Up Glowing

AFTER A CHALLENGING YEAR OF SAYING GOODBYE TO HER MARRIAGE, MARY J. BLIGE STILL FOUND THE STRENGTH TO SHINE BECAUSE SHE BELIEVES IN ONE SIMPLE TRUTH: LOVE WILL ALWAYS PULL YOU THROUGH

- Taiia Smart Young

Mary J. Blige is the very definition of #melaninpoppin. She’s slaying in a pretty white bikini, which accents her toned abs, arms and thighs. The vet, with 20-plus years in the entertainment industry, is posted up poolside in a patio chaise longue at the luxurious Faena Hotel. She’s soaking up the sun, sans makeup, while sipping something refreshing and strawberry fruity in this unforgiving 90-degree Miami heat.

The “Thick of It” singer throws on a pair of denim shorts and invites me to chat with her in an all-white-everything cabana facing the beach. Officially, today is Blige’s self-care moment before the next stop on her 45-city Strength of a Woman tour: “You have to give back to yourself. I don’t have a bunch of effects [onstage]. I just have lights, God, my life and my voice. When you give to so many people, it’s draining. You have to pray yourself back up and drink water so that when you see the people in the next city, you’re 100 percent.”

Thankfully, she’s carved out some time to talk about her latest project, Netflix’s Mudbound, which starts streaming November 17. The film—set in the Mississippi Delta of the Jim Crow South—is an adaptation of Hillary Jordan’s book, which earned the PEN/ Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction. The tome and the movie explore love, friendship, citizenship and racism from the perspective of two families—one Black, the Jacksons, the other White, the McAllans—who are living on a flood-drenched farm. The McAllans own the plantation, but patriarch Hap Jackson has plans to snag a piece of land for his family, too.