Mary Jane Blige (surname pronounced /?bla??/; born January 11, 1971), more commonly known as Mary J. Blige, is an American recording artist, record producer and actress. She has received many Grammy A . .   Expand    Wikipedia

Mary Jane Blige (surname pronounced /?bla??/; born January 11, 1971), more commonly known as Mary J. Blige, is an American recording artist, record producer and actress. She has received many Grammy Award nominations for her work, winning ten, and has been awarded the World Music Legends Award for combining hip hop and soul together. Blige's vocal range registers from alto to soprano, but mostly performs in the mezzo-soprano range. Blige cites Anita Baker, Aretha Franklin and Chaka Khan as three of the most influential vocalists in her life. She has sold more than 48 million records worldwide.; altogether, she has sold more albums than any other female R&B Hip Hop artist during the 2000s. Blige was born on January 11, 1971, in The Bronx, New York. She is the second of four children born to parents Cora (a nurse), and Thomas Blige (a jazz musician). Blige was taught to sing by her father. When Blige was four, her father (who was physically abusive to her mother) abandoned the family. Blige spent her early years in Savannah, Georgia, where she sang in a Pentecostal church. She later moved to Schlobohm Houses in Yonkers, New York, where she lived with her mother, older sister, five cousins and two aunts. At the age of five, Blige was sexually abused by a family friend. She dropped out of school in eleventh grade. When she was 17, Blige recorded an impromptu cover of Anita Baker's "Caught Up In the Rapture" at a recording booth in the Galleria Mall in White Plains, New York. Her mother's boyfriend at the time later played the cassette for Jeff Redd, a recording artist and A&R runner for Uptown Records. Redd then sent it to the president and CEO of the label, Andre Harrell. Harrell met with Blige and, in 1989, she was signed to the label; becoming the company's youngest and first female artist.

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