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Mary J. Blige has curated a generational discography on emotional honesty, so it’s only right that she’s just as candid when talking about the songs that didn’t make the cut.
The Queen of Hip-Hop Soul recently reflected on her decades-long run during a conversation on 7PM in Brooklyn, where host Carmelo Anthony asked a question every artist eventually has to face: Is there that one song or beat that got away?
“It’s not something that got away from me,” she explained. “It’s just that I know what’s for me and what’s not for me.”
Mary J. Blige had ‘Umbrella’ before Rihanna, but doesn’t regret passing on the song because it didn’t fit her 💯
— 7PM in Brooklyn (@7PMinBrooklyn) January 19, 2026
“All I heard was eh, eh … it wasn’t for me.” pic.twitter.com/8wPL3MapXY
She pointed back to the mid-2000s, when she was riding the momentum of The Breakthrough, the Grammy-nominated album that marked one of the biggest commercial peaks of her career thanks to records like “Be Without You.” During that era, hitmaking duo The-Dream and Tricky Stewart brought her a song they were excited about: “Umbrella.”
But from the jump, the “Be Without You” crooner says it didn’t feel right.
“Dream and Tricky came to me with ‘Umbrella,’ and all I heard was ‘aye, aye,’” she recalled. “And I was like, ‘Yo, my fans is gonna bug out on me if they hear me talking about aye, aye, aye.’ I had a lot going on, so I was like, ‘I’m going to pass.’”
Of course, the record went on to become a cultural juggernaut when Rihanna released it as the lead single from her 2007 album Good Girl Gone Bad. Featuring Jay-Z, “Umbrella” spent seven weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 and helped propel Rihanna into full-on global superstardom. (The song was even originally written with Britney Spears in mind before landing where it did.)
For Mary J. Blige, hearing the finished version only confirmed what she already knew.
“Then when I heard Rihanna do it, I was like, ‘See, it was for Rihanna. It wasn’t for me,’” she said. “I’m not afraid to pass on something that’s not for me. It got away, it got away—but it wasn’t for me in the first place.”
It’s a perspective that feels earned. Rather than chasing every potential hit, Mary J. Blige has spent her career trusting her instincts and protecting the bond she has with her audience. And if that means letting a chart-topping smash become someone else’s defining moment, evidently that’s fine with her.
