Recently, Mary J Blige made it to the Netherlands to perform with Maxwell. The pictures and some videos of the show made their way to my social media timelines pretty quickly and were impressive. I’d already seen fresh performances by miss Blige from just before she came out to my part of the world, and it’s fair to say, the queen hasn’t lost her skills over the years. And I think, she simply doesn’t age at all.
I saw her in concert myself, very unexpectedly, at Wembley in London. This was several years ago, when she was at the height of her success. I was in town and friends of friends had tickets they weren’t going to be using anymore. I really didn’t know what to expect from her in concert, but it was amazing and she rocked it vocally.
Before her show this year, Mary J released the song “Thick Of It” to lead her upcoming album, “Strength of a Woman”, and just this week, the video was uploaded to YouTube. The golden toned bling bling video shows Mary J as, yet again, a lady with an amazing fashion sense. I think the whole setting of the video looks very sharp. The clothes, especially the outfit with the golden choker and belt with leather straps, really make Mary J look like she hasn’t changed a bit. And the video reminds you of any 90s R&B video due to the mirroring effect of the glossy backgrounds. I think it’s a good representation of her.
The first time I heard the song, it caught my attention because of the variation in music. I somehow felt like two songs had merged together. There’s the undeniable retro soul style that starts off the song and then it switched to a surprising verse with a hip hop feel. And in the chorus it returns to that old soul and sometimes even reminds me a tiny little bit of “I’m Going Down”. It wasn’t a song I immediately loved. It’s like it doesn’t fully get started, but it was intriguing enough to listen to it again (and again) and somewhere I ended up loving this song.
Mary J is going through a divorce and with the filings being so public, a lot of her private life (like the demands of her husband’s alimony) has become news for the press to write about. It’s also a lot to process for her and I think this song is one of the steps to start putting it in the past. The lyrics clearly describe the moment of ending a relationship and we all can relate to that.
