Mary J. Blige said her early success came with a steep learning curve when it came to money and contracts.
On Wednesday’s episode of the “IMO” podcast, the singer said her lack of financial knowledge left her vulnerable early in her career.
“We signed a contract in the kitchen, on the washing machine. My mom didn’t know anything. She didn’t even know anything about reading a contract, nor did we care,” Blige told podcast hosts Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson.
Having grown up in poverty in the housing projects of Yonkers, New York, Blige said all she and her mother could think about was that they were “getting out of here.”
To them, whatever the contract contained was better than their circumstances at the time.
Looking back, Blige said she wasn’t equipped to understand the financial side of the music business. She hadn’t finished high school or gone to college, and knew little about contracts.
“I didn’t know how much money I had. I didn’t know when I was broke or whatever,” Blige said.
She added that she put her trust in people she later realized she couldn’t trust.
“I don’t want to start labeling things, but everybody was looking out for themselves, and they were benefiting off of the fact that I was unaware,” she said. “And that happened for a long time.”
Blige, now 55, said her mindset began to shift around the time she released her 2001 album, “No More Drama.”
She realized she needed to better understand her business, but also take responsibility for her own mistakes. Blige said she used to “get upset and curse everybody out” when things didn’t go as planned, such as when a record didn’t sell.
“I was ignorant of a lot of things and blamed it on everybody else,” she said.
Blige said she has learned from the experience and now makes sure she understands the business decisions around her. “I’ve never been afraid to say I need help, and I’ve never been afraid to say I don’t know,” she said.
To this day, she turns to her lawyers and people who have her best interests at heart to help her understand anything she’s unsure about.
Blige said her experience has also shaped the advice she gives others about money.
“Get your education. Take some accounting classes, some business school, do something,” she said.
Blige has spoken openly about the financial difficulties she’s faced over the years.
In 2023, Blige said she had once owed “hundreds of millions of dollars” in unpaid taxes and feared she would never get out of debt. She said she was debt-free by then and had gained the financial wisdom to better manage her money.
“My taxes are not my money, so I’m like, ‘Pay my payroll, pay my taxes, pay my tithes.’ All of that money, I don’t even wanna see it because it doesn’t belong to me,” she said.
Other celebrities have similarly opened up about having to learn how to manage money after their careers took off.
In a 2017 interview with Business Insider, Shaq O’Neal described receiving his first $1 million at age 20 and immediately spending it as though the full amount were his, without accounting for taxes or agent fees.
“It was me being overly happy-slash-irresponsible,” he said.
In 2024, Chris Pratt says he blew through $75,000 in two months after getting his first big paycheck. “I didn’t know what to do with money. It was like, it would come in, I would spend it,” Pratt said.
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