Mary J. Blige Says Her Upcoming Album Will “Blow Everybody’s Mind”

Since her arrival on the music scene in the early 1990s, Mary J. Blige established herself as one of the most accomplished R&B voices of all time. Nine Grammy Award wins and two Oscar nominations later, MJB continues to reign as the Queen of Hip Hop Soul.

In recent years, Mary J. Blige turned her attention to acting by starring in movies like Mudbound and Respect as well as television programs like The Umbrella Academy and Power Book II: Ghost. However, Blige is looking to return to her musical roots soon.

Mary J. Blige made an appearance on The Tamron Hall Show this week. Hall asked the 50-year-old native New Yorker about her upcoming 14th studio LP, and Blige teased the project will be worth the wait.

“Wait until you hear it, it’s going to blow everybody’s mind,” said Blige. “It’s because it’s something I had to do, and something I had to say when I was in my darkest, darkest moments in that life, to build myself up to this person that I can see and accept my nose, accept my eyes, accept my cheeks, accept all the things that I used to hate.”

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Tamron Hall (@tamronhall)

It’s Been Four Years Since MJB Dropped A Studio Album

2017’s Strength of a Woman is Mary J. Blige’s most recent full-length release. That effort peaked at #3 on the Billboard 200 chart and #1 on the Top R&B Album chart with 78,000 first-week units.

Throughout her career, Mary J. Blige scored four Billboard 200 Number Ones – 1997’s Share My World, 2003’s Love & Life, 2005’s The Breakthrough, and 2007’s Growing Pains. Her sophomore set, My Life, only hit #7, but the 1994 album is widely considered Blige’s best body of work.

“Family Affair” off the No More Drama album is Mary J. Blige’s biggest single to date. The song spent six weeks at #1 on the Hot 100 chart. She has 41 total entries on the Hot 100 and six Top 10 hits.

MJB Discusses The Impact Of Her Classic ‘My Life’ Album

“That album is so full of just moments that were dark for me,” Blige told Hall about My Life. “But every time I speak to a fan they’ll say ‘well, it helped me to get married’ or ‘it helped me get out of a bad marriage’ or ‘it took me through college.'”

She continued, “But for me, it was like, ‘Oh man, I just want to die.’ So it’s so many tears and I wanted to be loved, you know by this man, and I didn’t love myself, and I didn’t know where the love was supposed to come from. So it was just heavy.”

Billboard magazine lists Mary J. Blige at #88 on its Greatest Of All Time Artists chart. My Life made Rolling Stone magazine’s list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time at #126. Blige’s debut album, 1992’s What’s the 411?, came in at #271 on the Rolling Stone rankings.