#Drama left right lipstick alley full
Then she turns the full voltage of her huge, copper-coloured eyes on you. She speaks briefly to her assistant about a doctor's appointment - she suffers particularly virulent PMS, which explains the bluntly titled No More Drama track PMS - and regretfully pushes the chicken platter out of grazing range, explaining, "I'm trying to lose some weight I put on over Christmas". This January afternoon, punctual to the minute, she's purringly cheerful, extending a manicured paw and gesturing to the seat next to her. "I kinda feel bad about the way I treated people," she says. It was this famous episode that prompted her record label to send her on an etiquette course, where she lasted two days. If an interviewer was especially unlucky, as model-turned-journalist Veronica Webb was in 1995, she'd ask them outside for a fight.
When she did turn up, weighed down by carrier bags from spendathons at Prada and Fendi, her attitude ranged from indifference to outright hostility. Formerly she kept hip-hop time, arriving either hours late or not at all. The most telling evidence of New Mary is her approach to interviews. She only broaches it, though, after 45 minutes of unprecedentedly polite conversation. In the past she has alluded darkly to having been "closer to death people who say they love me than with drugs", but only recently has she felt comfortable talking about it. Blige may be yet another celebrity who's turned to God after finding that millions of record sales and all the designer clothes money can buy left her feeling emptier than ever, but it took a near-death experience to get to this point. He's allowed me to love you, and everyone else in the world," she beams. "I sought Jesus, and he gave me love and took away some of the vanity. As she tells it, she has never been as happy as she is right now, nibbling a piece of chicken at her record company's Manhattan office. The title of her current album earnestly insists there will be No More Drama, and to prove it the record is crammed with good-vibes songs such as Beautiful Day and new single Dance for Me. The cocaine, the abusive boyfriends, even the blaring ghetto-fabulous look are history. But her behaviour has been tolerated, even encouraged, by the American media, who romanticise it as the price she pays for being - by general acknowledgment - the most gifted singer of her generation.īut brilliance is no longer synonymous with pain for Mary J. Since recording her first album, What's the 411?, with a then unknown Sean Combs producing, she has been renowned for tantrums that friends claim mask deep vulnerability.
The D-word has become devalued, but if ever an artist met the criteria of divahood, it's the 31-year-old soul singer from the Schlobohm Gardens projects in the unalluringly-named Yonkers, New York. Drugs, destructive relationships and a hard-knock childhood contribute to her reputation as the diva's diva. The world loves a troubled diva, and for 10 years Mary Jane Blige has provided her public with a continuous flow of what her friend, producer Kenny "Babyface" Edmonds, calls "pure pain, unlike anyone else".
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