Mary J. Blige: a new man, a new career—and no more drama - Entertainment - Cover Story - Biography

Ebony, August, 2002 by Kevin Chappell

TO THIS day, Mary J. Blige can't fully explain what happened on that fateful night at her New Jersey home. It was then and there that the 31-year-old songstress heard a voice from her past, a voice that--somewhere between her well-documented decades of high times and low points--she thought she had left for dead a long time ago.

So remarkable was the incident that she describes it as a collision between "the spiritual and the physical," and the thought still amazes her. The voice was that of a 12-year-old girl, the same 12-year-old girl who sang in the church choir and could tear up a gospel tune with a voice so pure, so strong that it could make the grown folks cry. "When I first heard it, I was like, `Wow, it's back,'" Blige says of the return of her voice, the unencumbered voice she had as a kid growing up in projects in Yonkers, N.Y., the uninhibited voice that she says was "free from bondage, free from the insecurity, free from the uncertainty."

Now, some 19 years after the fateful encounter, Blige is once again able to hit the high notes. In the midst of redirecting her personal life and solidifying her career, the youthful, vibrant voice that only she knew existed had returned. "Instead of going down, my voice has began to go up. It's incredible," says the 31-year-old singer. "Now every day, I try to hit higher notes. I'm hitting notes about six ranges higher than before. My voice now is like it was when I was a child. I had lost it. When I did the album Share My World, I had lost it. The smoking and drinking, the hanging out late nights took it away from me. And now it's come back. It's like Mary lives again."

It's hard for anyone to imagine that Blige's voice could get stronger. After all, the world had come to know her as the ultimate singer, a person who already had a voice powerful enough to earn her the title of Queen of Hip Hop Soul, and with it fame, fortune and lofty comparisons to matriarchs like Aretha, Patti and Whitney.

But it's also hard for anyone to imagine that Blige could clean up her act and go from self-destruction to self-love, from the club to the gospel, from a string of bad relationships to a wedding engagement.

That's right. Mary J. Blige is in love, deep love, the kind of love that had avoided her all of her life. She's giddy as she shows off what she says she thinks is a seven-and-a-half carat ring. But to be honest, she's not sure how big the square-cut rock is. To be honest, she's not sure she cares.

During the one-hour interview, her fiance, Kendu Isaacs, sat patiently in the other room. Although very personable, he's definitely not the Hollywood type you would expect to see alongside Blige. In fact, he seems more average than not. Average height. Average build. Average looks. "He's smart, and he loves God," she says. "That's why I'm with him. I don't care how much money he has. I don't care how good he looks. Ain't no sex that good."

While she is keeping the wedding date a secret, she says it will happen soon. "It will be a very small wedding," she says. "We have to keep it small. A marriage is personal. Everybody knows about me. I don't want to start publicizing my love life. I did it so much when I was going through bad stuff. It's good now, and I'm not trying to mess with it."

She compares her new love to the movie Made in Heaven, saying her fiance "is my soul mate. He completes me in the areas that I'm weak in. He's an analytical brain. I'm a creative brain," she says. "We pray together. We read the Bible together. I've never seen a man who loves the Lord like he does. He loves his family. He's a good person. He makes me laugh. We laugh together like friends. We talk about stuff. We joke about stuff. We can get in the car and drive for five hours to D.C. from Jersey and have a good conversation. He's confident with himself as a man. I don't have to worry about him being angry with me because I'm Mary J. Blige. I've been through that."

While she wouldn't say how they met, she did say it was during a pivotal time in both of their lives. "There are so many lost angels out there. When I was lost in the world, I found him," she says. "We both were in the bottom of the pit. We both were probably about to die. We found each other. And now we have life. I complete him. He completes me."

Blige didn't want to give his name, take photos with him, or say what he did for a living. But she did say that once married, they would like to have,children. I want kids when the time is right, she says. "Maybe two."

For now, Blige lives in the New Jersey home she purchased two years ago. It's a far cry from the crime-infested public housing development she grew up in a single-parent household with her sister LaTonya. (Her father left the family when she was 9.) "It's a beautiful house," she says. "It's a blessing because it's big. It's not a mansion with 20 bedrooms. It's an eight-bedroom house. It's very homey. It has a nice, big foyer."

She is in the process of renovating it, and decorating it in a myriad of earth tones. ("I like warm-feeling places," she says. "Fall leaves, something that represents nature.") Although the bedroom is her favorite room in the house, she does spend time in the kitchen. She says she likes to cook, "but I'm not a chef or anything."