Blige took a huge leap in artistry by penning almost everything herself (the major exception being Norman Whitfield's "I'm Going Down") in collaboration with co-producers Combs and multi-instrumentalist Chucky Thompson, and everything seems to leap directly from her gut.
My Life is, from beginning to end, a brilliant, wistful individual plea of desire.
The hip-hop part of the combination takes a few steps into the background, allowing Blige's tortured soul to carry the album completely, and it does so with heartwrenching authority. But it is some of the finest modern soul of the '90s, backing away to a certain extent from the hip-hop/soul consolidation that Blige introduced on her debut album. This certainly isn't your parents' (or grandparents') soul. The melodic sources this time around, though, are so expertly incorporated into the music that they never seem to be intrusions, instead playing like inspired dialogues with soulsters from the past, connecting past legacies with a new one. The production is not exactly original, and there is evidence here of him borrowing wholesale from other songs. Perhaps the single finest moment in Sean "Puffy" Combs' musical career has been the production on this, Mary J.
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