Mary J Blige: the era-defining R&B original is back on imperial form – and primed for Grammys success
In 2015, Mary J Bligeperformed at Glastonbury. She appeared on the Friday afternoon during a rainstorm so relentless that the TV coverage was frequently blurred by water on the camera lens, innocuously sandwiched between Alabama Shakes and a wheezy-sounding Motörhead on their last legs. It was a relatively lowly billing for an artist with 100m sales to their name, but the sight of an R&B artist on the Pyramid stage still carried the tang of novelty – it was the year someone got up a petition protesting Kanye West’s headlining appearance as “an insult to rock music” – and, moreover, Blige’s career was, by her standards at least, on its uppers.
The imperial phase that had begun with the release of her 1992 debut
What’s the 411? had drawn to a close as the 00s turned into the 2010s. The previous year, she had released The London Sessions, a game attempt to pair her up with a series of UK artists:
Disclosure, Sam Smith, Emeli Sandé, Naughty Boy. The results were OK, but the concept smacked of an artist casting around for a new direction – and the fact that the British artists got billing on the album cover seemed to say something about Blige’s diminished stature: it was being marketed as much on their presence as hers. It proved the lowestselling album of her career.
Under the circumstances, you could have forgiven Blige for phoning it in. Instead, she unleashed a performance of scarcely believable power and ferocity. If you haven’t seen it, search out the BBC footage of her doing her 2001 single No More Drama (unbelievably, it isn’t available on any official platforms). Midway through, she fixes on the words “no more”, singing them again and again: screaming, howling, her voice dropping to a sob, then defiantly rising – apparently completely consumed by a song she must have performed hundreds of times. By its conclusion, Blige was crouched at the front of the stage being lashed by the rain. The crowd response was so loud and so long that Blige implored them to stop – “y’all are gonna make me cry”. For a moment it looked like she was going to break down. Instead, she tore into Family Affair, arguably her greatest single and a song entirely at odds with its predecessor.
Onstage at Glastonbury, Blige did not look much like an artist prepared to quietly accept diminished circums