It’s almost impossible to describe how talented Mary J. Blige is as an entertainer. In addition to being a trailblazer for R&B singers, Blige has been nominated for an Oscar as both an actress and a singer. In fact, she was the first person to be nominated for both in the same year. She can literally do it all and shows no signs of slowing down. Her performance during the Super Bowl LVI halftime show gave the world further evidence that she’s still got it, even after turning 50. Blige can still own any stage she steps foot on and be the headlining act on a tour. At this point, she’s essentially a living legend. More than a dozen studio albums into her career, the hits keep coming, so any time she takes a long enough break from acting to hit the road and start performing concerts, music lovers should flock to her because Blige is still one of the best in the business.

The Rap Game

Over the years, there haven’t been many women featured prominently in hip hop, but Mary J. Blige is one of the few to seamlessly crossover from R&B to rap. Even more than that, she was the first, doing so with her debut album What’s the 411?, which blended rap with R&B in a way that had never been done before. She took things to the next level with the remix of the album by having a rapper featured on almost every track, which was an unthinkable collaboration between rap and R&B at the time. She is also the only artist to take home a Grammy Award in R&B, gospel, hip hop, and pop and has been credited with helping to create the sub-genre of neo-soul.

The Queen Bee

No matter how you slice it, Mary J. Blige is one of the most influential women in music history. They don’t call her the Queen of R&B for nothing. But she’s so much more than that. Blige has had 10 no. 1 R&B albums, with a couple of her albums being considered among the most influential of all time. There’s no telling where artists like Beyonce, Keke Palmer, Monica, Adele, and even Taylor Swift would be without her. With a lifetime of hits in her catalog and her influence visible in all of the music industry, there are few artists worth seeing in concert more than Mary J. Blige.