One of Mary J. Blige’s earliest lyrics, from her breakout sophomore album, “My Life,” encapsulates the theme that has become central to her 30-plus year career: “How can I love somebody else/If I can’t love myself enough to know/When it’s time/Time to let go?” It is a question that went beyond the tendency of pop and R.&B. songs of the time to look outward (Why won’t you love me?), or to focus purely on the singer’s desires (I need romance) and turned the gaze inward, acknowledging the work to be done on the self first. The lyric also introduced one of Blige’s hallmarks: She doesn’t provide her listeners with answers to life’s big questions, instead complicating the inquiry itself, time and again. More than a guide, she is a fellow traveler.

Blige is now 51, with 9 Grammy Awards, two Academy Award nominations and three Golden Globe nominations, with a hit for seemingly every era of hip-hop and R.&B. since her debut. She was 17 and living in public housing in Yonkers, N.Y., when she sang Anita Baker’s entire “Rapture” album to the music executive Andre Harrell, which led to her record deal. She has spent the ensuing years longing for love on records, finding and losing it in front of the world. Where so much of popular music has been geared toward showing just enough vulnerability to bolster your own fierceness, Blige’s particular brand of honesty and approachability brings out something tender in listeners and collaborators alike.

During the heyday of mid-’90s New York hip-hop, when gritty, gun-toting street narratives dominated the culture, Blige’s vocals helped add nuance to the image of city life and the relationships that governed it. She softened Method Man on his devotional “I’ll be There for You/You’re All I Need to Get By” and added uptown swagger to Jay-Z’s Mafioso flow on “Can’t Knock the Hustle.” In the early 2000s Blige brought soul to Talib Kweli’s “I Try” and a sense of ease and warmth to Common’s “Come Close.” In the years since, Blige’s list of featuring spots has grown to include Ludacris, Lil Wayne, Drake, Kendrick Lamar, Kid Cudi and Wyclef Jean. If you want a track to have real feeling, you call Mary.

In this year’s Super Bowl halftime show, Blige appeared alongside some of the biggest names in hip-hop, past and present, and sang about her joy and her heartbreak. She performed her bouncy club anthem “Family Affair,” (wherein she gifts us with the word “dancery”), and then her ballad “No More Drama” with a kind of controlled anguish, ending sprawled out on the stage in an act of triumphant depletion. As her peers rapped about their own enduring greatness (Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg’s “Still D.R.E.”) and offered broader affirmations for their people (Kendrick Lamar’s “Alright”), Blige kept the show grounded in raw, introspective emotion, even while clad in Swarovski crystals and thigh-high boots.

This February Blige also released her 15th studio album, “Good Morning Gorgeous,” her first since her divorce from the music producer Kendu Isaacs was finalized in 2018.The production of the album feels in step with current trends, with features from Anderson .Paak and songwriting assistance from H.E.R., but the substance of the songs is classic Blige: honest about her failures and unabashed about her desire to be loved. On the Starz show “Power Book II: Ghost,” Blige currently plays Monet, the calculating, occasionally murderous wife of an incarcerated drug kingpin. Blige has said that the character reminds her of women she grew up around: sole providers willing to do whatever it takes to survive in a ruthless, male-dominated world.

Blige and I spoke on Zoom the Friday after her Super Bowl performance, in a moment of relative calm before she traveled to Cleveland to perform at N.B.A. All Star Weekend. Though her music is often informed by pain, Blige is more interested in taking stock of life’s fluctuations and grabbing whatever joy is within reach along the way.

So many songs on your new album feel really contemporary but also so genuinely Mary — “Rent Money,” “Failing in Love,” “Here with Me.” How do songs like that begin for you, from a writing perspective? A song begins from an experience, a feeling. Feeling, like, empty, or depleted — what does that mean? What word can define feeling that way? Getting nothing back in return — I think that would be “Rent Money.” And “Failing in Love” is what I seem to keep doing. I’m single, and I’m cool with it now, but the relationship thing, I don’t know what’s going on with it. That’s where “Failing” came from: Sometimes I feel like I failed when it comes to love. “Here With Me,” that’s just how I want to feel — I want to be with someone. I want to feel someone and be with someone and be able to sing those lyrics, you know?

One of your hallmarks is how personal you are in your music. During something like your decade-plus marriage, how do you decide how much of yourself to put in your songs, and how much to hold back? Well, I’m not going to say anything that I don’t want to say. You’re not going to find out anything about me that I don’t want you to find out.

The world is always “Gimme more, gimme more, I need gossip, I need this, I need that” — I’m not going to give you gossip. I’m just going to give you what I know I can confirm, what I know I can stand and talk about and not feel like I don’t have anything left. What I give is what people deal with, what we go through every single day.

