And, most certainly, for Blige herself.īut in the interim, not only did the Grammy-winning superstar interview Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton for Apple, Blige has recorded a song, Strength of a Woman, to inspire WNBA teams as they enter the playoffs. And the forthcoming album will be exactly what her fans are hoping for: raw, unfiltered and the kind of lyrics that can make even the world’s most hardened soul sob uncontrollably. The singer/songwriter is fine-tuning her new music now - it’s “coming soon,” she promises. The Queen of Hip-Hop Soul knows what everyone thinks: The recent “Happy Mary” of the last decade, her music feels stagnant. So when news hit that after 12 years of marriage, she was filing for divorce from Kendu Isaacs, the response - universally, perhaps selfishly - was “When is new music coming, and will it be the ‘old Mary’?” The Mary who conveys rich, layered emotion on a song in a way the music industry still hasn’t heard since Aretha Franklin. It’s as if she takes the very personal pages of her supersecret diary and sets every nook and cranny to music. They mourn together with Mary their loves gone wrong and the seemingly eternal hunt to find that ever-after good-good. The praise hands that move side to side at her shows during the ballads - the deep stuff, such as Not Gon’ Cry and Seven Days from her moody 1997 album Share My World and Your Child from her emotionally gripping 1999 album Mary - these are communal experiences among concertgoers. And Blige’s concerts feel like summertime revivals.
Generously, she’s shared them over the course of 12 studio albums - not including the more than 150 guest appearances on other artists’ songs. We know more about the ins and outs of Blige’s romantic woes than perhaps we should. It’s a connection she’s shared with her fans for nearly 25 years - since 1992’s What’s The 411? Blige takes the rough patches of her love life, douses it with her signature Pentecostal preparation and bares the entirety of her soul on song after song with her husky mezzo-soprano range.