Biography

Is the first person nominated for an Academy Award for acting and writing an original song in the same year.

A huge fan of Led Zeppelin since she was a child, the singer went so far as to perform the band's classic "Stairway to Heaven" as a guest on The Oprah Winfrey Show (1986) [April 13, 2010].

Credits her husband, Kendu Isaacs, for helping her clean up her act and to overcome her drug and alcohol addiction.

Her mother, Cora Blige, survived a stabbing by a neighbor (1987).

Her job before she became a singer was a Directory Assistance operator, thus the title of her debut album "What's the 411?" (1992).

It almost kills me to say I'm in love, because as soon as men hear that shit, they're gone.

I don't know. Only God knows where the story ends for me, but I know where the story begins. It's up to us to choose, whether we win or lose and I choose to win.

My God is a God who wants me to have things. He wants me to bling. He wants me to be the hottest thing on the block. I don't know what kind of God the rest of y'all are serving, but the God I serve says, "Mary, you need to be the hottest thing this year, and I'm gonna make sure you're doing that."

I don't think there's anything they can say about me that I haven't said about myself already. And I would be an absolute total liar, and my fans would not respect me, if I said that my life and my marriage are perfect. But we absolutely love each other; we have fun together - it's great. Then we have our struggles, and we work through it. That's life.

The important thing is to realize that no matter what people's opinions may be, they're only just that - people's opinions. You have to believe in your heart what you know to be true about yourself. And let that be that.