Mary J. Blige Opens Up About Struggles With Self-Love In New Interview

Mary J. Blige is undoubtedly the Queen of hip-hop soul. She has continually churned out unique, emotionally charged songs that tended to every black woman for over thirty years. However, she recently revealed to Elle that she had several insecurities which shaped her life.

The soul Queen entered the music scene with her 1992 award-winning record, "What's the 411?" However, her rise to stardom could be attributed to her second album, "My Life." The record, produced in 1994, is a musical diary that sheds light on Blige's abusive relationship survival, substance use, and depression.

To celebrate the album's 25th anniversary, she chronicled a series of happenstances that led to the album in her new documentary," Mary J. Blige's My Life."

The Docuseries, released on June 25, 2021, streamed on Amazon Prime and revisited the musician's trauma as she grew older. It also featured friends and collaborators, including her sisters, the late Andre Harrell, and its executive producer, Sean Combs.

Since she dropped the album, she has bagged nine Grammy and Oscar awards, released 11 albums, and even won the Golden Globes.

The singer opened up in the cover story for Elle Magazine about not feeling confident or beautiful. She looked stunning in a sexy corset dress with a sheer skirt with her toned arms and legs on full display.

"I didn't feel beautiful—like for real for real, not just 'Hey, I'm pretty but believing it—until about 2016," she admitted. "If you've been beaten down mentally by someone, you're never pretty enough. You're never smart enough. Nothing's ever good enough."

Back in the 1980s, she was signed into Uptown Records. While the streets loved how she looked, the industry looked down on her appearance.

"When I got into the business, I was already blonde. I was already red. I was already doing those colors. I wasn't searching for an image. I was my image," she proceeded. 

"Ghetto fabulous is just, when you come from the hood, you at your most fly. What can you afford? What can you do with it? You want stones on your nails. You want mad colors on your nails. You want colorful furs. You want Timberland boots to rock with your furs. Do you want a hockey jersey? It's whatever you feel you can do with whatever you can afford. Growing up around drug dealers and the women that I hung out with, they wore furs—long sables and silver foxes and red lipstick. They were just flying. Men wore them, but when you saw a woman show up in one, you knew who she was."

The songwriter revealed that after she worked on the 2017 "Mudbound," she began to build her confidence. This she did by paying herself regular morning compliments.

"When I shot Mudbound, I was at my point of no real confidence," she began. "'This chick is beautiful,' I told myself every morning. So I started to believe it and started to pay myself high compliments to get past that feeling and that fear."

"I would tell myself in the morning because that's the time when your hair is not done, and you don't have on makeup. You're just kind of dealing with yourself for real."

Thankfully, she learned to embrace her natural beauty through her character, Florence, and not attach too much importance to makeup and wigs.

Till today, she still tells herself in the morning: "Good morning, Gorgeous. I love you. I got you. I need you."

In an interview with People, the singer opened up about what led to her divorce from her husband of 12 years.

"You start to realize that this man doesn't want you, and he's just gone all the time, and you're by yourself in the relationship," Blige said. "When you realize you're by yourself and you're just suffering through it, now it's time to do some investigating."

Although the couple shared no children, Blige was a stepmother to Isaac's three children; Jordan, Briana, and Nas.

At the end of 2021, the singer released two songs entitled "Amazing" and "Good Morning Gorgeous." According to her, those were from the times she loved herself after waking up barefaced in the morning and feeling great throughout the day.

In February 2022, Blige will be making an epic return to the Superbowl alongside other music icons like Eminem, Kendrick Lamar, and Dr. Dre.

This is Blige's second appearance at the Superbowl, but it'll be entirely different from her first in 2001, where she made a cameo. "This time, I'm going to be front and center—Mary J. Blige, in her glory and greatness and swagger," the singer concluded.