Mary J Blige Breakthrough Album
Eryn
Last year her aptly titled album, "The Breakthrough," brought the unparalleled success and career recognition to Blige, 37, who has been on the national scene since 1992. Her song "Be Without You," has been nominated for record and song of the year.
Perhaps more than that, it signifies the changes and growth in Blige as a woman, and human being. Blige has admitted battles with alcohol and depression. Much of her life seemed to turn around after she married music executive Martin Kendu Isaacs in 2003.
"I'm proud of all the nominations for this record because it represents evolution in a big way for Mary J. Blige," she told USA Today. "I had a lot of things to fix, and I made a breakthrough in believing in myself. I wanted something people could celebrate, and the celebrating is that we are all working on something, and it takes a lifetime for us to get better."
Perhaps that attitude is best reflected in her teaming with Bono and U2 on covering that band's song, "One." It earned a Best Pop Collaboration Grammy nod. Another Grammy nomination came for Best R&B Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals, as Blige recorded "Love Changes" with Jamie Foxx.
Chucky Thompson, one of the in-house producers for Diddy's legendary Bad Boy Records, has died. He was 53 years old. His death was first announced by producer Young Guru on Instagram, who called him "my mentor, my big brother, the man who changed my life forever."
Bad Boy Records' crew of producers were dubbed "Hitmen," and Thompson lived up to the name. His production credits include Notorious B.I.G.'s "Big Poppa," Faith Evans' "You Used To Love Me," and Mary J. Blige's breakthrough second album My Life. That album was nominated for a Grammy in 1996 for Best R&B album.
Thompson was a native of Washington, D.C., and got his start in music playing with legendary go-go musician Chuck Brown. "Chuck taught me about music, money and people early on with his band," Thompson said in an interview with the Recording Academy earlier this year.
"It was a mission of mine as soon as I got back from the successes and accomplishments from New York, my first mission was to come and work on a record with Chuck. We worked on three albums together. It felt like life robbed him because he had so much more in store. He passed away working with dates still booked. He was super inspirational to me."
There's no denying the commercial legs or fan appeal of MaryJ. Blige's late-2005 The Breakthrough. In the wake of 2003'sDiddy dud Love & Life and the teeth of an industrywideslump, its triple-platinum domestic sales--not to mention thesixteen-month stay of "Be Without You" on the R&B chart--are verynearly miraculous. So it's a little glossy, a little soft, a littleemotional. A girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do, especially ahappily married girl who wants to share the emotional wealth.
A mere two years later, with a best-of in between, Blige isback. Growing Pains is the eighth studio album of herfifteen-year career, and it doesn't stand pat. Where TheBreakthrough harnessed an astonishing thirteen producers or teamsover its sixteen tracks, as of press time these require, give or takea few collaborators, only nine. Moreover, Blige has rehired just twoof the last record's music providers: Andre Harris and Vidal Davis,responsible for the over-the-top "Father in You" then and the softlyrevealing "Hurt Again" now, and "Be Without You"'s Bryan-Michael Cox,who we can blame for the anodyne self-help number "Stay Down." Newlyenlisted producers include "Umbrella"-wielding Tricky Stewart,Pharrell Williams bearing a "Good Times" bass line, the NorwegianStarGate combine that gave us Ne-Yo's "So Sick," Ne-Yo associateNeff-U and Ne-Yo himself.
These changes don't signal any fundamental evolution, however. Takethe album titles literally--after her Diddy retro tanked, the lastalbum embodied Blige's "breakthrough" from "Queen of Hip-Hop Soul" tobest-selling R&B diva, while this one reflects her "growing pains"within her freely chosen new self-definition. Right, both titles alsoreference her personal life. But since her personal life, musicallytransubstantiated, is the subject of her songs, why can't the titleshave a double function? Ultimately, that's the point.
