Portrait

mary j. blige often seems to come out looking like she’s had a serious wardrobe malfunction, and she isn’t as half as young, beautiful or sexy as say, beyonce. but arun has reminded me just how great i think she is.

this april, in a little shop in hikkaduwa, while reaching for a CD of trance music, i toppled over a few other CDs and shattered the cover of the then somewhat new mary j. blige album, ‘the breakthrough’. i was compelled to buy this CD for 500/=, due to the damage i’d caused it. so, grudgingly, i bought it and started to listen to it when bored once back home. i loved it.

she’s not called the queen of hip-hop and soul for no reason. she’s just a marvelous singer and a soulful performer. her duet with U2 on ‘the breakthrough’, the re-release of U2’s hit single ‘one’ is one of the very many examples of this. her powerful yet soothing vocals on this track make it a better song than it ever was before. ‘be without you’, ‘the breakthrough’’s most popular love ballad/single, is a most amazing song by any standards; simply in the fact that even those that don’t like this kind of music can be blown away by the sheer quality of her singing. in a time of hopeless wannabes and too many divas, it’s good to have the likes of mary around, who not only constantly hikes up the standard of her singing and performing and keeps challenging herself to reach better and better heights, but also projects an image that is not squeaky-clean, but ultimately true to real life. whether you want some easy r&b music in the background, or you want to really appreciate a golden voice, some mary j. blige is what you want. one has to admit, she’s simply the best at what she’s doing.

she is a real woman, tattoed, alcoholism and drug addiction in her past, she has risen to a place in which she is all ‘what you see is what you get’. her music is genuine, and her image un glamorous. rock on mary.