Her Life: Mary J. Blige @ Soul Summer

In years past, when Mary J. Blige’s primary claim to fame was being known as the Queen of Hip-Hop Soul signed to Uptown Records, she wasn’t above cursing out writers, sniffing coke in nightclub bathrooms, or stumbling drunk through music industry parties. Yet, in the eighteen years since the release of her triple-platinum debut What’s the 411 in 1992, the former wild child who came of age in Yonkers during the 1980s golden years of crack and rap, has transformed.

Though she grew up to win nine Grammy Awards, to write (and co-write) countless hit songs, and to make duets with Jay-Z, Bono, George Michael Elton John and Trey Songz, she still struggles with abuse issues from her childhood and the self-inflicted sorrow she put herself through as an adult. From drink to drugs to abusive men, she’s been down that rock ‘n’ soul road. However, as can be heard on Stronger With Each Tear, her ninth studio album, Mary J. Blige is still striving for strength in her music as well as her life.

Reflecting back, 2009 was a very good year for Mary. Beginning with her televised performance covering Bill Wither’s classic “Lean on Me” at We Are One: The Obama Inaugural Celebration in February, she also co-starred in director Tyler Perry’s I Can Do Bad All By Myself alongside Academy Award nominee Taraji P. Henson, launched her charity Foundation for the Advancement of Women Now (FFAWN), and contributed “I Can See in Color” to the controversial film Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire.

“You can feel Mary creatively turning herself inside out on that song,” says Precious executive producer Lisa Cortes. “Her contribution to the film is a heartfelt song that elevates the emotion of the scene. It was obvious to me that Mary took her own pain and put it into her art.”

Recently Soul Summer lunched with Mary J. Blige over steak and potatoes as she talked about past accomplishments, future projects, and the soul of Nina Simone.

For the rest of this interview, go to:
http://www.soulsummer.com/mjb-live-and-in-color

Remembering Curtis Mayfield on the 10th Anniversary of his Death

Unlike the deaths of musical icons like Elvis Presley, John Lennon or Michael Jackson, there was not much fanfare when soul brother Curtis Mayfield died—ten years ago on December 26, 1999 —at the North Fulton Regional Hospital in Roswell, Georgia. At the age of fifty-seven, after more than four decades of songwriting, production and performance, the man whose friends nicknamed “the gentle genius” was gone.

Outside of old soul radio stations, not many seemed to care that the Mayfield was gone. Where were the distraught fans clutching photos of the bespectacled brown-skinned man while candles blew in the winter wind? Where were the urban troubadours strumming songs like “People Get Ready” or “Choice of Colors” on acoustic guitar? Where were the VH1 specials featuring neo-soulsters Lenny Kravitz, D’Angelo, John Legend, Joss Stone, Jill Scott and Maxwell talking how Mayfield’s musical magic and angelic voice had inspired their own creative spirits?

While Mayfield’s death and subsequent cremation a few days later became nothing more than a footnote in the national consciousness, I sat on the couch in my mom’s Baltimore living room and shed a few tears for the fallen artist. As memories of Mayfield rushed to my head, I was transported back to the Harlem hood of my youth where I first bought the Super Fly soundtrack album at Mr. Freddy’s Soul Shack in 1972, when I was nine.

For the rest of this story, go to:

http://www.soulsummer.com/memories-of-mayfield

Alicia Keys on Soul Music

It’s so easy to hate Alicia Keys. Besides being fine as crystal, the sister knows how to construct soulful pop songs with the flair of Stevie Wonder and the pop sensibility of Burt Bacharach. Yet, even with three best-selling albums, a truck full of awards (five Grammys in 2002 alone) and songcraft for days. Even if you give her a pass for those frequent Prince swipes (click these links to weigh the evidence and draw your own conclusions), there are still folks who believe Alicia Keys is an R&B poser.

In 2007, when Keys’ last joint All I Am dropped, my spiritual godfather Greg Tate wrote an inspired review called “Extensions of a Woman,” wherein he praised her for being damn-near a genius. Some of the villagers got a little rowdy, and like a scene out of Frankenstein complete with pitchforks and torches, one angry voice berated the singer/songwriter/producer by calling her “dumbed-down, mainstream, and utterly irrelevant as they come.”

For the rest of this story, go to:

http://soulsummer.com/ezine/feature-stories/alicia-keys-of-soul-and-superwomen