While What’s The 411 put Mary J. Blige on the map, you could argue that My Life made her a superstar. Her sophomore effort was deeply intimate and revealing, allowing fans to know her more personally. She wasn’t just a woman who could churn out great hits. She had gone through a lot of pain and grief to get to that point in 1994. It’s that trauma that made fans connect with her so deeply, relating to the stories Blige was telling.
However, we’re also lucky that the Queen of Hip-Hop Soul was able to make it through at all. In a 2021 conversation with Billboard, Mary J. Blige candidly admitted that she didn’t want to be alive during the making of My Life. Only years later was she able to find the beauty in her struggle.
“It is a lot of pain in it, but it’s pain now that’s translated into joy,” she told the publication. “We’re living to tell this story. There’s a time that I didn’t want to live. I hated myself. I didn’t think anything of myself. But the beauty is that I lived to tell the story, and now I don’t hate myself. I’ve developed some love for myself. And it’s helped so many people, and they’re living to tell the story.”
Mary J. Blige Opens up About The Struggles She Went Through While Making Her Classic ‘My Life’
Nowadays, it’s been important for Blige to care for her inner child. During the interview, she talked about being a part of the Amazon Prime documentary for the album. Director Vanessa Roth used animation to depict a 6-year-old version of the singer taking in the Roy Ayers classic “Everybody Loves The Sunshine”. It’s that song that inspired the making of My Life, and the visuals depict how the song made her feel.
“The little girl spinning represents how I felt as a little girl. You don’t understand the pain you’re in or going through until you’re older,” Mary J. Blige explained. “So now looking back, it’s like, ‘Wow.’ The spinning represented a little girl just going through so many things, watching her mother struggle, and trying to raise them.
“And she’s carrying her pain, carrying the neighbor’s pain, the women that were being beaten in the apartment next door,” she continued. “And she’s just a little girl trying to handle all this stuff. Imagine a little kid trying to weather all of these storms.”
Ultimately, Mary J. Blige never found that true piece of mind until after her 2005 album The Breakthrough. Even then, though, it wasn’t perfect. Her marriage to her former manager, Kendu Isaacs, got rocky, and they filed for divorce in 2016. Blige noted that only by that point did she start to see the beauty and value in herself.
The post Mary J. Blige Reflects on Making an Album When She ‘Didn’t Want to Live,’ Turning That Pain Into Power appeared first on VICE.
