A History of Mary J Blige

The Billboard awards has come an gone and Mary J Blige rocked the house winning eight grammy nominations this past week.

I remember listening to songs by Mary like "What's The 411?" and her rendition of Tammi Terrell's 1968 "You're All I Need To Get By when I was in middle school.

At that time she was a bit ruff with her style and was just coming up in the industry, ten years later and it looks like she is unstoppable. She is three-time Grammy Award-winning American R&B, soul, songwriter, producer, and actress and has sold over 25 million records worldwide.

The blog lyrics for HipHopRepublican.com for the month will be the duet Mary did with U2 on the cover of their 1992 hit, "One."

Background

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Born in The Bronx, New York City, New York to a jazz musician father and a nurse mother, Mary was exposed to music from an early age. At the age of four, Mary's father, Thomas, left the family, leaving her mother Cora to raise Mary and her older sister Latonya alone. (On the February 1, 2006 episode of The Oprah Winfrey Show, Mary revealed that she was sexually assaulted as a child by a family friend.) A couple years later, Mary's family relocated to Yonkers, where they resided in one of the city's most dangerous housing projects. Music eventually became Mary's refuge, singing lead in her church's choir, and at seven she won a talent contest singing Aretha Franklin's "Respect."

While continuing to remain true to her love of music, as Mary entered her teen years, she began experimenting with recreational drugs and eventually dropped out of high school.
She has a young brother named Bruce Miller ( he contributed lyrics to Family Affair ), as well as sisters LaTonya Blige-DaCosta ( the woman dancing with Mary in her Family Affair music video ) and Jonquell.

Personal life

Blige had a tumultuous six-year affair with Jodeci frontman Cedric "K-Ci" Hailey, which ended in 1997. In 2006, the mother of Nas's child, Carmen Bryan, revealed that Blige had a relationship with rapper Nas around 1997/1998.

R&B singer Case was affiliated with Mary J. Blige. The supposed reason why they went their separate ways was that Case felt he was dealing with Mary J. Blige's problems from her previous relationship's with K-Ci of Jodeci and K-Ci and JoJo fame.

In 2000, Blige began a relationship with record industry executive Martin Kendu Isaacs (known as simply Kendu). Isaacs was, in Blige's words, the one to get Blige to kick alcohol after issuing an ultimatum to Blige that he was leaving her if she came home drunk. Isaacs and Blige married on December 7, 2003 in a small private ceremony at Blige's home. As a result, Blige is now the stepmother of Kendu's three children from a previous marriage. Blige has also talked about having children of her own one day.

Another significant change occurred in 2001 when Blige lost a reported 40 pounds. She stated that during the time when she was struggling with substance abuse, she also found comfort in food which explained her weight. Through the help of a trainer combined with diet and exercises, she lost the weight.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_J._Blige