![play mary j blige greatest hits play mary j blige greatest hits](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/YNmHxuPXP1M/maxresdefault.jpg)
After 13 studio albums, 9 Grammys, two Oscar nominations and a slot in this year’s impressive Super Bowl Half Time show, there’s nothing the pioneering R&B singer hasn’t done, and at that. Even as she’s gone Hollywood (earning an Academy Award nomination for 2017’s Mudbound), Mary J. Blige has entered the phase of her career where she can simply do whatever she pleases. Mary (1999) saw her move toward a more classic sound, though 2001’s smash “Family Affair” swung back toward hip-hop that fertile tension has remained in her music since.
![play mary j blige greatest hits play mary j blige greatest hits](https://assets.vogue.com/photos/6209b1255e9c40c59222380f/3:4/w_2100,h_2800,c_limit/GettyImages-1370398069.jpg)
Blige’s life was never separate from her art, and fans have followed her through addiction, marriage, divorce, and therapy, connecting with songs like “Not Gon’ Cry” and “No More Drama” out of deep identification: Here was an artist who sang women’s realities as they were almost never presented in popular music-and who always came out stronger. She and Sean Combs crafted her 1992 debut, What’s the 411?, which spawned the ubiquitous and beloved jam “Real Love” and helped set the template for R&B’s marriage to hip-hop. Her voice is elastic, scrappy, and versatile, with more than a hint of world-weary grit, and when a chance recording of Anita Baker’s “Caught Up in the Rapture” came before Uptown Records execs in 1988, the label immediately snapped her up as its youngest (and first female) signee. Born Mary Jane Blige in the Bronx in 1971, Blige was raised mainly in Yonkers, NY, where she grew up listening to the greats: Aretha, Chaka, and Gladys Knight. Dubbed the Queen of Hip-Hop Soul in the ’90s, Blige came off as tough and streetwise (unlike many of her contemporaries), and she could go toe to toe with rappers, including JAY Z, Method Man, and more recently Kendrick Lamar.
![play mary j blige greatest hits play mary j blige greatest hits](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/QUqiNM67Zx0/maxresdefault.jpg)
Blige is that rare singer who can channel your pain-and then drag you onto the dance floor to sweat it away.