Mary J Blige: Growing Pains
Friday, 01 Feb 2008 10:50
Mary J Blige: Growing Pains
Geffen Records, out now.
In a nutshell...
Smooth, powerful, soulful, heartfelt, mellifluous.
What's it all about?
Growing Pains is the eighth studio album from one of R 'n' B's most enduring stars. The 16 new tracks have a lot to live up to, given Blige's last record Breakthrough sold seven million copies worldwide and garnered eight Grammy Award nominations. However, early signs are auspicious - the record has already made number one on the US Billboard 200 and achieved over a million sales since its December 18th release stateside. Speaking to MTV, Blige elaborated on the album's name: "So as long as I'm a human being and I'm not perfect, I'm able to say I'm having some growing pains... Yes, I'm going to make a mistake. Yes, I'm still gonna do things. And that's what Growing Pains is about, it's about finally not whining about the pain, Mary J Blige, and accepting the pain that comes with growing." The album features collaborations with Usher and Ludacris.
Who's it by
Mary Jane Blige was signed to Uptown Records at the age of 19 after the president heard a recording of her singing Anita Baker's Rapture. Now 37, she has sold 40 million records worldwide, racked up 26 Grammy Award nominations and gained a lot of life experience along the way. Her first album was 1992's What's the 411? with Sean 'Puffy' Combs, an artist involved at various stages in her career. Despite the commercial success of her second album My Life, released in 1994, Mary J was by this time battling addictions to alcohol and drugs worsened by her depression and an abusive relationship with K-Ci Hailey of Jodeci, which was on-off for a tumultuous six years. The hits kept coming, but it was only with 2001's No More Drama that Mary J could claim to have beaten her demons with the help, she attests, of the man who would later become her husband, record industry executive Martin Kendu Isaacs. The lack of drama did not dent her creative inspiration however. Her last album, 2005's Breakthrough, debuted at number one on both the Billboard 200 Albums and Top R 'n' B/Hip-Hop Albums charts. It also had the biggest first-week sales for an R&B solo female artist in history.
As an example
"I'm so sexy, I made a mystery/'Cos everyone always want what they can't see/And what they can't have and what they can't grab/And what they can't buy and baby that's me." - Grown Woman.
Likelihood of a trip to the Grammys
High. Given the lady's track record, it's a no-brainer.
What the others say
"Whippersnappers like Rihanna have ensured she doesn't have it all her own way now, but Growing Pains finds Blige on chirpier form, and the shiny, happy Just Fine sees Tricky Stewart reproducing his Umbrella-honed knob-twiddling skills in style."- NME
"From anyone else, the earnestness here would come across as preachy and contrived, but Blige oozes realness and has a surprising amount of self-awareness for a pop star. The various producers behind this all pull their weight, but as usual the star is Blige's husky voice and that charming mix of vulnerability and over-the-top diva confidence." - Now
So is it any good?
This album exudes class and effortlessness. Work That is a layered slice of uplifting soul, with an infectious beat and the self-affirming lyrics that are now the artist's trademark. Grown Woman, featuring Ludacris, inevitably has a harder edge with Mary's brand of chastened self-acceptance punctured by a rap that includes the line: "I make her get her exercise with her sexy thighs." However, while it can hardly be called feminist, his later sentiment is progressive within the context of his genre: "It ain't no need to bitch her out/Cos she's my only one."
Till the Morning is gentler, even cheerful, but with the same lack of naivety that is borne not just of the lyrics but also of a rawness sometimes lacking in the voices of Mary's great contemporaries, Mariah and Whitney. The same understated strength is captured by What Love Is, in which the opposites hint at the complexity lesser artists evade - "it feels like joy and it feels like pain, and it feels like sunshine, feels like rain, an excuse for dying, reason to live... "
Talk To Me is in the same vein, acknowledging the inevitability of individual shortcomings and the necessity of compromise: "Love is a process."
After the ballsy Just Fine, comes a run of tracks with less imagination and punch than their predecessors; still good, just not great. Shakedown, a duet with Usher, is slick but unexceptional and the album only scales its opening heights with the aforementioned Talk To Me and the standout track Roses - empowerment and realism never sounded so good.
With Growing Pains, the lady christened the queen of hip-hop soul gives us a master class in mellifluous passion. If one was to find fault it could only be that it is a little long; with so many quality tracks, she could have dropped four or five and given us a record that was wholly rather than largely brilliant.
8.5/10
Meghan Graham
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