Filed under: design of a decade, lists, music | Tags: 2001, lists, mary j blige
#5. Mary J Blige, Family Affair
The second half of 2001 was kind of a downer for me; I left college at the end of my freshman year, thinking I’d be returning in the fall, only to have my financial aid revoked at the last minute. So I enrolled at the local state school, signing up for whatever classes were open (Latin! Philosophy! The Indian novel!) and hoped for the best. Which is not what I got that semester. I had four very bad professors that semester, and everybody else there was acting like they were still in high school, complaining about school work and talking to each other about their stupid drunken parties all the time. Worse, because I had moved back home, a lot of these people actually were from my high school.
The upside was that, since this was a commuter school, I spent a lot of time in the car, alone. And at the time I was listening to a lot of hip-hop radio, because it was one of those cycles when hip-hop radio was really likable. And nothing was more likable than the first single off Mary J’s No More Drama album. (more…)
