My Life

1	Intro 1:04
2	Mary Jane (All Night Long) 4:41
3	You Bring Me Joy 4:14
4	Marvin Interlude 0:40
5	I'm the Only Woman 4:32
6	K. Murray Interlude 0:24
7	My Life 4:19
8	You Gotta Believe 5:02
9	I Never Wanna Live Without You 6:20
10	I'm Going Down 3:44
11	My Life (Interlude) 1:15
12	Be with You 4:27
13	Mary's Joint 5:02
14	Don't Go 5:01
15	I Love You 4:33
16	No One Else 4:17
17	Be Happy 5:51

Barnes & Noble

On My Life, Mary J. Blige trades in the jeep bumping beats and shallow vocals of 1992's What's the 411? for sophisticated jazz chords, rich harmonies, funk grooves and soul jams such as on the title track, which reinterprets the Roy Ayers favorite, "Sunshine." Produced by Sean "Puffy" Combs and Andre Harrell, My Life adds New Jill swing to classic '70s R&B. Take "Be Happy," for instance, which samples the Mary Jane Girls' hit "All Night Long." Throughout My Life Blige's moody vocals often evoke the kindred spirits of Aretha Franklin, Chaka Khan and Mavis Staples, especially on ballads such as "Gotta Believe" and "I'm Goin' Down." Still, Blige never loses her ghetto street vibe while paying homage to her musical influences. Margeaux Watson

All Music Guide

Perhaps the single finest moment in Sean "Puffy" Combs' musical career has been the production on this, Mary J. Blige's second proper album. The production is not exactly original, and there is evidence here of him borrowing wholesale from other songs. The melodic sources this time around, though, are so expertly incorporated into the music that they never seem to be intrusions, instead playing like inspired dialogues with soulsters from the past, connecting past legacies with a new one. This certainly isn't your parents' (or grandparents') soul. But it is some of the finest modern soul of the '90s, backing away to a certain extent from the hip-hop/soul consolidation that Blige introduced on her debut album. The hip-hop part of the combination takes a few steps into the background, allowing Blige's tortured soul to carry the album completely, and it does so with heartwrenching authority. My Life is, from beginning to end, a brilliant, wistful individual plea of desire. Blige took a huge leap in artistry by penning almost everything herself (the major exception being Norman Whitfield's "I'm Going Down") in collaboration with co-producers Combs and multi-instrumentalist Chucky Thompson, and everything seems to leap directly from her gut. Blige's strain is sleekly modern and urban, and the grit in it comes from being streetwise and thoroughly realistic about the travails of life. My Life, nevertheless, emanates from some deep, dark place where both sadness and happiness cohabitate and turn into one single, beautiful sorrow. Stanton Swihart