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.
David Browne’s Entertainment Weekly review from September of 2001 summed my feelings about that album up really well: “Blige’s pushy rasp has never sounded better. Anyone who hires a choir to chant ”PMS!” in a slow jam of the same name is the best sort of drama queen.”
Because that’s the thing. For all she had to say about not wanting any more drama, this album had just as much heartbreak and despair as 1999′s slow-jam classic Mary. But it also had a crazy pop angle that the previous album lacked; Family Affair was Blige’s first top 40 single in four years, and became her only number one to date.
Family Affair is a fun song. Even now, eight years later, my head immediately starts bobbing when it comes on. Dr Dre’s beats are solid, and the string samples hint at Mary’s drama queen disco forebears. And Mary’s talking about herself in the third person, and using words like hateration and holleration and dancery, and it’s wonderful.
Unfortunately, this was also a kind of last hurrah for fun-Mary. 2003′s Love and Life was only memorable for two or three tracks, and I didn’t even bother with The Breakthrough after the ennui-inducing Be Without You and horrific U2 duet thing.
Leave a Comment so far
Leave a comment
