Mary J. Blige

What’s the 411? arrived in 1992, with Real Love and You Remind Me introducing a sound in which the beat and the sung melody have equal importance. The arrangements are direct, leaving room for vocal inflections that make a repeated phrase feel personal. Blige does not need to hide the grain in the voice to make a polished record work.

My Life followed in 1994, giving that musical vocabulary a more concentrated emotional setting. The title track and other songs allow the performance to carry difficult feelings without resolving them too quickly. The album’s coherence comes from the voice and the perspective as much as from any one production texture.

The later catalogue keeps finding new settings for that voice. No More Drama in 2001 places the large emotional performance beside the rhythmic assurance of Family Affair. The Breakthrough in 2005 offers another important chapter, with Be Without You giving a familiar R&B structure considerable weight through phrasing and control. Later releases continue to move between celebration, reflection and more conflicted feelings. The albums are worth hearing as distinct stages rather than as interchangeable evidence of endurance. A quieter verse may be doing as much expressive work as the climactic chorus. Listen to the short responses around the lead, the way a note holds against the beat and the points where the arrangement steps aside. Those details give the large voice its human scale.