The new Mary J. Blige tells how drugs and attitude almost ruined her sizzling career

Ebony, Jan, 1998 by Kevin Chappell

Wiping her mouth with a scrunched-up paper napkin, Mary J. Blige finally comes up for air. Seconds later; she dives back in with her plastic fork, this time determined to finish off the salmon croquette and grits at the bottom of her Styrofoam carryout box. Wearing a sweat-quit and sneakers, and sporting a blond weave and a tattoo on her right arm, she looks more like an around-the-way girl on the second leg of a three-wing special than the reigning Queen of Hip-Hop Soul who picked up the specially ordered meal in her chauffeured limo with her 300-pound bodyguard in tow.

True, looks can be deceiving. But it's these types of oxymoronic tendencies that have made, and continue to make, the 26-year-old singing sensation one of the most intriguing--and misunderstood--artists of the '90s.

After all, who else could crossbreed Alaskan seafood with Southern soul food, gold records with a gold tooth, manicured nails with steel-toed combat boots, a Babyface-produced album with a roughneck mentality, class with grass, and still give birth to a new generation of soul music so pure that it is being compared to the sonorous sounds of matriarchs like Patti, Whitney and Aretha?

In spite of herself--and because of herself--Blige has become arguably the decade's hottest female singer, possessing a defiant voice so powerful that it dragged her kicking and screaming out of a lowly existence in Yonkers, N.Y., to uppity places she never knew existed, places she didn't want to be, places where copping her homegrown attitude, fix or grub was not as acceptable as it was in the projects where she was raised.

But today she's no longer kicking and screaming. In fact, while it took her nearly a decade to appreciate, Blige says she now loves herself and her new life--the music, the money, the props, the freedom--everything that has come with fame, fortune and maturity. Now she only hopes that she can clean up her past before it drags her kicking and screaming back to the bricks. "We're all from the ghetto. We all got a little ghetto in us," she says matter of-factly after finishing her lunch. "But I'm learning how to leave the ghetto at home when it's time to work."

She knows it won't be easy. When you have lived the street life, leaving it behind is as hard as a wino passing on a swig of cheap wine on a hawkish January night. For Blige--so shy she rarely makes eye contact with a stranger, so timid she sleeps with her older sister LaTonya during thunderstorms--the hard-knocks mindset has always been there for her.

It was there when she exploded onto the music scene seven years ago with her funky-cool debut album What's the 411?, taking the place of formal music training, giving her the confidence she needed to perform before thousands during concerts and millions on television. Later, it was there whenever someone upset her, in place of home training, giving her the courage she needed to deliver either a cussing out or punching out. That edge was also there when people asked too much of Mary, comforting her, persuading her to have two, three, 12 drinks and a couple of tokes to help take her mind off the situation. It was by her bedside the mornings after her all-night parties, looking out for her, tucking her back into bed, telling her it was okay to sleep as long as she wanted, even if that meant missing a newspaper interview, concert or some other prearranged engagement.

Indeed, the `hood life has been good to Blige, something she never has had to think about because she knew it would always be there when she needed it. "It's like a reflex," she admits.

Before long, Blige had gained a reputation throughout music circles as the temperamental diva whose talent was great, but was being overshadowed by her faulty disposition. "She won't last," insiders predicted. "She'll self-destruct."

Blige heard the criticism, but she didn't care. Although she never really tried to hide it, Blige now reveals that during this time, she a drank heavily and used a variety of hard drugs. "Hooked" might not be the right word, but then again it might, she says. "I did a lot of stuff, things that a lot of girls wouldn't do, because of a lack of self-love," says Blige, pausing, reflecting, seemingly still trying to come to grips with the person she had become. "I did drugs, I did a lot. I did things, not just weed, but beyond.... I'm too strong to get hooked on anything [but] at that point I think I was hooked."

That point was the day she saw a telling picture of herself and realized she had to make a change. "I said to myself, `Gosh, I look bad,"' she says of the defining moment. Not only was her lifestyle taking a toll on her body, it was also wreaking havoc on her finances. Because of her lackadaisical approach to her music, she wasn't making as much money as she could have been making, and the money she did make, she was spending recklessly. "There were a lot of things that were happening to me [financially] that weren't happening to anyone else," she says. "I wasn't doing too well business-wise because I didn't know how to act, because I wasn't intelligent enough to be strapped with knowledge instead of strapped with offensiveness."