玛丽·布莱姬

Mary Jane Blige ( BLYZHE; born January 11, 1971) is an American singer, songwriter, actress, and entrepreneur. Often referred to by the honorifics "Queen of Hip-Hop Soul" and "Queen of R&B", her accolades include nine Grammy Awards, a Primetime Emmy Award, four American Music Awards, twelve NAACP Image Awards, and twelve Billboard Music Awards, including the Billboard Icon Award.

Blige signed to Uptown Records in 1988. Her debut album, What's the 411? (1992), is credited for introducing the mix of R&B and hip hop into mainstream pop culture. Its 1993 remix album became the first album by a singer to have a rapper on every song, popularizing rap as a featuring act. Both What's the 411? and her 1994 album My Life ranked among Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time list. Throughout her career, Blige has released 15 studio albums, four of which―Share My World (1997), Love & Live (2003), The Breakthrough (2005) and Growing Pains (2007)―have topped the Billboard 200 chart. Her biggest hits include "Real Love", "You Remind Me", "I'm Goin' Down", "Not Gon' Cry", "Everything", "No More Drama", "Be Without You", "One" (with U2), "Just Fine" and the Billboard Hot 100 number-one single "Family Affair".

Blige enhanced her popularity with an acting career. She was nominated for two Academy Awards for her supporting role as Florence Jackson in Mudbound (2017) and the film's song "Mighty River", becoming the first person nominated for acting and songwriting in the same year. Her other film roles include Prison Song (2001), Rock of Ages (2012), Betty and Coretta (2013), Black Nativity (2013), Trolls World Tour (2020), Body Cam (2020), The Violent Heart (2021), Respect (2021) and Rob Peace (2024). Her television work includes the series The Umbrella Academy (2019) and Power Book II: Ghost (2020–2024).

One of the world's best selling artists, Blige received a Legends Award at the World Music Awards in 2006, the Voice of Music Award from ASCAP in 2007 and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2018. In 2010, Billboard ranked her as the most successful female R&B/Hip-Hop artist of the past 25 years. In 2017, the magazine named "Be Without You" as the most successful R&B/hip-hop song of all time, as it spent a then-record 15 weeks atop the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart and over 75 weeks on the chart overall. Blige was featured in listicles such as VH1's 100 Greatest Artists of All Time (2011), Time's 100 most influential people in the world (2022) and Rolling Stone's 200 Greatest Singers of All Time (2023). In 2024, she was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Life and music career

1971–1991: Early life and career beginnings

Mary Jane Blige was born on January 11, 1971, at Fordham Hospital in the Belmont neighborhood in the Bronx, New York City, to nurse Cora and jazz musician Thomas Blige. She has an older sister, LaTonya Blige-DaCosta; a younger half-brother, Bruce Miller; and a younger half-sister, Jonquell; both from a relationship Blige's mother had with another man after divorcing her first husband.

Blige spent her early childhood in Richmond Hill, Georgia, where she sang in a Pentecostal church. She and her family later moved back to New York and resided in the Schlobohm Housing Projects, located in Nodine Hill, New York in the city of Yonkers. The family subsisted on her mother's earnings as a nurse after her father left the family in the mid-1970s. Her father was a Vietnam War veteran who suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder and alcoholism.