Girl Got Range II
Six Degrees of Mary J. Blige
They crowned her the Queen of Hip-Hop Soul.
Fair enough. She helped build the kingdom.
But somebody forgot to tell Mary J. Blige that queens were supposed to stay inside their borders.
Born in the Bronx, raised in Yonkers, Mary brought gospel fire, street-level truth and a gloriously imperfect emotional vocabulary into hip-hop. She made pain dance, made survival sing, and turned vulnerability into a weapon.
Her voice could live inside a breakbeat, wrestle an electric guitar, rise through an orchestra or walk into a room full of musical royalty and rearrange the furniture.
Whitney Houston possessed the majestic instrument. Aretha Franklin could make a church appear wherever she opened her mouth. Mary inherited some of that musical DNA but refused to polish away the bruises.
Two performances of one song tell the story.
ONE - TWO CONTINENTS, TWO MOMENTS
September 2005. Hurricane Katrina relief.
Mary joins Bono, The Edge, Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen Jr. for U2's "One." A song born from the tensions inside a rock band becomes a transatlantic conversation between Irish rock and American hip-hop soul.
The collaboration lands on The Breakthrough and becomes an international single.
December 2013. Oslo, Norway.
Nelson Mandela has died. Mary performs "One" at the Nobel Peace Prize Concert in his memory.
No Bono required.
The same song now carries another century of meaning: apartheid, reconciliation, mourning, unfinished promises.
The song didn't change.
The world around it did.
And Mary had enough range to carry both.
But "One" is only the doorway.
THE SIX-DEGREES MACHINE
Start with Bono.
Mary records "One" with U2. Bono later shares stages and causes with Lady Gaga. But the more interesting connections aren't necessarily the obvious ones.
Follow the musicians.
Follow the songs.
Follow the strange little accidents that turn music history into a family reunion nobody bothered to organize.
STING - THE FIRST DETOUR
In 2003, Sting and Mary record "Whenever I Say Your Name," a collision of sophisticated British pop craftsmanship and full-throttle American soul.
The duet wins a Grammy.
Sting had already traveled from The Police through jazz, world music and orchestral arrangements. Mary walks into that musical passport office and doesn't need a stamp.
Now follow Sting to Lady Gaga.
May 13, 2010. Carnegie Hall.
Sting's Rainforest Foundation benefit assembles a gloriously improbable collection of humans: Mary J. Blige, Lady Gaga, Elton John, Bruce Springsteen, Debbie Harry and Shirley Bassey.
Mary reunites with Sting for their duet.
Gaga sings with Sting.
Gaga and Elton John perform together.
Then Bruce Springsteen and Gaga launch into Journey's "Don't Stop Believin'," with other legends joining the finale.
There it is.
Mary to Sting.
Sting to Gaga.
Gaga to Springsteen.
Springsteen to a room full of musical history.
Not six degrees.
Sometimes barely two.
And the evening ends with everybody singing a song about not giving up.
The universe occasionally writes its own punchlines.
ELTON JOHN - THE PIANO HAS NO BORDERS
Mary joins Elton John onstage during his 2000 One Night Only concerts.
Their musical paths cross again through "I Guess That's Why They Call It the Blues."
Elton connects to Gaga, one of pop's great intergenerational friendships, and to decades of rock, soul, glam, Broadway and musical rebellion.
Elton was making flamboyance a commercial art form long before Gaga turned it into a multimedia operating system.
Mary belongs in that family tree too.
Different wardrobe. Same refusal to stay in a designated lane.
GEORGE MICHAEL - A STEVIE WONDER BREADCRUMB
In 1999, George Michael and Mary release "As," a duet built on Stevie Wonder's 1976 masterpiece.
Now the thread travels backward.
Stevie Wonder.
Motown.
The civil rights era.
American soul.
British pop.
Mary J. Blige.
One song connects decades of Black American musical invention to a British superstar and the woman who helped rewrite the relationship between hip-hop and R&B.
And Stevie's song becomes a bridge between generations without requiring anyone to surrender their identity.
Funny how often the great musical borders turn out to be imaginary.
METHOD MAN - THE KINGDOM'S FOUNDATION
Before the international rock collaborations, Mary and Method Man created one of hip-hop soul's defining partnerships.
"I'll Be There for You/You're All I Need to Get By" joined Wu-Tang grit to a lineage reaching back to Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell.
A love song with combat boots.
The 1960s meet the 1990s.
Motown meets Staten Island.
