The Grammy-winning legend (six nominations this year) and actor — her Starz series Power Book II: Ghost returns next month — opens up to PEOPLE about learning to face herself in the mirror every day ahead of Black History Month.
Mary J. Blige has 15 studio albums to her credit (and sold more than 100 million of them). She’ll be back in the third season of Starz’s Power Book II: Ghost next month. She arrives on the PEOPLE picture shoot set amid a frenzy of activity, now 52 and in her fourth decade in the music business. She’s prepared. “I’ve been doing this for a minute,” she says. “I’m no rookie.”
However, she claims that her job is feeling a little different today. “I can receive all the gifts,” she adds, alluding to six Grammy nominations for her new album Good Morning Gorgeous, the Billboard Music Icon Award she received last year, her Emmy-winning performance at last year’s Super Bowl, and her pair of Oscar nominations a few years ago. She is firing on all cylinders. She’s at her peak. She’s there, whatever you want to call it. But here’s the essential part: she’s aware of it.
“I can accept it all with humility and with confidence because I’ve been working so hard all my life — really, really hard. But I wasn’t able to see the good things until I really got my head together and my life together.”
Her regular habit contributed to this. She glances in the mirror first thing in the morning. “Good morning, gorgeous.” she murmurs to herself. (Yes, her album’s title tune is about this rite.)
“Sometimes my eyes are all closed up,” she says. “But I strain to see myself. It’s not about the vanity of it, it’s about how we’re strengthened. no one can love me like me. Nobody can.”
This has become more than a daily practise for the Grammy-winning singer and Oscar-nominated actress — it’s a sort of meditation. “I do it in my prayer time. There’s no makeup, no nominations for an award. It’s just me and God. And the beauty of being able to say, “I appreciate my life.” To look in the mirror, my eyes are half closed, and say something to myself that I never even believed.”
That may seem unlikely given her status as music royalty. After all, Mary J. Blige is the Queen of Hip Hop Soul. A term given to her since she established the genre by fusing hip hop and R&B, for which she claims she is finally being recognised.
“Being the trailblazer ahead of that whole movement,” she says, “I honestly can say back then I didn’t know what I was doing. I was just making music. I feel like I’m getting the credit that I deserve now, but for a while, people were just passing by me. I don’t blame anyone. I was passing by myself.”
Blige was up in Yonkers, New York, and her hefty mezzo-soprano voice (matched only by her smart, honest storytelling) propelled her from the housing projects to a recording studio by the age of 18. Her debut album, released when she was 21, exposed her difficult life and catapulted her to popularity with the singles “Real Love” and “You Remind Me” but it was her 1994 album My Life that indelibly blended hip hop and R&B and began a genuine discussion with her fans.
She’s shared everything, from her struggles with substance abuse and grief to her rehabilitation from both. She claims to have turned another corner now that she is unmarried. “Mary J. Blige is happy. Happy with herself and happy with her life.” And she’s got a new focus: “me.”
“I didn’t care about myself,” she says. “I didn’t love myself. You get what you’re giving yourself. So now that I’m giving to myself, I’m getting it all.”
Main Image: Mary J. Blige/ Instagram
The post Mary J. Blige’s Morning Routine That Changed Her Life: ‘I Didn’t Love Myself’ appeared first on Entertainment SA - South African Entertainment News, Celebrity and Lifestyle Online Magazine & Entertainment.
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