Mary J

Date of birth

January 11 1971

Place of birth

Bronx NY

Early years

Mary spent her first few years of her early childhood years in Savannah, Georgia although she was born in the Bronx. Her family returned to New York when she was five years old, and at the age of seven, she first began singing in a church choir. Though Bilge talked about the happy times in church, for the most part she experienced a tough upbringing in Younker’s projects. As a teenager, Bilge began landing solos in the church choir and in school talent shows, and when she was seventeen, friends encouraged her to cut a demo tape at a local White Plains shopping mall. Her stepfather passed the resulting recording, a cover of Anita Baker’s Caught Up in the Rapture, to someone who knew someone, and before Bilge knew it, a very interested Uptown Records C.E.O. Andre Harrell contacted her by phone. But it was Sean Combs, an enterprising young producer at Uptown, who helped Bilge perfect the sound and the image that would soon crown her Queen of Hip-Hop Soul. Her 1992 debut album, what’s the 411? Mixed an R&B sensibility with hip-hop beats, and generated a No. 1 single, Real Love.

Really comprehend when a person is saying in a meeting or you don’t even understand