One welcome shift is retro--some hip-hop soul. Compared toWill.i.am's mild commentary and Jay-Z's hype-man icing on TheBreakthrough, the cameos by Busta Rhymes on the rousing sisterhoodanthem "Work That" and Ludacris on the lascivious body-pride come-on"Grown Woman" are takeover moves, and not only that--the songs havethe stuff to fight back. These loud, assertive tracks remind us justhow tough this sweet-voiced diva can be, and add muscle to, forinstance, the silly gangsta metaphor underlying the Usher duet "ShakeDown": "I'm robbin' you for your love." More auspiciously, they beefup two declarations of female pride composed in part by the Dream, whowrote "Umbrella." "I work this relationship nine to five," Blige tellsthe tomcatting dog of "Nowhere Fast." "Stick around till I get areturn on my investment." On the confessional "Roses," she tells herman he'd better "suck it up" and understand her bad mood. Both timesStewart's tricks--softened by bubbly electro beats on the first song,ominously bass-y on the second--undercut the soap opera.
Baring her weaknesses, "Roses" is a typical move for Blige, who'salways made a specialty of acting the round-the-way girl. When she gotmarried in 2003, she invited not a single celeb to her wedding, andalways she keeps that faith. "Just like you," "Work in Progress" tellsher fans, "sometimes I get depressed." But the tone of her confessionshas changed with her music. Growing Pains is an edgier recordthan The Breakthrough, but Blige has definitely lost or justoutgrown the brassy urgency of her twenties. Then, her confessions hadthe feel of painful late-night outbursts; these days, they sound morelike she's had a lot of therapy. It would be easy to make fun of this,but why? How gratifying it is to see pop lucre propel a project kidlike Mary J. Blige into the upper reaches of the upper-middle classrather than turn her into a lost grotesque. If her new music stillsometimes seems too comfy for comfort, give her credit for trying togrow into it and believing she can keep on going.
9th Wonder has a smooth and soulful production style that relies on samples from artists such as Al Green and Curtis Mayfield. He attributes the bass lines that he uses in production to DJ Premier, Pete Rock and J Dilla, while he claims to have learned the sampling of "Wails and moans" from other works of music and where to position them in his songs from RZA.
9th has produced 3 albums with MURS, an Emcee from MidCity, CA, all three of which have received critical acclaim. More recently, 9th Wonder produced Jill Scott's "Beautiful Love" ft. BJ The Chicago Kid on her 2015 album release Woman. In 2015, he collaborated with legendary rapper Talib Kweli on a joint album titled Indie 500 to the delight of the hip-hop underground. Rising Star Anderson .Paak sought out 9th Wonder's production for "The Season" and "Without You" (featuring Rapsody) on his breakthrough release Malibu released coincidentally on 9th Wonder's birthday, January 15, 2016. 9th Wonder collaborated with Big Boi of Outkast for the song "Put It On Her" for his release Big Grams in 2015 and assisted on Kendrick Lamar's landmark album To Pimp a Butterfly with the track "Complexion (A Zulu Love)" featuring Rapsody.
In January 2009, 9th Wonder announced plans to start the independent record labels Jamla, under his imprint It's A Wonderful World Music Group (IWWMG). In July 2010, 9th Wonder officially debuted his production team for IWWMG. The Soul Council consists of Khrysis, E. Jones, Ka$h Don't Make Beats, AMP, Eric g., Nottz, Hi-Tek and 9th Wonder himself. In 2016, 9th Wonder's Jamla Records went into a partnership and collaboration with Jay-Z and Roc Nation to release, market, promote the career of Jamla Records artist Rapsody.
9th Wonder was appointed Artist-In-Residence by the Chancellor of North Carolina Central University along with Christopher "Play" Martin from hip hop group Kid-n-Play and began instructing a hip hop history class in NCCU's Music Dept in 2007. In January 2010 it was announced that 9th Wonder would co-teach a class titled "Sampling Soul" with Dr. Mark Anthony Neal at Duke University.In an interview with HitQuarters, he explained the reason for the move into academia: "Educating the youth on where hip-hop comes from and the history of it, using the records we use, gives hip-hop a longer life. I decided to become an advocate of that."
