‘That’s Why I Had That Pen’: The Trials and Triumphs of Mary J Blige

‘I didn’t think that stuff like that could happen to somebody like me – you know what I’m saying? - like us.’
Mary J Blige

I recently watched a moving documentary about Mary J Blige. The film, ‘Mary J Blige’s My Life’ (2021), directed by Vanessa Roth, marked the 25th anniversary of the singer’s second album.

‘The whole ‘My Life’ album was: ‘Please. Love me. Don’t go. I need you.’ It was a cry for help.’

In the mid ‘90s Blige redefined contemporary R&B by integrating her raw soulful vocals with hard-edged hip-hop beats. She sang with deep emotional power, but her voice also had an element of grit that suggested a life fully lived. Her message was honest and urgent, heartfelt and true. She was, and still is, the Queen of Hip-Hop Soul. And 1994’s ‘My Life’ represented a pivotal career moment.

‘I was writing to get free, so I can move around and I wasn’t in so much bondage and I won’t be stuck.’

Blige teaches us to break through the limits that environment sets on our ambition, and to find consolation and healing in creative expression.

1. ‘You Can’t Love Anybody If You Don’t Love Yourself’

'How can I love somebody else
If I can't love myself enough to know
When it's time,
Time to let go?’
‘Be Happy’ (M J Blige/ A DelValle/ S Combs/ J-C Olivier/ C Mayfield)

Blige was born in the Bronx, New York in 1971. Her mother, a nurse, separated from her jazz musician father, and settled the family in the Schlobohm Housing Projects in Yonkers. Money was tight and this was a tough environment for a girl to grow up in.

‘In that neighbourhood someone would get jealous or mad at you for having something – for having a smile, for having a dream…It’s like a prison inside a prison inside a prison. It’s like hurting people hurting each other.’

Bullied at high school, Blige dropped out and turned to alcohol and drugs to numb the pain.

‘Most of the times I was just depressed and didn’t want to live because I didn’t love myself.’

2. Find an Escape

From an early age Blige had found solace in music. She would watch her mother dance round the apartment to the Staple Singers, Gladys Knight and Aretha Franklin. And she developed a particular affinity for Roy Ayers’ ‘Everybody Loves the Sunshine.’

‘That record made me feel like I could have something. I couldn’t get my hands on it, but I could have something. ‘My life in the sunshine’ was something I wanted.’

Blige discovered she had a strong voice and musical talent. She sang in private and public, outside and in.

‘Singing was the escape for me. Singing made me forget that we were struggling so much. Singing made me feel free.’

But Blige was consistently held back by her environment. She was living in a world of levelled aspirations.

‘When I was growing up, in the neighbourhood we lived in, it was like: ‘You better not dream it. You better not hope it.’’

3. Take a Chance

In 1988, while visiting the Galleria Mall in White Plains, Blige stopped off at a studio booth and recorded a cover of Anita Baker's ‘Caught Up in the Rapture.’ Through a friend of her mother, the cassette was played to Jeff Redd, a recording artist at Uptown Records.

‘When I heard the demo at the time, I heard the pain of a generation.’
Jeff Redd

The following year Andre Harrell, CEO at Uptown, signed Blige to his label and she set to work with producer Puff Daddy on her first album, ‘What's the 411?’ The record introduced a new chapter in R&B.

‘There wasn’t a lot of R&B singers singing over hip-hop tracks. So that alone right there was: ’OK. We can groove to this. We can do our dances off of this. This doesn’t sound like Mama’s music. But she’s singing, so Mama might like it too.’’
Method Man

Kevin Westenberg - Mary J Blige (2004)

4. ‘Only Connect’

Blige cut a dash in big earrings, boots, baseball shirt and reversed cap. People could relate to her authentic look, but also to her authentic feelings. She developed a remarkable intimacy with her listeners - with people that recognised real emotion. In the documentary a fan articulates the bond between them.

‘I feel like I know her personally. I connect with her through her music. And I just want to hug her.’

Sadly, despite her accomplishments and growing popularity, Blige still didn’t believe in herself.

‘Success comes when you are successful inside. For a long time I didn’t know I was successful outside, because I was a wreck inside.’

Blige was dating Jodeci singer Cedric ‘K-Ci’ Hailey, but their relationship was marked by alcohol and abuse. During a 1995 interview on ‘The Word’, Hailey denied that the couple were planning to get married. When subsequently shown the clip in a TV interview, Blige was visibly upset.

‘Whatever. Let’s move on please. I’m disgusted.’

Blige tumbled into an abyss of depression.

‘I was falling completely off the planet… You’re screaming and there’s nothing coming out.’

5. Channel Your Emotions into Your Work

It was at this point that Blige channelled her indignation and sorrow into her music.

‘That’s why I had that pen. And that’s why I had it all inside and I was able to sing it and write it. It was the only way to survive. It was the only way to get through what I was getting through.’

Built on a foundation of robust beats and sophisticated samples, ‘My Life’ was deeply soulful and gloriously tuneful. Introspective and personal, it spoke of yearning and anger; frailty and strength; joy and pain. Released in 1994, it topped the R&B/Hip-Hop chart for eight weeks and subsequently went triple platinum.

'Sleep don't come easy,
Boy please believe me.
Since you’ve been gone
Everything's going wrong.
Why'd you have to say goodbye?
Look what you've done to me.
I can't stop these tears from falling from my eyes.
Ooh baby,
I'm going down.'
‘I’m Going Down’ (N Whitfield)

What can we in the creative professions learn from the trials and triumphs of Mary J Blige?

