Puffy Cultivated Me
Mary J. Blige discusses what it was like to transition into the spotlight.
- I think what Puffy saw in me is what he saw in his environment growing up, just being fresh off the block, fresh outta the hood. He just cultivated me. He saw that I was a more of a tomboy than anything, so he dressed me like he would dress Jodeci, or like he would dress himself. When everything did take off, it was like whoa, okay. Now what? And the craziest part is that when my first record took off, we were still living in the projects. We were still living in that environment so it was like scary. Now we really gotta fight for our lives because people can't handle that kind of success and you're still in the hood. The business was happy but people around me weren't happy, they weren't happy for me. So I can't describe it but the only person that made me happy when they came around was Puffy.