Mary J Blige featuring Drake “The One”
For close to two decades (!!) we’ve relied on Mary J Blige‘s raw, grainy (and, at times, off-key) whoops to help keep some semblance of true, from-the-soul authenticity alive in the contemporary R&B realm, and even though those fiery chops have gotten smoothed over in recent years, we never once thought that she would ever think of joining the “singing android” parade. Yet, there she was on the summer-leaked (and Drake-featured) “The One”, crushing plenty of hearts across the globe in her unnecessary decision to undergo the Auto-Tuned treatment.
Why MJ why, we sighed and whimpered, hoping that the track would either end up in the recycling bin, get passed onto some lesser naturally-gifted singer, or at least be given a post-”D.O.A”, vocal effect-stripped make-over before it’s official release. Unfortunately, our wishes were ignored: “The One”, minus any revisions, would ultitimately be branded as the jump-off single for Mary’s 9th studio effort, Stronger.
In a case of the video sort of making a song better though, thanks to “One”‘s heavily stylized accompanying clip, featuring Blige cutting up a rug while getting her sexy swag on under a neon-lit glow, our initial hesitations towards the record have alleviated some.
It’s plinky-plonk futuro beat may fall a tad on the generic side but it does bump (a fun vibe we actually requested from her a couple months back), the boasting lyrics are cool (“Let me break it down if you don’t get it/ Quality, I’m custom-fitted/…Boy don’t you know I’m the one”"), and the Auto-Tune is really only heard on a couple lines. Still, let it be known that we would fully appreciate it if Blige left the roboticized gimmicks to the chicks that really need it from here on out.
Stronger drops this November.
Saw this song featured on a commercial recently with MJB strutting with her cellphone and going through a bunch of automatic costume changes. It raised a couple of questions, namely, if MJB uses auto-tune, does that mean in order to be commercially successful, you need to follow industry trends even if it goes against your original style? How do artists actually feel about using auto-tune? Maybe it’s fun? How long is this trend going to continue? I figured that it would last maybe a year after T-pain popularized it, but as the public gets more used to it, as our ears grow accustomed to that sound, is it going to be around for the considerable future?