Footage from the studio is sparsely deployed, and plenty of questions are left unexplored. Roth’s camera catches Blige’s emotional reunions with “My Life” producer Chucky Thompson and collaborator Big Bub, who recall songwriting and recording dates that often functioned like therapy sessions.īut considering the distinctiveness of “My Life,” and the vast cast of principals assembled here, one can’t help but wish the film delved a little deeper into the actual process of making it. By the time she got around to making her second album, Blige was, as she says, “all fucked up,” and poured that desperation into her studio work. Illustrated through vintage photographs and artful animated sequences, Roth takes us through Blige’s rocky journey to “My Life,” from her rough childhood in Yonkers’ Schlobohm housing project, where she remembers regularly witnessing violence against women, including her mother to her oft-recounted first meeting with Uptown Records founder Andre Harrell on the strength of an Anita Baker cover she recorded in a mall to her own disorienting ascent to multiplatinum stardom, which brought with it struggles with substance abuse, depression, and a toxic relationship with Jodeci star K-Ci. But what was perhaps most remarkable about her early career was the quickness with which she began to take control of her own narrative on her sophomore release, writing her own lyrics and using her own life as source material. Eschewing the part of the starmaking process that had often seen female R&B singers airbrushed of their more distinctive attributes, Blige brought a thoroughly modern authenticity to her persona from the start, even if much of that initial image was styled by the very young A&R Sean “Diddy” Combs, who plucked her from record label purgatory and helped shepherd her into a very different type of star. But there’s a valedictory glossiness to the film that sometimes underserves the warts-and-all power of the work in question - as a fan-centric retrospective, it hits plenty of the right notes but as a chance to more thoroughly explore a complicated, still-influential landmark, it never digs quite deeply enough.īlige’s place in early ’90s pop culture was unique at the time, and only seems more so in retrospect. Blige’s My Life” has no shortage of cooperation from the subject herself (also an executive producer). Tracing that album’s dark genesis, exploring its legacy with fans and featuring brief (perhaps too brief) performance clips from a pair of 2019 concerts Blige staged to celebrate its 25th anniversary, Vanessa Roth’s “Mary J.
But it wasn’t until her second album, 1994’s “My Life,” that the Blige most of us are familiar with - the heart-on-a-sleeve singer-songwriter unafraid to mine her own considerable trauma through music - truly began to take shape. Blige’s 1992 debut, “What’s the 411?,” was an instant smash that established the young Yonkers singer as a multiplatinum hitmaker, a fashion icon and the prototype for what an R&B star could look and sound like in the hip-hop era.
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