14 November 2016
Newsdesk
Tonight on Beats 1, Julie speaks exclusively to Mary J Blige to talk about her meeting with Hillary Clinton, her ambitions for The 411, and collaborations on her new album.
Here are some of the main quotes from the interview.
On touring
“Well very well, my fans are happy, people are loving the show, it’s nice to be on the road with a nice person, Maxwell is a nice person, nice guy and most of all, my fans are just happy, that makes me happy.”
On her connection to her fans
“I think we’ve connected, but there has been a disconnect and I don’t know, I think because of my life and whatever I was living and dealing with and whatever I had to release and let go and really come to terms and be real with and end up here in this horrible situation that I’m in right now. But the disconnect came because of you know, just me trying to figure life out yeah.”
On future guests after Hilary
“Whoever is apart of our culture and what’s going on, because the show was not just about the latest fashion or the latest this, it’s about, like Hilary Clinton was important because she’s what’s going on in our culture right now. The mothers of the movement in the United States is something major right now, people wanna hear from them. Sports, Serena Williams is a strong woman, you know people wanna hear from her and they wanna hear her side of not being so tough and how hard it is you know. I would love to get Kanye, and I would love to get him just so people can hear what he’s dealing with you know, if I could get him you know what I mean….
I would love to get Jay, I would love to get all my friends that have grown up with me, and are moguls, and they have so many stories and people think ‘they have this and they have that’ but they don’t know the stories and the trials and the struggles and the things that it took to get, to be you know so successful.”
On the method of releasing the new music and album
“I just want to make sure the album is right. I just want people, the fans, to be happy and I wanna take this opportunity to make them happy like when they received the ‘My Life’ album, like when they received the ‘411’ album, like when they received the ‘Share My World’ album, and I wanna be happy when I listen back to it, because when I listen to the ‘My Life’ album, I cry, I listen to the full thing, when I listen to the ‘411’ album I cry.”
On collaborators for the album ‘Strength Of A Woman’
“Kanye, I love him because he’s always been honest. It has always been a dream of mine to work with him, because of how he affected me. I can remember the first Kanye concert I ever went too, I walked outta there feeling like I was at a revival, I felt like my life was gonna change, he blew everybody away with how he delivered his emotion. I think his mom had just passed. So all of his music is something that means something to me so I wanted to work with him. As far as like the DJ campers, producers on the album I picked him because of what he selects, I grew up on Stevie Wonder, he would select the colours that Stevie Wonder, but he’ll go to like a hardcore beat that those beautiful keys are playing on and then mix in some jazz with it and it’s like ‘woah what how where’d you get this from’ but it’s all so beautiful. So I like the beauty, but I love the hip hop and the soul. I am the Queen of hip hop soul, let’s just say that, I am, I own it. So I wanted it to be that. Not just ‘what is she doing?’ this is what it is.”
On a message to give to fans before the album is released
“I don’t have to give them anything, they’re looking at it. They’re looking at all the information they need.”
