Hayes and White, after all, had long stopped scoring pop crossovers here was a Black woman artist modernizing them as part of glistening triple-platinum product. The anniversary edition confirms the novelty if not radicalism of the Hitmen’s approach: R&B as tradition and living history. A ’90s fly girl hearkening back to Ella Fitzgerald over a Reagan-era jam, Blige had learned how to contextualize her melancholy. On the other hand, “Mary Jane (All Night Long)” finds her and the source material in harmony: by brightening Rick James’ original synth-flute line, Thompson and Combs give Blige the chance for some old school scatting over the outro. The title track interpolates the hook and ascending three-note keyboard from Ayers’ 1976 “Everybody Loves the Sunshine,” creating a healthy tension between Blige’s blue mood and the sample’s shafts of light. These ancestral voices reassure but offer subtle contrasts, too. There's Isaac Hayes and Barry White, Roy Ayres and Slick Rick-history as group therapy. Sandwiched between the buoyant debut What’s the 411? (1992) and the austere, inevitable divadom of Share My World (1997), My Life positions Blige as heiress to an R&B fortune, thanks in large part to the sampling acumen of Bad Boy’s Hitmen team members Chucky Thompson and Sean “Puffy” Combs.
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