Track Listing

1. Leave A Message
2. Reminisce
3. Real Love
4. You Remind Me
5. Intro Talk
6. Sweet Thing
7. Love No Limit
8. I Don't Want To Do Anything
9. Slow Down
10. My Love
11. Changes I've Been Going Through
12. What's The 411?

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #31933 in Music
• Released on: 1999-03-20
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 53 minutes

CD Description
The opening track 'Leave A Message' is an immediately intriguing hook for the listener. A series of answering machine messages over a funky drum beat does not fail, even though most callers insist on saying 'peace' instead of 'goodbye' at the end of every call. The artist first appears on track two, and stays in control throughout an album of high-quality urban R&B/soul. Highly commercial, yet it never sinks to the blandness of some other 90s female pop acts. Tracks such as 'Real Love' lend more to the best of Aretha Franklin pop flirtations than to 90s R&B. Blige is Aretha's heir apparent.

Customer Reviews

The One That Started it All
This is the debut album from Mary J. Blige. In 1992, when New Jack Swing swung out of popularity, a new brand of r&b started to gain momentum. Blige was probably the first artist who introduced the genre that would later be known as hip hop soul. "What's the 411" is a solid collection of grooves with spark and attitude. The singles "Real Love," "Reminisce," and "You Remind Me" all sound as fresh as they did a decade ago and are great slices of well-crafted mid-tempo r&b. Her cover of Chaka's "Sweet Thing" has listeners divided. Some people like it, while others cringed at the thought of an upstart covering material from a diva so widely revered. But Blige's version of the song did work, as her bruised voice gave it the unfiltered emotion the lyrics demand. This wasn't Blige's best album, but "What's the 411" would be the beginning of a bright career for the artist we would later hail as the Queen of Hip Hop Soul.

A good debut
When 'What's The 411?' was released in 1992, it was groundbreaking; hip hop meets soul, making a mould which acts like the Fugees. Still today most tracks better recent commercial R&B rubbish. Reminisce, You Remind Me and My Love are very solid tracks. The only better songs on the album are the duets and Changes I've Been Going Through. The first duet (with K-Ci Hailey) is the ballad I Don't want To Do Anything and is probably the only decent Hip Hop/R&B ballad since it's release. The second is the rap track What's The 411?, where Mary proves she can not just sing. But the album pulls out all it's stops on Changes I've Been Going Through. A slow, melancholic song about someone not seeing the pain Mary is going through. It is backed only by piano and a drum machine, and is a pure classic.

Brilliant
One of Mary's early albums- although it can stand up to music of it's type today. the song that means something to me is "reminesce", if you like Mary you'll love this classic album. Also check out her latest album "Mary" - out standing! she just keeps getting better..