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"  What does it mean, exactly, to be the &amp;quot;Queen of Hip-Hop Soul&amp;quot;? To understand that, you have to see Mary J. Blige\u2014the woman who has not just held but thoroughly owned the title for nearly 20 years\u2014perform. Onstage, Blige is a spiritual fire hydrant, injecting emotion that seems never-before-felt into songs she&amp;#039;s sung hundreds of times. Eschewing complex choreography, Blige struts, she squats, she arches her back to draw out notes, all the while connecting with the truth in every lyric, preaching her message\u2014survival, strength, self-empowerment\u2014with the unvarnished authenticity of gospel. Her audience, converts all, clutch their stomachs in empathy, put their hands in the air, eyes closed, lips fervent, following her word for word with the feverish intensity of, as her concerts are often described, a revival meeting. Queen? Indeed. &amp;quot;Honey,&amp;quot; Blige says, &amp;quot;there are no distractions when you&amp;#039;re onstage, because you are where you live. When I&amp;#039;m on that stage, I&amp;#039;m not worried about my heels, I&amp;#039;m not worried about my hair. My pony\u00ADtail could fly off and it wouldn&amp;#039;t even matter to me. Because once you make that connection with those people, nothing else matters.&amp;quot;  Blige, 40, has called herself a singer who thinks like a rapper. She is bluntly honest about what she calls the &amp;quot;drama&amp;quot; in her life: molestation by a family friend at age five; abandonment by her father at eight; childhood in the rough Schlobohm (aka &amp;quot;Slow Bomb&amp;quot;) projects of Yonkers, New York; and the rocky relationships of her twenties. Even now, after 10 albums (her latest, My Life II... The Journey Continues (Act 1), is out this month), 28 Grammy nominations and nine wins; after becoming a happily married, perfume-selling, sunglass-designing mogul living in a bucolic New Jersey manse, she remains for fans a conduit to emotions they often can&amp;#039;t acknowledge, let alone articulate. &amp;quot;I can&amp;#039;t save every man and woman on planet Earth; I&amp;#039;m not God. Let&amp;#039;s be clear on that,&amp;quot; Blige says with a laugh. &amp;quot;What I am is a vessel and a friend. What I&amp;#039;m here for is to walk outside and have someone say `Wow, this song got me through this when I was going through this&amp;#039; and then lay the story on me.&amp;quot;  Now, with two movies in the works, Blige is about to show us just how far her gift for connection extends. Acting, she says, has been a dream since grade school, but she knows there&amp;#039;s work to do: coaches, practice, patience. &amp;quot;I don&amp;#039;t want to be the singer that just got the part,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;I want to earn it.&amp;quot; In August, she wrapped next summer&amp;#039;s Rock of Ages, based on the audaciously campy, fourth wall\u2013trouncing Broadway musical (picture Hair meets The Rocky Horror Picture Show on L.A.&amp;#039;s Sunset Strip in the &amp;#039;80s). In addition to Tom Cruise singing Def Leppard&amp;#039;s &amp;quot;Pour Some Sugar on Me,&amp;quot; it features Alec Baldwin, Russell Brand, Paul Giamatti, and Dancing With the Stars alum Julianne Hough. Blige plays gold-jumpsuited strip club owner Justice Charlier, who delivers a familiar-sounding message\u2014&amp;quot;to encourage [her strippers] to feel good and take their power back from whatever dark place it was taken before they even came to work there&amp;quot;\u2014by way of Pat Benatar&amp;#039;s &amp;quot;Shadows of the Night&amp;quot; and Journey&amp;#039;s &amp;quot;Any Way You Want It.&amp;quot; All of which is to Blige&amp;#039;s apparent delight. &amp;quot;I was a kid in the 1980s,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;I remember the day the `Thriller&amp;#039; video hit television, and we all cut school and ran home to watch it. I remember Hall &amp;amp;amp; Oates, Tears for Fears; `Love Is a Battlefield&amp;#039; being everybody&amp;#039;s favorite song at the moment. I&amp;#039;ve been brought up on music, not just R&amp;amp;amp;B but music.&amp;quot; The true test of her big-screen skills will come this fall, when Blige begins filming what could be the role of a lifetime, as Nina Simone in a long-gestating biopic written and directed by Cynthia Mort (creator of HBO&amp;#039;s Tell Me You Love Me). Simone, born into the large family of a poor preacher and handyman in Tryon, North Carolina, became a star of the radical &amp;#039;60s black intelligentsia for channeling Civil Rights\u2013era rage into anthems like &amp;quot;Mississippi Goddam.&amp;quot; Ultimately, though, Simone found a warmer reception in the smoky bo\u00EEtes of Paris than in her home country. It&amp;#039;s easy to see why Mort, some seven years ago, told Blige, &amp;quot;You are my Nina&amp;quot;: Onstage, Simone could saturate a single word with more feeling than other artists channel into entire albums. But Simone was difficult, erratic; later in her career, she was said to have suffered from schizophrenia.  When the idea arose, Blige had little idea who Nina Simone was\u2014she&amp;#039;d heard the name, but thought the dusky voice behind &amp;quot;I Put a Spell on You&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;My Baby Just Cares for Me&amp;quot; was a man&amp;#039;s. Since then, though, &amp;quot;I learned that she was a woman on the search for love, as well. You know, looking for love, standing up for her rights, and not being understood.&amp;quot; For Blige, a high school dropout who earned her GED at the age of 39\u2014and who has admitted that, early on, she found record execs&amp;#039; jargony talk intimidating\u2014Simone&amp;#039;s flinty intellect struck a sensitive chord. &amp;quot;No one could ever belittle her in a conversation. She was not a mess,&amp;quot; says Blige. &amp;quot;Spirituality? My God, this woman makes the hair stand up on my legs just talking about her.&amp;quot; Simone might appreciate the title of Blige&amp;#039;s new album, My Life II... The Journey Continues (Act 1). Her iconic 1994 effort, My Life, was recorded at a time &amp;quot;when we didn&amp;#039;t know if we were going to live or die,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;It spoke from such a place of `I need help, we all need help.&amp;#039;&amp;quot; Today, she and her fans have sustained each other. &amp;quot;Now we can say we&amp;#039;re beautiful, we&amp;#039;re strong, we&amp;#039;re confident.&amp;quot; Not that it&amp;#039;s all sunshine and champagne. &amp;quot;To sit back and lie and say everything is wonderful in anybody&amp;#039;s life?&amp;quot; She chuckles. &amp;quot;My fans would be like, `Come on, man.&amp;#039;&amp;quot; "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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