"People are going to get a show, but as far as what my fans expect from me, that's singing the songs. You're experiencing Mary J. Blige's breakthrough as far as her career and her life. That's really it."
Blige's latest album, "The Breakthrough," which debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart in December with first-week sales of 727,163 -- the most ever by a solo female R&B artist. The album has sold more than 2 million copies.
Something Else is aptly titled. "It's time for hope and change," Thicke says. "It's in the air. And I'm speaking on the times around me." Thicke echoes the change with mesmerizing Superfly-era vocals, Gamble and Huff-inspired horn arrangements ("Hard on My Love"), unabashed lyrical optimism and an irresistible invitation to the dance floor ("Side Step"). "I don't want to be a preacher, but I do think at the core of every great existence is an abundance of love and joy, and the only way to create that is to give it," he adds.
Born in Los Angeles, Thicke grew up with an ear trained squarely at R& and Hip Hop. "I was listening to Kurtis Blow at 8, NWA at 12, Jodeci and Mary J. at 14 and Boyz II Men and Babyface soon after," Thicke says. "I didn't even listen to rock and roll music until I was 17. And I find myself thinking that's more normal than it is." Andr Harrell (then president of Bad Boy Entertainment and mentor to Mary J. Blige, Puff Daddy and Thicke) heard the lanky white kid and was dumbstruck. "I heard what Martin Luther King, Jr. described in his dream of a new America: a place where a white man in the San Fernando Valley can feel Detroit, Harlem and the blues," he says.
The spirit of Michael Jackson looms large throughout the new release. "Michael is the epitome of celebration, and the core of this album has that: It's celebratory, healing, loving music," Thicke says. To deepen that connection, Thicke employed the same horn section used on Jackson's "You Wanna Be Starting Something," from the 1979 classic, Off the Wall. "Andr Harrell told me, 'When God is singing loud, that's the sound of horns,'" he says. Gary Grant and the Jackson horn section contributed to the album's trans-generational appeal. "I kept the kids on some songs and the adults on others, so it's the sound of young and old coming together."
Something Else also benefits from writing sessions that took place in different cities, a tactic employed by several of Thicke's idols, including Marvin Gaye. "New York is the center of information, so I took a few trips there and set up a big studio," Thicke says. Songs like "Sidestep" and "Something Else" with their heavy, insistent grooves, were the result. "Paris is the center of romance," he says, "and I went there, and found 'Sweetest Love,' 'You're My Baby' and 'Miss Harmony.'"
The first single, "Magic," draws all of Something Else's influences together into one blast of disco-infused dance pop. Robert Hales, director of Gnarles Barkley's "Crazy" video, was tapped to add visual balance between downtown dance couture, references to Fred Astaire's Mr. Universe and Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, one of Thicke's all-time favorite films.
Melding the retro and the modern across 12 tracks, Robin Thicke leads his international fanbase into inspired, sexy and refreshing new territory.
Robin Thicke's first album, A Beautiful World, released in 2003, yielded the hit song, "When I Get You Alone," and paved the way for his breakthrough second release, 2006's The Evolution Of Robin Thicke. Now on the way to double platinum status, Evolution's mega hit "Lost Without U" became the #1 most played song in Urban Adult Contemporary BDS and topped four Billboard charts simultaneously. TV appearances included the unprecedented distinction of two appearances on Oprah Winfrey within two weeks.
The year 2007 concluded with the VH1 Soul/Vibe award for "Best Breakthrough Artist" and nominations from BET ("Best Male R&" and "Viewer's Choice"), Soul Train ("Best R& Soul Album, Male"), MTV VMA ("Male Artist of the Year"), MOBO (Best Song, "Lost Without U"), the American Music Awards ("Favorite Breakthrough Artist") and "Lost Without You" was named ASCAP's ("Song Of The Year").