Mary makes the connection sound inevitable.
From Method Man, follow the Wu-Tang Clan into the enormous universe of hip-hop collaborations, samples, films and cultural crossovers.
One record. Hundreds of doors.
ARETHA, PATTI, CHAKA AND LAURYN
Now follow the women.
Mary records with Aretha Franklin on "Don't Waste Your Time."
With Chaka Khan, she delivers "Disrespectful."
With Patti LaBelle, she takes on "Ain't No Way," a song written by Aretha's sister Carolyn Franklin.
And on Lauryn Hill's landmark 1998 album The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, Mary appears on "I Used to Love Him."
Consider the family tree.
Gospel.
Motown.
Funk.
Soul.
Hip-hop.
Neo-soul.
Different generations arguing, borrowing, celebrating, reinventing and occasionally stealing each other's thunder.
Not a straight line of succession.
A magnificent, tangled electrical grid.
And Mary keeps showing up at the junction boxes.
THE UNLIKELY PASSPORT STAMPS
Andrea Bocelli.
Barbra Streisand.
George Benson.
Eric Clapton.
Rod Stewart.
Sam Smith.
These are not names someone would necessarily place beside Method Man, Lil' Kim, Grand Puba, Ja Rule, Nas and Jay-Z.
Unless that someone is Mary J. Blige.
With Bocelli, the conversation enters classical crossover and Christmas music.
With Streisand, it enters the world of theatrical pop and the American songbook.
With Clapton, guitar-driven blues-rock.
With Benson, jazz sophistication.
With Sam Smith, contemporary British soul-pop.
With Jay-Z, the machinery of modern hip-hop.
The point isn't that Mary collected famous collaborators like refrigerator magnets.
It's that she could actually inhabit these different musical worlds.
The collaborations weren't merely invitations.
They were evidence.
TWO SUPER BOWLS - TWENTY-ONE YEARS APART
January 28, 2001.
Super Bowl XXXV.
Mary joins Aerosmith, Britney Spears, 'N Sync and Nelly for "Walk This Way."
Think about that lineup.
Aerosmith's 1970s hard rock had already collided with Run-DMC in 1986, helping redraw the commercial boundaries between rock and rap.
Now the same song becomes a Super Bowl collision of rock veterans, teen-pop royalty, hip-hop and Mary J. Blige.
A cultural telephone game with a national television audience.
February 13, 2022.
Super Bowl LVI.
Mary returns, this time as a headliner alongside Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Eminem and Kendrick Lamar, with 50 Cent and Anderson .Paak joining the spectacle.
She performs "Family Affair" and "No More Drama."
Twenty-one years earlier, she had helped bridge a pop-rock halftime circus.
Now she stands inside a celebration of the musical revolution she helped build.
Anderson .Paak on drums.
Kendrick carrying another generation.
Dre and Snoop representing the West Coast explosion.
Eminem and 50 Cent extending the family tree.
Mary standing at the center of the intersection.
A woman who had spent decades crossing musical borders was now part of the institution's own history.
THE CONNECTIONS DON'T STOP
Mary to Bono to Gaga.
Mary to Sting to Gaga to Springsteen.
Mary to Elton to Gaga.
Mary to George Michael to Stevie Wonder.
Mary to Method Man to Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell.
Mary to Lauryn Hill to the Fugees and the broader hip-hop diaspora.
Mary to Jay-Z to Beyoncé.
Mary to Dre to Snoop to Kendrick.
Mary to Aerosmith to Run-DMC.
And from each name, another thousand branches.
There are recording sessions, award shows, charity concerts, shared stages, sampled records, tribute performances, songs passed between generations, and stories that become larger with every retelling.
Some connections are collaborations.
Some are musical inheritance.
Some are cultural echoes.
Some are delicious accidents.
And some are breadcrumbs waiting for another curious bastard to follow.
THE CROWN WAS NEVER THE CEILING
Mary J. Blige did not become extraordinary because she could sing with Bono, Sting, Elton John, Aretha Franklin or Method Man.
She could sing with them because she was already extraordinary.
The collaborations simply make the architecture visible.
One woman standing at the crossroads of gospel, soul, funk, jazz, rock, pop, hip-hop and a considerable chunk of modern cultural history.
Her voice is the anchor.
The other artists are the coordinates.
The songs are the breadcrumbs.
And the connections?
Those are practically infinite.
Six degrees of Mary J. Blige.
Good luck finding the edge of the map.