Mary Q & A with Rolling Stone

New York, NY. (Top40 Charts/ Geffen Records) - Out of the gates, Mary J. Blige's seventh album, The Breakthrough, was a blockbuster. Released in December of 2005, it debuted atop the charts, selling a whopping 727,000 copies in its first week out.
The lead single, "Be Without You," ruled the R&B charts for fifteen straight weeks, and the powerhouse collaboration with U2 on their classic "One" reached an even bigger audience - proving without a doubt that Blige is the pre-eminent soul singer of our time.
Now she is nominated for eight Grammys, but Blige still sees The Breakthrough - on which she addresses her past drug and alcohol abuse and childhood abandonment by her father - as more of a personal triumph than a professional one.
"I had to kick through the wall, to no longer blame other people for the terrible things that have happened to me," says Blige, 36, sitting in her suite at the Ritz Carlton in New York.
"I had to find the pleasure on the other side of pain."