Mary J. Blige's Excellent New Video Tackles the Domestic Abuse Cycle

Mary J. Blige’s video for “Whole Damn Year”—from her great new album The London Sessions—features vignettes of abuse and violence. There’s a mother who cries at the memory of her partner’s assault in the presence of her daughter. There’s a bullied gay man, and there’s another woman who recalls locking herself in a bathroom to avoid being beaten by her dad.

Directed by Mike Ho and Alex Moors, the video is especially apropos for Blige, who’s spoken before about being a victim of and witness to abuse. This type of visual treatment is nothing new, of course, but it’s definitely impactful to pair stories of assault with a song about post-breakup emotional and physical reparation (Blige sings, “It took a whole damn year to repair my body”).

You can watch the video here. Even though there’s sort of a happy ending within it, an attempt to move forward, the narrative theme is that memories of abuse recur well after the incidents. MJB is having a great resurgence and I’m all in for it.