Her third album, 1997's Share My World, reached No.

My Life proved another critical and popular success with singles such as 'Be Happy,' 'Mary Jane (All Night Long)' and 'You Bring Me Joy.' In 1996, she won her first Grammy Award (best rap performance by a duo or group) for 'I'll be There For You/You're All I Need to Get By,' a duet with Method Man of the Wu-Tang Clan. Two years later, Blige released a second album, My Life, on which she wrote or co-wrote nearly all of the songs. Alcohol, sex, drugs-I'd do whatever it took to feel a little better.' 'I ended up becoming my environment,' Blige said.

I felt the Spirit.' However, by the time she turned 16, she had dropped out of school, stopped going to church, and become addicted to drugs and sex. 'I felt wanted and special, and when I was 12, I sang the hymn 'Lord, Help Me To Hold Out Until My Change Has Come.' I was praying as I sang it. 'I loved being there because I wouldn't be hurt,' she said about going to church. They hurt me.'Д«lige found escape from the terrible world of her childhood in church and in music. She left us with people she thought could be trusted. My mother was a single parent, a working woman. When I was 5, sexual stuff was done to me. I never saw a woman there who wasn't abused. The projects offered only more horror: 'I'd hear women screaming and running down the halls from guys beating up on them. Hoping to escape from her father, Blige and her mother moved to the Schlobohm Houses, a public housing project in Yonkers.

Mary j blige be without you album cover