She completely owns Rose Royce’s 1976 soul classic “I’m Going Down,” and her promise of happiness amid the drama still rings true on the exuberant “You Bring Me Joy.” Blige flexed her encyclopedic knowledge of soul by sampling Roy Ayers (“My Life”), Curtis Mayfield (“I’m The Only Woman”), Isaac Hayes (“I Love You”) and Barry White (“You Bring Me Joy”).Įven 25 years later, Blige’s bristling delivery on My Life still sounds raw. With Bad Boy’s hitmaker Chucky Thompson and Price Charles Alexander at the boards, My Life blended street-savvy R&B with quiet storm ballads.
The bar was set with her debut and Mary was up to the challenge when she released the most introspective, personal, and culturally impactful album of her career, My Life. In 1992, the Yonkers-raised singer, recorded her 3x platinum debut, What’s the 411?, with Sean “Puffy” Combs behind the board, marking the beginning of the Blige/Puffy golden era. The 3LP edition will also be available digitally, which will feature commentary by Blige on the original album tracks. My Life will be available in three formats: a 2 CD, a standard weight black double vinyl, and a triple vinyl edition in translucent blue with a lenticular cover, including bonus tracks featuring LL Cool J, and Smif ‘N Wessun. The album, which celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2019, is getting a deluxe reissue on November 20 via Geffen/UMe. Blige secured herself the title of Queen of Hip-Hop Soul when she delivered the R&B classic. Album DescriptionWith her 1994 breakthrough sophomore album My Life, Mary J. See More Your browser does not support the audio element. My Life, nevertheless, emanates from some deep, dark place where both sadness and happiness cohabitate and turn into one single, beautiful sorrow. Blige's strain is sleekly modern and urban, and the grit in it comes from being streetwise and thoroughly realistic about the travails of life. Blige took a huge leap in artistry by penning almost everything herself (the major exception being Norman Whitfield's "I'm Going Down") in collaboration with co-producers Combs and multi-instrumentalist Chucky Thompson, and everything seems to leap directly from her gut. My Life is, from beginning to end, a brilliant, wistful individual plea of desire. The hip-hop part of the combination takes a few steps into the background, allowing Blige's tortured soul to carry the album completely, and it does so with heartwrenching authority.
But it is some of the finest modern soul of the '90s, backing away to a certain extent from the hip-hop/soul consolidation that Blige introduced on her debut album. This certainly isn't your parents' (or grandparents') soul. The melodic sources this time around, though, are so expertly incorporated into the music that they never seem to be intrusions, instead playing like inspired dialogues with soulsters from the past, connecting past legacies with a new one. The production is not exactly original, and there is evidence here of him borrowing wholesale from other songs.
Perhaps the single finest moment in Sean "Puffy" Combs' musical career has been the production on this, Mary J.
MARY J BLIGE MY LIFE 1994 ZIP DOWNLOAD
Purchase and download this album in a wide variety of formats depending on your needs.
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