There is no shame in vulnerability, she preached to a generation that liked to think itself bulletproof. She perched that pain on stiletto python boots and paraded it for the whole world to see. She was unafraid to go to those painful places, where mornings feel like they’re covered in a blanket of wet sand, where rejection and lies rip strong women to pieces. Mary's love of music has pointed her in the direction of new talent and kept her own sound in front of her own peers, helping to guide hip-hop itself.īut despite her singular occupation of a male-dominated art form, Mary has always concerned herself with love. 'She knows all the classic singers and MCs and not just their hits-she knows the B-sides.” It’s that musical knowledge that gives her ears an edge. 'She has a musical library in her head,' says Hank Shocklee, the legendary Public Enemy producer who Executive Produced her best-selling Share My World. his first ever official gig, blessing him with a few bars on her remix to “Real Love” when he was still a demo tape sensation, living in the back of his mom’s Bed-Stuy apartment. She learned to rap with Grand Puba, pushed the Lox out of Yonkers, she gave the Notorious B.I.G. Her early collabos flowed like duets-not guest spots.Ī cruise through her catalog and collaborations is a short cut to each era’s most important MCs. Mary spelled out her pain, the poverty that had shaped her childhood and the bankrupt way young men and women were attempting love in the hip-hop generation. Here was a singer who didn’t dress her personal struggles in a gown and give them vague euphemisms. There were girls in the game, but the testosterone was so dominant that b-girls still favored the safety of baggy jeans over corsets and camisoles.Įnter Mary J. Hardcore songs that in the past could’ve only hoped for jeep rotation were receiving regular spins in major radio markets. Sales were soaring, record labels were dedicating whole divisions to the evolving sound, and radio stations that had once boasted “hip-hop free zones” were flipping their formats. Sophisticates Luther Vandross and Anita Baker were carrying on in a time-honored tradition, Teddy Riley had created a niche with his swing beats, but hip-hop, already coming into its third generation, was staging a straight takeover. When “Real Love” hit the streets in the summer of ’92, R&B’s future was uncertain. Blige the Queen of Hip-Hop Soul it means so much more than her being a singer who flows over classic Awesome Two beats.

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