-hop beats and gritty subject matter pioneered by Blige. Her throaty vocals ache with emotion on uptempo tunes like “Reminisce,” the plaintive new jack swing of “You Remind Me,” and the heart-on-its-sleeve modern soul classic “Real Love.” The combination of edgy street vibe with soaring melodies worked like coffee and cream, deservingly earning her the title Queen of Hip-Hop Soul.
Artist Playlists
- The Queen of Hip-Hop Soul is also the Duchess of Getting Your Groove Back.
- What's the 411?
- The R&B pioneers who inspired her reverential sound.
- You know the power ballads; now check the queen’s subtle side.
- From hits to deep cuts, breaking down the samples that inspired one of R&B’s most vital artists.
- A set of Mary’s strong, soulful, and self-empowering jams.
Live Albums
Appears On
- Waze & Odyssey & Tommy Theo
- Jacky Clark-Chisholm
- She was crowned Queen of Hip-Hop Soul for a reason.
- A master of emotion put hers all the way out there.
- The common denominator? Some So So Def magic.
- How to use that voice inside your head for good.
- Mary J. Blige’s life inspired her casting as Monet Tejada in 'Power.'
- The Queen of Hip-Hop Soul dances her way to her first No. 1.
- Nada in for Dotty, celebrating the Queen of Hip-Hop Soul.
About Mary J. Blige
Mary J. Blige is that rare singer who can channel your pain—and then drag you onto the dance floor to sweat it away. Dubbed the Queen of Hip-Hop Soul in the ’90s, Blige came off as tough and streetwise (unlike many of her contemporaries), and she could go toe to toe with rappers, including JAY Z, Method Man, and more recently Kendrick Lamar. Born Mary Jane Blige in the Bronx in 1971, Blige was raised mainly in Yonkers, NY, where she grew up listening to the greats: Aretha, Chaka, and Gladys Knight. Her voice is elastic, scrappy, and versatile, with more than a hint of world-weary grit, and when a chance recording of Anita Baker’s “Caught Up in the Rapture” came before Uptown Records execs in 1988, the label immediately snapped her up as its youngest (and first female) signee. She and Sean Combs crafted her 1992 debut, What’s the 411?, which spawned the ubiquitous and beloved jam “Real Love” and helped set the template for R&B’s marriage to hip-hop. Blige’s life was never separate from her art, and fans have followed her through addiction, marriage, divorce, and therapy, connecting with songs like “Not Gon’ Cry” and “No More Drama” out of deep identification: Here was an artist who sang women’s realities as they were almost never presented in popular music—and who always came out stronger. Mary (1999) saw her move toward a more classic sound, though 2001’s smash “Family Affair” swung back toward hip-hop; that fertile tension has remained in her music since. Even as she’s gone Hollywood (earning an Academy Award nomination for 2017’s Mudbound), Mary J. remains a model R&B diva who paved the way for myriad successors, including Beyoncé and Ariana Grande. In 2022, she performed an Apple Music Live session in New York.
- HOMETOWN
- Bronx, NY, United States
- BORN
- January 11, 1971
- GENRE
- R&B/Soul