‘I wrote it because I needed to write it.’

First we need to be alert to the levelled aspirations that can be found in deprived communities and disadvantaged environments. If people don’t even hope to realise their ambitions, their potential will go unrealised.

Secondly, whilst we endeavour to direct our talents to commercial ends, we should never forget that creativity can provide emotional release and psychological relief. Creativity soothes the soul.

‘No matter how bad it hurts dealing with the truth, whatever the truth is, that’s how you get to the core. You’ve got to feel it to heal.’

Blige went on to create many more fine albums. Her path through life has not been smooth. But she has been sustained by her ability to translate her pain and vulnerability into words and music; to articulate her suffering in song.

‘Being human is hard. But I think I’ve evolved in a major way. What’s consistent is my heart. And my heart is that little girl in Yonkers. My heart is that teenager trying to get through and making it through. My heart is never forgetting the environment I grew up in and going back and helping others. So the evolution is not being afraid to expose my truth and myself, to touch someone else’s life.’

'Ooh baby, not tonight
I don't want to fuss and fight.
I just want to make it right.’
'Mary Jane (All Night Long)' (M J Blige/ S Combs/ C Thompson/ R James)

[If you’d like to read about the issue of levelled aspirations, I’d recommend the 1987 social science classic ‘Ain’t No Making It’ by my friend Jay MacLeod.]

No. 353

Turn The Arc Lights On The Audience: A Modern Marketing Lesson from The Who

‘Music is not a prayer to god. It’s a prayer to the audience. It’s about you. It’s about you. I don’t write songs about me. I write songs about you. That’s why I’m successful.‘

Pete Townshend, Lambert and Stamp

Lambert and Stamp is a splendid documentary about Kit Lambert and Chris Stamp, the managers of The Who that mentored the band from West London mods to global rock superstars.

The Who were a thrilling, combustible, mercurial stage act. They were cheeky, angry, dapper and aggressive. They were ‘meaty, beaty, big and bouncy.’ They were ‘maximum R&B.’ But, more than this, they were a band that gave expression to post-war British teenagers; to the disaffected working class; to stylish urban kids that wanted to get on. The Who spoke for their generation.

‘People try to put us d-down,
Just because we get around.
Things they do look awful c-c-cold.
I hope I die before I get old.
This is my generation,
This is my generation, baby.’

Pete Townshend/The Who, My Generation

In the documentary Chris Stamp relates how, during the band’s American tours, huge arc lights were stationed at the back of the stage. At the finale of each gig they would shine the arc lights’ powerful beams through the group so that the audience were illuminated. The crowd invariably stood up as one and became part of the experience.

This instinct to shine a light on the audience, on their tastes and style, their passions and pain, seems to have been right at the heart of The Who’s success.

Pete Townshend, The Who’s guitarist and lead songwriter, cuts a thoughtful and engaging presence in the film. He repeatedly returns to his conviction that The Who put their fans at the centre of their creative process.

‘Everyone thinks that it’s you that influenced [the audience], not the other way round… You become a mirror to the audience. [Lambert and Stamp] started to develop it as a way of harnessing the energy of the audience, which was to empower them; to make them realise how important they actually were.’

Pete Townshend, Lambert and Stamp

I found Townshend’s argument compelling, not least because I come from a communication tradition that was uncomfortable with the thought of ‘holding a mirror up to consumers.’ We regarded our core task as persuasion and so we always put the brand and its point of view first. We sought to craft ‘emotional selling propositions’ that won consumers’ hearts, in the expectation that their minds (and wallets) would follow.

But Townshend argues that marketing should go further than this. As he succinctly puts it: ‘You don’t market to them; you market them.’

‘When you do marketing you’re always trying to find some way to get round the fact that the audience are a problem; the consumer is a problem. Well, the way that you stop the consumer being a problem is that you don’t give them what they want; you allow them to be. You affirm who they are. You don’t try to change them.’

Pete Townshend, Lambert and Stamp

I’m increasingly of the view that Townshend is right; that in the modern age of consumer empowerment, audiences don’t want to be targeted, tracked and interrupted; they want to be represented, supported and encouraged; they want their views articulated, their hopes expressed, their fears addressed. Audiences want advocacy, not advertising.

We should think of a brand as a community, a neighbourhood, a union; a collective that needs representation. A brand should be a club worth joining, a membership worth paying for.

Of course most marketers know that marketing is all about putting the consumer first. But whilst this is readily articulated, I’m not sure it is fully lived, certainly not in the way Townshend suggests.

We may understand our audiences, but do we truly empathise with them? Do we start every conversation with their tastes and preferences, hopes and aspirations? Do we really see our role as advocacy?

The evidence of rate fixing and rip-off pricing, dodgy diesels and data leaking, mis-selling and horsemeat suggests otherwise. If brands are to re-earn eroded trust they must fundamentally remodel their relationships with consumers: from marketing at them to marketing for them. In short, we need to turn the arc lights on the audience. Because this is a generation that won’t get fooled again.

 ‘I’ll tip my hat to the new constitution,
Take a bow for the new revolution,
Smile and grin at the change all around,
Pick up my guitar and play,
Just like yesterday.
Then I’ll get on my knees and pray
We don’t get fooled again.’

Pete Townshend/The Who, Won’t Get Fooled Again

No. 61