This February Blige also released her 15th studio album, “Good Morning Gorgeous," her first since her divorce from the music producer Kendu Isaacs was finalized in 2018.The production of the album feels in step with current trends, with features from Anderson. Dre and Snoop Dogg’s “Still D.R.E.”) and offered broader affirmations for their people (Kendrick Lamar’s “Alright”), Blige kept the show grounded in raw, introspective emotion, even while clad in Swarovski crystals and thigh-high boots. As her peers rapped about their own enduring greatness (Dr. She performed her bouncy club anthem “Family Affair,” (wherein she gifts us with the word “dancery”), and then her ballad “No More Drama” with a kind of controlled anguish, ending sprawled out on the stage in an act of triumphant depletion. In this year’s Super Bowl halftime show, Blige appeared alongside some of the biggest names in hip-hop, past and present, and sang about her joy and her heartbreak. Where so much of popular music has been geared toward showing just enough vulnerability to bolster your own fierceness, Blige’s particular brand of honesty and approachability brings out something tender in listeners and collaborators alike. She has spent the ensuing years longing for love on records, finding and losing it in front of the world. She was 17 and living in public housing in Yonkers, N.Y., when she sang Anita Baker’s entire “Rapture” album to the music executive Andre Harrell, which led to her record deal. More than a guide, she is a fellow traveler.īlige is now 51, with 9 Grammy Awards, two Academy Award nominations and three Golden Globe nominations, with a hit for seemingly every era of hip-hop and R.&B. The lyric also introduced one of Blige’s hallmarks: She doesn’t provide her listeners with answers to life’s big questions, instead complicating the inquiry itself, time and again. songs of the time to look outward (Why won’t you love me?), or to focus purely on the singer’s desires (I need romance) and turned the gaze inward, acknowledging the work to be done on the self first. Blige’s earliest lyrics, from her breakout sophomore album, “My Life,” encapsulates the theme that has become central to her 30-plus year career: “How can I love somebody else/If I can’t love myself enough to know/When it’s time/Time to let go?” It is a question that went beyond the tendency of pop and R.&B.
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