I’m not afraid of the world, not at all — I’ve been going through hell since I was little. I’m not afraid to say, OK: I’m going through this, and I need help just like everybody else on Earth needs help. But I’m not going to give up nothing that I don’t want to give up. That’s why I’m comfortable. People in this world can’t force me to do anything.

Is that something you’ve believed from the beginning, or is that a part of your evolution as a songwriter? From the beginning. Ever since I was a little kid, you cannot force me to do things. If you try, it’s always a bad experience for you and me.

There’s this assumption that the thing that makes you so powerful is that you lay it all out. But in reality, one thing that makes you so powerful is that you know which parts of you are going to touch other people. I don’t think people care about the details too much! They just care about the part that they can relate to directly with you. “Me too, girl, me too.” They don’t even care about how you got on that floor. They just know that you were down there — with them. I just give them enough to say, “Me, too. I’m hurting too.”

It feels like this is what I’m supposed to be doing. I got a divorce, you know: OK, Mary, how’d you get through this? Because the world saw you go through all this. It’s an assignment for me to do that. It might not be everybody else’s assignment. But there are a lot of women who love me and respect me and follow me, and want to know — not the details, but how to get to the other side. How did you get to the other side with class and dignity when everybody was tearing you down and teasing you, and the person that you were with was destroying you? I made a way that’s like, Whatever your truth is, speak it.

You have a philosophy in terms of what you reveal. Do you have one on a language level? Do you ever cross something out because it’s just not a Mary kind of word? I do. There are certain things I would never say. And I don’t like to be too literal. “Failing in Love” is an experience. “Rent Money” is an experience. It wasn’t like, “My rent is due, so the song is called ‘Rent Money’” — it was like, Everything is due.

I was thinking about Roy Ayers’s “Everybody Loves the Sunshine,” which you sample on “My Life.” The lyrics of that song are pretty straightforward — it’s “bees and things and flowers.” And that’s what I love about it! That was the first song I really heard, when I was 4 years old. When you think of the sunshine, you think of bees and trees — it’s very A-B-C, 1-2-3. It’s not literal, it’s just plain and simple. I like to write like that, too, plain and simple. Because people get it. Something in the color of that music, something in the keys, something that just drives me crazy in a good way. It has so much medicine and healing. They didn’t have to say anything else but just bees and trees and flowers, and I’m in. “Whatever drug y’all are taking, I’m taking, too.”

You said you love the color of that song. What color is that song to you? That’s gold. There’s something very regal and shiny about it.

You often mention colors in relation to your songs. I hadn’t realized that you’re a synesthesia person. When you listen to music, do you often see colors? Every time. As soon as it comes on, I can tell you what color it is.

“Good Morning Gorgeous” is what color? Purple. It’s royal, an arrival of something new and powerful.

And “Real Love?” “Real Love” is light, like a sunny-day sky blue. Almost all the songs on “My Life” are blue. “Be Happy,” blue. “All Night Long,” blue. “Don’t Go,” blue. “I’m The Only Woman,” dark blue.

The new album’s themes feel very 2022: positive affirmations, self-care, vulnerability, the benefits of talk therapy. Your openness made you so beloved, for decades. But were there ever opportunities or things that didn’t come to you, because you were so real? A lot of people don’t come to me. A lot of people run away from me, because I’m so open. Everybody’s not ready to be open! That’s the professional downside: A lot of people will run. And a lot of people will stay, because they want to get to the other side. If I weren’t getting to the other side, everybody would be running. People run when they’re not ready to get to the other side, to get out — when it’s comfortable. I’m always in a place where it’s uncomfortable, because I’m always trying to get to the other side of any kind of self-hatred, negativity, self-pity. And not everybody’s ready.

When you say people, do you mean other artists, or listeners? I mean some peers, some friends. They’re not ready. Some people run. What I love about doing this is you get to see who is who. The one who is just in it for who you are — famous, or whatever — you see them run when it gets hard. But the ones that love you stay, and they hurt with you, heal with you, cry with you. That’s the beauty of vulnerability. It weeds out all the B.S.

Growing up listening to your music, you always seemed to be one of the girls in the boys’ club — so affiliated with hip-hop, which was so male-dominated. Because of that, when you were the only woman onstage at the Super Bowl, it felt very natural. Was that something you gave any thought to, being the only woman? Well yeah, of course. I’m always in that situation. Because hip-hop is such a male-dominated field, and I happen to be the Queen of Hip-Hop Soul. But I’ve never had a problem, a run-in, any negativity, with my male peers, ever. They love me, they respect me, they call on me. I know how to carry myself. I love that about myself, that I can handle myself with these men.

