American singer and songwriter Mary J. Blige began her career as a backing vocalist for Uptown Records in the early 1990s. She has released 13 studio albums, eight of which have individually achieved worldwide multi-platinum status. The Queen of Hip-Hop Soul and Queen of R&B (publications often refer to her as both honorific titles), Mary J. Blige is uniquely credited as the first singer to release an album singing over hip-hop beats, which created the genre "hip hop soul" which fuses elements of soul, R&B and gospel style vocals over hip hop beats. Blige's genre-changing sound, in many ways, changed and shaped the sound for modern day R&B and blue-eyed soul artists. In September 1999, Rolling Stone bestowed her first album, What's the 411? (1992), as "genre-creating". Her discography cons