Mary J. Blige and Diddy share a long history of friendship in the music industry. This friendship is backed by collaboration, camaraderie, and a few bumps along the way.
Today, Mary J. Blige is an icon, the Queen of Hip-Hop Soul, they say, and a Grammy Award winner, an Emmy Award winner, and a two-time Oscar nominee.
She is now 52, but when she was 18, her unique voice coupled with her deft, confessional songwriting skills led her from the housing projects in Yonkers, New York, to the hearts of Manhattan’s recording studios.
She became the youngest and first female artist signed to Uptown Records and debuted her album in 1992 titled, What’s the 411?
She followed this up with her 1994 album My Life, which was produced largely by Sean “Diddy” Combs, then known as Puff Daddy.
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According to her, she was “afraid of success” when she first entered the music business.
Mary J. Blige confessed that she took a long time to accept her status as a trailblazer, and it wasn’t until she met Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs in the early ’90s that she began to change her outlook.
She stated, “I was not as ambitious as Puff. When I met him, I was afraid of success, afraid to do anything that could put so much attention on me. When you come from where I come from, you’re scared to be ambitious. You’re scared to want more,” she told the outlet.
She said when she met Diddy, he was the complete opposite.
“He was such a good thing for me because I needed what he had—to be excited to be seen, to have the lights on him but it took some years to grow into that.”
Mary J. Blige, also noted that Diddy, who produced her debut album What’s the 411?, made her believe that she deserved her fame and wanted to see her be successful more than she “wanted it” herself.
In turn, Mary J. Blige praised her friend as a “pioneer” and “unstoppable force.”
