stories and histories BIOGRAPHY OF MARY J. BLIGE

Adeyemi Olajide » Biography of Mary J. Blige

Mary J. Blige (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.

Blige was born in Fordham Hospital in the borough of the Bronx, New York City. 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.

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; she become the company's youngest and first female artist.

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?(1992) was an indication by Blige of being the "real deal". 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 & Jopan 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. With the album, she was dubbed the reigning "Queen of Hip Hop Soul."

Blige's other successful albums include: My Life(1994), Share My World(1997), Mary(1999), No More Drama(2001), Love & Life(2002), The Breakthrough(2005), Reflections A Retrospective(2006), and Growing Pains(2007).

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 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. In February of 2023, Mariah Carey released an EP of her song It's a Wrap which featured Marys remix of the track.

ACTING CAREER

In 1998, Blige made her acting debut on the sitcom The Jamie Foxx Show. She also appeared on Strong Medicine, Ghost Whisperer, Entourage, Mudbound, I Can Do Bad All by Myself, musical Rock of Ages, Off-Broadway play The Exonerated, the Lifetime movie Betty and Coretta, Evillene, the Wicked Witch of the West in NBC's The Wiz Live!, The Umbrella Academy, Power Book II: Ghost, and Respect.

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