Blige, Mary Jane (1971– )

US hip hop and R&B singer, songwriter, and producer. Inspiring future artists with her combination of modern R&B and gritty street rap, she became popular during the 1990s on both the R&B and pop charts.

Her debut album What's the 411? (1992) went straight to number one in the R&B charts, and her follow-up album My Life (1995) cemented her position as an R&B star. Both albums were produced by Sean ‘Puffy’ Combs. Her later albums, Share My World (1997), Mary (1999), No More Drama (2001), Love and Life (2003), The Breakthrough (2006), and Growing Pains (2007), had more of a classically soul sound. The Breakthrough won three Grammy Awards, including best R&B song for the single ‘Be Without You’. She also collaborated on the soundtrack of the Whitney Houston film Waiting to Exhale (1995).

Blige was born in the Bronx, New York, and after a few years in Savanna, Georgia, grew up from the age of five in a notoriously rough housing project in Yonkers, New York. She sang for her church choir throughout her childhood. A demo tape made in a local shopping mall earned her notice from Uptown Records at the age of 17, where Combs, then a rising star himself, helped hone her voice and image. Early in her career she became known as the ‘Queen of Hip-Hop Soul’. Her own label Matriarch Records is distributed through Geffen records.