Mary J Blige, the queen of hip-hop soul, speaks candidly
about her journey from ghetto to fabulous in the final programme of
Soul Deep.
Her music represents the fusion of R&B and hip-hop and completes the
journey that started 50 years ago with the emergence of the early soul
sounds of Ray Charles and ends with black R&B artists'
domination of the charts today.
The extraordinary story of the unstoppable rise of urban R&B - with
its diamond-dripping darlings of the media and high profile celebrity
artists such as µþ±ð²â´Ç²Ô³¦Ã© and Destiny's Child
- is traced back to the housing projects in Yonkers in the Eighties
where Mary J Blige started out.
Her tempestuous career began when producer Andre Harrell signed her
to Uptown Records. "She wasn't an album, she was a movie," comments
Andre.
On the way up, the pressure of stardom nearly destroyed her. "To cope
with life in the music business, I had to get wasted all the time,"
she admits.
But her music spoke to the streets. She brought the rawness of classic
soul into the hip-hop era.
Andre says: "We took her pain and put it on a platform to be the communicator
for all that generation of women who grew up in the Eighties in a single
parent decade, with crack being the main drug – which took whole households
out."
Her music has had a massive influence.
Kelly Rowland from Destiny's Child says: "I think
of Mary J Blige as the Aretha Franklin of our generation because she's
got so much soul."
Producer and former Fugee Wyclef Jean discusses the
meteoric rise of Destiny's Child - which has made them The Supremes of
the R&B generation - and comments: "It's the hard rhythmic singing style
of µþ±ð²â´Ç²Ô³¦Ã© Knowles that makes her an extraordinary vocal figure."
A precursor to hip-hop soul was the emergence of new jack swing, epitomised
by the alpha male performance of Bobby Brown. He brought
black masculinity and ghetto style back to the game.
Another part in the jigsaw of world domination by R&B artists was played
by video producer Hype Williams. A former graffiti
artist, he placed black artists in dreamy, exotic locations which brought
urban R&B music to a wider audience.
Images like Missy Elliott in an inflatable rubber
suit, TLC on a swing and Puffy on
a yacht "did for the video world what Picasso did to the art world –
turned it on its head," comments writer Barry Michael Cooper.
The combination of all these factors has meant that R&B – with its
roots in soul music which has been evolving over the last 50 years -
has moved from ghetto to ghetto-fabulous to simply fabulous.
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