These challenges fueled her work, with Blige filtering her pain into the diaristic lyrics she penned across her thirteen albums.
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Superstardom would follow, along with fifty million albums sold, nine Grammy wins and, eventually, two Academy Award nominations.īut turmoil ran alongside her massive fame, with Blige publicly battling drug and alcohol abuse, rocky personal relationships, a brutal divorce from her ex-husband and former manager and dizzying financial problems.
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Entering into the cultural imagination in 1992 as a soulful tomboy with platinum locks and combat boots, Blige’s trailblazing debut What’s the 411? changed Hip-Hop, as she melded the thumping beats of the genre with the earnest, pleading lyrics of R&B on her hit single, “Real Love.” This amalgamation of the raw and vulnerable would become her oeuvre like a pained but streetwise Nina Simone, Blige swiftly entered into the pantheon of moody chanteuses who could pull on one’s heartstrings with just a few notes.
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Rising up from a traumatic childhood spent in the Schlobohm projects of Yonkers, New York, where Blige endured abuse and a broken family, the young creative would go on to be signed by late music executive Andre Harrell of Uptown Records at just eighteen and mentored by a young Sean “Puff Daddy” Combs. That a mere snippet of a deep cut Blige track would rouse such visceral reactions (Blige’s name quickly began to trend alongside Harris’s on social media) says so much about the polymathic force’s unflagging twenty-eight-year reign and relevance in the entertainment industry. “That is certainly never something that many folks in our community thought they would see.”Īlexandre Vauthier dress Christian Louboutin boots Simone I. Blige at the end and we heard a Divine 9 shoutout at the beginning,” activist Brittany Packnett tweeted, referring to the Queen of Hip Hop Soul and Harris’s AKA sorority affiliation. Blige ‘Work That’ at the end of her speech for me.,” radio host Charlamagne Tha God declared. Immediately, Black Twitter erupted in celebration. By centering Blige’s “Work That” in one of the biggest game-changing moments in American politics, Harris seemed not only to pay homage to Black womanness but also to unite the culture’s two proverbial favorite aunties. A campaign song, as we know, is a thoughtful measure, a rallying cry meant to incite the audience, appeal to would-be voters and send coded messages to one’s opponents. “ There’s so many-a girls/I hear you been running/From the beautiful queen/That you could be becoming… ” the inspirational lyrics went on as Harris waved to the small, socially-distanced delegation assembled before her and a gaggle of supporters beaming in via Zoom. The R&B siren’s 2007 “Work That” was the soundtrack to this momentous occasion, the anthem preaching the value of self-worth, female empowerment and self-actualization.
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Rather than the sound of rapturous applause, what was immediately heard were the brassy vocals of none other than Mary J. It was a testament to the enduring and unrecognized influence of Black female political resistance and, when Harris closed, she seemed to double down on her point. The first Black woman to do so, Harris used some of her twenty-minute remarks to credit the Black female suffragists who paved the way for her to stand squarely at the center of American politics nearly a century later. Standing at a podium in a plum pantsuit and flanked by American flags, the Black-South Asian politico was speaking remotely in Wilmington, Delaware to millions of Americans at last month’s virtual Democratic National Convention, where she officially accepted her Vice Presidential nomination. Senator Kamala Harris was making history. Blige wears Brandon Maxwell cape Chanel pants Alexander McQueen boots Lorraine West earrings Sterling King cuff and ring. Blige’s makeup by Porsche Cooper hair by Neal Farinah.