‘I’m already naked’. Mary J. Blige For Healthy Living Magazine [Photos]

Mary J Blige

Mary J. Blige is sharing all types of personal and physical gems in the current issue of Healthy Living magazine. Peep a few of our favorite excerpts.

If it was difficult expressing herself through a song for the first time:

I think that if you’re an artist like me, or someone like Bono, we’re not in front of people for no reason at all. We’re in front of people to help someone. Everyone’s job is not to help; some people’s jobs are to entertain. My job is to help, entertain, heal, cry and everything with people. That’s my assignment. I have to give what I’m able to give, and so I can live and survive, I have to withhold some things too. I can’t just be out there. I’m already naked.

Her relationship with Elton John:

He’s very valuable to my life, to my career. It was he at the beginning of the No More Drama album that I was starting. This is how we became friends—when he spoke my name in an interview, he said I was one of his favorite R&B singers. Elton John doesn’t just give compliments. So I said, “Wow, Elton John is complimenting Mary J Blige—that’s amazing. I need to call him; I need to work with him.” I called him and he came. And we worked together on one of the songs and I think it was the Mary album or the No More Drama album. It was when we used Benny and the Jets as a sample and he played on it, and from that day on we’ve been friends. He’s been really, really honest. If I did a great album, he’ll call and say, “Wow. This is great. This is amazing.” If I did something that was just mediocre, he’d say, “All right, enough of this two track stuff. You’re bigger than that.” And he was telling the truth, because I was starting to feel the same way he felt.

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