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'Family Affair' is the first single to be released from Mary's new LP and arrived in the UK Top 10 this Autumn... Mary is well known for her prestigious collaborations (Eric Clapton, George Michael, Lauryn Hill, Aretha Franklin) and Elton John, one of her former cohorts, is such a big fan that upon meeting her at Madison Square Garden he gave her gifts of perfume and a Versace pocketbook!
Another act who seems to arrive in the Now series surprisingly late in her career, although admittedly this was only her second solo Top 10 single in the UK, and the first that wasn't a cover version - this is unrelated to the Sly & The Family Stone song. I was actually more surprised to learnt that it also became her first US chart-topper. It's not actually the title track of her album No More Drama (that was the next-but-one single), but the phrase features prominently in the lyric, as indeed does the title of the single in between, 'Dance For Me'. Apparently all this represents a period in her life when she had conquered her demons and some of the complications of her personal life; good news for her but, as one reviewer said at the time, "no more drama" isn't necessarily an attractive slogan for a soul singer to come brandishing.
I'd never really been a fan of hers anyway, I'd always found her voice too strained and nasal, but I had to admit after repeated plays on the chart rundown (it spent a long-in-those-days 11 weeks in the Top 40) this track did rather appeal to me, or at least the bouncy but lush backing track produced and partly written by Dr Dre. Even if Blige herself is still a bit too whiny fully to convince in her MC role, linguistic innovations like "don't need no hateration" help keep the mood light-hearted, whether that was the intention or not. The only trouble was, every time I heard her sing the word "percolating" in the chorus it made me want a cup of coffee.
Also appearing on: Now 51, 52, 69
Available on: R&B Classics Collection
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