Mary J. Blige’s highly anticipated and heavily promoted new album, The London Sessions, is finally here. While we dive into it and get into the British spirit by sipping on tea and snacking on crumpets, MJB goes and drops the music video for the song "Whole Damn Year." And from the opening frames to the closing scenes, the clip grabs your attention with a visual tribute to courage and overcoming.
The video opens with a woman shrugging off her significant other with “not tonight, I have a headache” posturing, but quickly devolves into something deeper and more sinister. Flash back to her youth and we see her cowering behind a locked bathroom door, frantic and in tears, hiding from a sexually abusive alcoholic father. The next sequence shows a brutal fight between another man and woman, her eye blackened and his hand around her neck as she cries. The camera focuses on the young girl sitting in the room at the kitchen table. Closing out the trifecta of pain is a young man facing rejection from his family and bullying from neighborhood guys who toss a rainbow sticker on him after knocking him to the ground.
Surrounded by drama, Mary’s singing reaches a passionate crescendo while the painful images we witness morph into ones of strength, restoration and healing. "Whole Damn Year" is true Mary J. Blige, and the video dramatizes sensitive topics in a way that only Mary can.
