At first glance, she seems as out of place as Dorothy in those first moments in Oz. Among the charcoal and navy suits sprinkled throughout the midtown Manhattan restaurant, her white Baby Phat sweat suit, matching baseball cap, and oversize silver hoops create a startling contrast. More likely the meeting place of CNN and NBC executives who work nearby, Del Frisco's is the kind of dark-wood-paneled hangout where the old boys kept their network going strong in cigar-filled meetings, before the mayor's smoking ban stomped out their Cubans. Yet Mary J. Blige is unfazed, never seeming to notice that she is one of the few females present—definitely the only African-American woman (reporter not counted)—without an apron. Here, she and her husband, Kendu, are regulars. She's on a first-name basis with the staff, and she's happy to stop by the bar to exchange small talk with the manager.
"They let me use this place for meetings, interviews, you know," Blige explains as we're escorted into a part of the restaurant normally set aside for private parties, now empty she slides in ther seat and looks out of the ceiling-high windows that separate her from the tourists meandering past Radio City Music Hall, a block away. Mary doesn't seem particularly enthusiastic about spending the next two houre talking about her life. Newer, hungrier artists might invite a journalist along to see them do anything, from reuniting with long-last family members to witnessing their bikini wax. Aside from lunch in a closed-off section of a favorite eatery, politeness and professionalism are all that Mary seems willing to offer. Even at the mention of her sister, LaTonya, once a permannent fixture at the singer's side, Blige visibly stiffens, saying only, "I'd prefer not to talk about my family."
Yet this shielded version is a welcome change from the days when reporters had to brace themseleves for attitude and nonanswers from the once painfully shy Queen of Hip Hop Soul. "God is working me out of that," she remarks when asked about the hats that used to shield her eyes, the whispers that could barely be heard, and the girl from Yonkers who wasn't trying to let anybody in. "There's no time for being shy right now."
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Ayanna Byrd. Unbreakable: Mary J. Blige. Copyright 2005 Vibe.com.
