A Warming Trend

Beautiful, yet ice-cold.

That’s what first strikes you about Mary J. Blige as the most celebrated and enigmatic female singer in hip-hop soul walks onto a hotel patio for an interview--that and the fact she is 45 minutes late.

For those who have read over the years about Blige’s sometimes chilly attitude with the media, the distant manner and the tardiness seem to signal another tense encounter.

Like the once media-shy Aretha Franklin, Blige is able to sing about romantic heartache and personal setbacks so convincingly that it’s easy to assume her personal life--which she keeps so guarded--has been filled with a fair share of pain.

Indeed, troubled emotions have become the signature theme in Blige’s music, where the singer wears her heart on her sleeve. Not everything in her music is downcast, but the pain we hear on certain songs feels as if it comes from someone who is not only trying to find her way through tumultuous relationships, but is also wrestling with her own identity.

In real life, too, the assumption--from the little information Blige has chosen to share with the public--is that the New Yorker is trying to find her balance in a world that, in the past, seemed in her mind hellbent on her destruction.

Blige acknowledges her reticence with the interview process.

“I can shut down when I want to,” Blige says at one point in the interview. “I can tune you out and act as if you’re not even there. I can be talking to you right now and not even be here.”

But just when it looks as if nothing is going to melt the Blige ice barrier, she suddenly looks up at a hotel balcony high above and spots someone she knows. Her eyes brighten and her spirit lifts. The tight, sullen expression disappears. She’s actually as sunny as the weather on this warm afternoon.

“They’re waving at us!” she says excitedly.

From nine stories above, her close friend Nas, the New York rapper, stands with members of his posse making sweeping arm gestures--in their world, this rare display of affection is called “showing love.”

She waves back and yells a few words, then returns to the interview in a more open mood. She becomes even more relaxed when she begins to talk about her fans.

“Before all of this success, I never cared about what people thought about me,” she says. “You gotta realize that there are millions of people who love you, and you owe it to them, ‘cause they’re the ones who are buying your records and selling out your concerts.”

Even so, Blige doesn’t shed all the pieces of her emotional armor.

“But the good times are so short, ‘cause as soon as you wake up, there’s something else sad that’s happened,” she continues. “My favorite song on the new album is ‘Keep Your Head’ because it talks about dealing with the everyday struggle, and the obstacles you face. People are always praying against you.”

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Blige, whose third album, “Share My World,” comes out April 22, has a breathtaking gift that’s been embraced by all factions of the hip-hop nation and part of the general pop audience. Her constituents range from roughnecks drinking malt liquor on street corners to self-proclaimed “Big Willies” working their way toward a $2,000 cellular phone bill while driving a Mercedes, and from teenage girls pushing baby strollers to independent, high-fashion women wearing Donna Karan suits.

This audience has proclaimed Blige the queen of hip-hop soul not only because she often sings over hip-hop-influenced backing tracks, but also because her voice and perspective reflect the joy and pain of the culture. She feels what her audience feels as if they were one.

Her albums, like many rap records, reflect her life as she’s living it. The reason so many people gravitated to her second album, 1994’s “My Life,” was because the album felt like a cinematic rendition of her stormy, heart-wrenching relationship with Jodeci lead singer K-Ci Hailey.

Her Grammy-nominated performance of “Not Gon’ Cry” for Babyface’s “Waiting to Exhale” soundtrack was so heartfelt one could almost believe that this young woman had sacrificed 11 years of marriage to the wrong man.

And her album sales reflect her premiere status. Her first two albums have sold an estimated 2.5 million and 3 million copies, respectively, according to SoundScan.

“I think she’s always been the blueprint for the whole ghetto-fabulous movement” says Andre Harrell, chairman of Motown Records, who helped shepherd Blige’s career when he was head of Uptown Records in the early ‘90s.

“Growing up in the projects teaches you to protect yourself and be cautious,” he says. “She’s not going to let too many people into that private emotional space. But I think it all ended up in her music anyway. The yearning to be loved. To be free and to be happy.

“She didn’t know it, but her pain and yearnings was the voice of an entire generation that was yearning to be loved. And once she realized that she is that voice, it empowered her and gave her strength. She realized that she deserved to be loved, and to see her mature and have that confidence is a joy.”