In the studio, has it ever been difficult to be so vulnerable about things like your romantic experience, in such a male-dominated setting? Not at all. Most of them are like, “Me too, I’m going through it too!” That’s another thing — you’d be surprised what vulnerability can bring. It just opens everybody up. And it’s beautiful because now we can all get some healing together. Now we can write this song together. Like me and Anderson .Paak writing “Love Without the Heartbreak” — that was a heavy session! But he can relate. Doing the whole “My Life” album with my brother Puff — that was a lot. He was going through what he was going through, and I was going through what I was going through.

Has it ever felt like some kind of negotiation when you were the only female voice on a track with men who were, perhaps, expressing negative views about women on the same song? Well, I know who I am. I know they aren’t talking to me. Even when I didn’t love myself, I knew they weren’t talking to me. These are my friends and my brothers, and they’re talking about whoever they’re talking about, and that’s on them. Whatever they have to come through, they have to come through. I don’t like men speaking negatively about women, but I’m not everybody’s boss, I’m not your mother. I’m your friend. So that’s between you and God and whoever you’re speaking about.

When I was younger, that wasn’t something that was on my mind. What was on my mind was making a hot record, a record that we can both relate to together. Like “You’re All I Need.” That’s a beautiful song. Method Man’s speaking highly about women.

I’m always struck by hearing you talk about your ascendant years — how, behind the scenes, you didn’t feel that you were all that, that you were beautiful, that you were as great as everybody said you were. During those years, what was the thing that kept you creating? The fan base, the love for the music, that was my survival. I didn’t have anything else. I was a girl from the hood who didn’t really have much. And then when I got something — which was love from people who didn’t even know me — it was like, wow, OK.

It was the only thing that made me feel good. Everything else about me was like, Yeah, whatever. It was always hard to see myself as a beautiful person — because of so many things I don’t want to talk about that happened in life, from childhood to being a young adult in the music business. The music and the people and the fans and the money — the things that came with it — helped me to cover up everything else.

In the “My Life” documentary, you said that Diddy helped you see yourself as a real artist. What is your definition of a real artist? In my case, a person who’s not afraid to give of oneself to heal, or to help someone else heal. A person who’s not afraid to experiment.

The reason I say that about Diddy is that I was afraid to bring some of the songs to him for the “My Life” album. And that was my first experience as an artist speaking from a place of hurt, a place of “I need help.” And I was afraid to go to him, because I didn’t know how he was going to receive it. Because, you know, the “What’s the 411?” album was not like that. And when I brought it to him, he went crazy. That’s when I knew: OK, this is what I do. This is what I do as an artist. I’m an artist. Puff believes in me, and he sees me. He told me that — he said, “You’re a real artist now.”

As 2022 Mary, do you have anything you wish you could have said to 1998 Mary? If she would have listened to me — because she wasn’t listening to anyone — I would tell her that you have no idea what the future holds for you. I need you to get ready. But you can’t tell her to get ready. Because she ain’t ready.

I think about the years in the late 2000s, early ’10s, when it seemed like R.&B. took a back seat to music that was more dance focused, electronic focused. And those are the years when you went to London and put out the amazing “London Sessions,” which feels like a bridge to current trends. How did you feel during those years, when everybody was trying to make songs for a different kind of club? I felt normal. But I was feeling forced by the labels to do something that would move the needle more, on the charts or whatever. Try this, try that. I could have just kept making the type of music I was making, but the labels wanted dance remixes. I felt like I was being pushed to do things I didn’t want to do, but you know, when the label speaks, sometimes you have to do what they say, because it’s their money. I got in a lot of trouble fighting for the R.&B. singles I wanted to keep. It didn’t hurt anything, but it didn’t help anything either.

But sometimes, dipping your toe into that genre — like the songs with Disclosure, or Kaytranada and BADBADNOTGOOD — doesn’t feel like you got lost. In those songs, no, because I was doing what I wanted to do. I picked Disclosure because I thought they were hot! I saw a video of theirs, and I was like, Who is this? It felt like they knew where we came from, they were sampling everything we were sampling. They knew their history, hip-hop music and R.&B. And Kaytranada, he’s us. I like to do stuff when it feels like I’m not alienating who I am and where my music history comes from. I like to stay where my world is not crossing over to theirs — they’re crossing over to me.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

Angela Flournoy is the author of the novel “The Turner House.” She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the American Academy in Berlin. Arielle Bobb-Willis is a photographer from New York. Her work can be seen in the traveling “New Black Vanguard” gallery show and book.