![]() Steve Stoute was managing you, and while you were touring the Share My World album, we did the song “Love is All We Need.” It was somewhere in that whirlwind that we met. How did we meet?īLIGE: I swear I can never actually remember, but I know this much. īLIGE: We all had our first real car on that one. NAS: Man, that album reminds me of when I got my first car. Chucky Thompson’s in it, right?īLIGE: Yeah, Chucky was a major part of the My Life album. That shit had my eyes watering.īLIGE: Aw, thank you, Nas. Below, the pair reminisce about their days touring together, the infamous Club MJB, and their very first meeting. Last week, Nas and Blige cleared some time in their crowded calendars for a Zoom call to catch up on one another’s lives. This August, Nas released King’s Disease II, an album boasting features from the likes of Eminem, Lauryn Hill, and Hit-Boy, and Blige returned to the screen in Power Book II: Ghost and Respect. Since that fateful interaction, the two hip-hop R&B powerhouses have collaborated on a slew of chart-toppers like “Love Is All We Need,” “Reach Out,” and recently, 2019’s “Thriving.” The same year, Nas and MJB hit the road as co-headliners on their Royalty Tour, an experience which brought them still closer as collaborators and companions. The pair have even confessed to playing each other’s music line for line, before they ever met in person. Both budding stars in the ’90s, they caught each other’s attention with explosive debut albums- Illmatic and What’s the 411?, respectively. Blige were fans before they were friends. Happy 20, 411? R&B fans in 2012 would be lucky to get an album with a tenth of the pull that this had.Nas and Mary J. He was dancing around the studio all hype.Īlso excellent is the track's Pete Rock remix, which liberally samples his "They Reminisce Over You." "We thought we had them and then he played us that record. I remember the day played ‘Reminisce' for us and we all said, ‘Damnit,'" he laughs. Says Rooney, who didn't produce it (Hall did): It wasn't a huge pop hit, but was all over R&B radio and BET that fall. ![]() Blige.' This is how I became part of the project." This is new direction I need for this artist named Mary J. He said, ‘That's exactly what I'm looking for! That's the new sound we need. One day, I was in Eddie F.'s car in the backseat and Diddy was in the front and I played my tracks. I wasn't getting any traction with the sound because people didn't quite understand it. At that time, New Jack Swing was prominent and he told us that his artist wasn't New Jack Swing and that her style was a little bit grittier and a little more urban.īack then, I was experimenting with putting hip-hop beats together with R&B chord progressions. and I and said he was looking for this new type of sound for his artist. When Diddy was working on the project, he came to Eddie F. In today's context, it can sound like just a really tight collection of great songs.Įbony has a terrific interview with 411? producers Dave "Jam" Hall and Cory Rooney, in which they describe engineering the revolution. Sometimes landmarks alter things so definitively that they end up subverting their own importance - 411? redefined sound so much that it's easy to forget just how revolutionary it once was. The idea of singing straight R&B over hip-hop breaks (including classics like that of Audio Two's "Top Billin'," as heard in " Real Love") was a foreign concept at the time of its release. No single disc of the past two decades did more to define the sound of R&B (though Aaliyah's One in a Million came close). Tomorrow marks the 20th anniversary of the release of Mary J.
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