My friends always ask, “Sweet Mary, tell me why do you weep.” / ‘Cause I’m trying to get over all the negativity . . .

--”Searching,” by Mary J. Blige

Blige was born 25 years ago in Yonkers, N.Y., and spent her formative years there in a housing project. There were plenty of good times, but more often than not the bad outweighed them.

“It was double Dutch and block parties, but there was also the fights and the shootings,” Blige says. “There was a lot to do for fun, but there was also a lot of down time, plenty of time for mischief.”

She won’t reveal too many details about her family life--just that her mother still lives in Yonkers and that her older sister, LaTonya, is her closest confidant. (She also has a younger brother and sister.)

Blige considered herself a rebellious type, but she also developed a love of singing at an early age. She followed LaTonya (who now co-writes and sings backup on her albums) to church, but she also spent hours listening to the albums that her mother played in the living room.

“All I remember is being 7 years old and singing,” she says. “It was everything from Chaka Khan and Gladys Knight and Otis Redding to Patti LaBelle. I loved it all.”

When she was 19, Blige stopped at a karaoke machine in a mall and begin singing to Anita Baker’s “Rapture.” Her stepfather took the recording of the performance to Uptown Records artist Jeff Redd, who passed it on to Harrell.

“But it wasn’t no overnight success, trust me,” she says. “It took almost two years to come up, and a lot of hype.”

Development and hype are two of Sean “Puffy” Combs’ specialties, and the then-Uptown vice president of artists and repertoire cultivated Blige’s sound and image.

Combs, who also developed the careers of Jodeci and the Notorious B.I.G. before leaving Uptown in 1993 to form his own Bad Boy Entertainment., helped transform Blige from a background singer on Father M.C.’s 1990 hit “I’ll Do 4 U” to a star whose 1992 debut album, “What’s the 411?,” was a major influence on modern pop. The record was one of the first to combine pure hip-hop beats with full-fledged R&B; vocals.

“I feel what my culture wants and what my people want,” Blige says. “I know what they want and what they feel. I wasn’t trying to bring people in with my records, but if I am, that’s good. It seems like when you’re not trying to get attention, that’s when you get it. You ever notice that?”

‘I listen to this little voice in my head,” Blige says softly, late in the interview, smoking a cigarette as she explains her new philosophy.

“It’s a small voice. The bigger voice is the one that always gets me into trouble. The small voice is the one that says, ‘Mary, don’t go out to that party tonight. Don’t drink that.’ I listen to that. The big voice is the one that says, ‘Have your fun. Go there and get with that guy over there.’

“First of all, what you have to learn is that that little voice is who you really are, and that it’s God trying to speak to you, if you would just listen. The big, loud voice is the flesh. But if your spirit is together, your little voice will guide you in the right direction. That’s how I’m living.”

That small voice slowly but surely has changed Blige’s attitude about the music business, and has helped her handle the tribulations that come from being in the spotlight. She’s radiant, confident and proud. “You can go so far in life just with common courtesy,” she says.

Producer Jimmy Jam, who produced two of the tracks on the new album with his partner Terry Lewis, is among those who notice the maturity.

“She’s gone through a lot,” Jam says. “I had met her at different industry events and she was kind of cool and aloof, but when I got to know her, I realized she was this very warm, very caring person. It made me realize that she could be hurt very easily, and probably has been in the past.”

The duo ended up writing and producing a song for Blige called “The Love I Never Had.” But even that song, according to Jam, contained pockets of joy.

“Even when Mary is singing a painful song, you can tell there’s nothing she’d rather be doing than singing,” the producer says. “I think it gives her comfort, and it comforts her fans too.”

For her part, Blige seems pleased with the life she’s made for herself and of her ability to touch so many lives. She’s finally taking the time to absorb that love, and release the pain and negativity that she feels have shielded her true nature from all that was out to get her.

“That little voice just tells me, ‘Mary, as long as you’re living, you’ll never stop learning. You’ll grow, and you just have to be more patient than ever,’ ” she says.

“I just want a piece of mine and peace of mind. Sometimes it seems so far away, but as long as I’m happy and do the things I have to do, it will come. You just have to wait and pray for everything.”