The London Sessions

The London Sessions is the 12th studio album by American R&B recording artist Mary J. Blige; it was released on November 24, 2014 by Capitol Records and Matriarch Records. On October 26, 2014, the album leaked in its entirety to the Internet, with Billboard calling it "superb" and "objectively her best since 2005's The Breakthrough".
In June 2014, Blige released a full-length soundtrack album for the comedy film Think Like a Man Too. The project followed her gold-selling holiday album A Mary Christmas, which became a top ten success in United States, but it underperformed commercially: Think Like a Man Too debuted and peaked at number 30 on the Billboard 200, with 8,688 copies sold in its first week, becoming the lowest sales debut of any of Blige's studio albums. "Suitcase", the only single released from the album, reached the top 30 on Billboard‍ 's Adult R&B Songs chart only. In February 2014, amid the production for the soundtrack album, Blige recorded vocals for a remix version of "F for You", a song by British electronic garage-house duo Disclosure. The remix, while retaining most of the original track from their album Settle, was re-recorded for release as a single and became a top ten hit on the UK Dance Chart. Inspired by its response, Blige initially hoped to record an EP with the duo, in July 2014, it was announced Blige would move to London to experiment with a new sound. Blige spent a month in London recording her album in RAK studios with a host of young British acts, including Disclosure, Naughty Boy, Emeli Sandé and Sam Smith. The results were ten new songs, co-written and recorded by the singer in one month in postcodes W6, NW8 and NW5.
During an interview with The Guardian, American executive producer of the album Rodney Jerkins spoke on the musical direction stating, "You have so much different music here. Variety births the next generation. In California the music kind of all feels the same. That 90s house vibe you have right now – it feels fresh. Dancin', celebratin' – feelin' good about life. We're making a Mary Blige record, but she can introduce new styles to the world." In the same interview Blige shared about the project's vision saying, "Our idea was to become part of London... to really embrace the culture – to really live in it. Not that I haven't been here before, but I've never had the chance to really soak in it the way I have this time. To make records from the London-scene perspective. The music is free over here the way it used to be in the States. Artists are just free to do what they love. Listening to the radio you can hear the freedom. The music is living and breathing – you can hear that from Adele's last album. It was massive – a big deal. But she did what she loved."  Rodney Jerkins revealed a film crew is making a documentary of Blige's creative process in London with a new documentary, and he plans to drop in audio clips from it between tracks.
"Right Now" was described by Disclosure member Howard Lawrence as, "start with some chords I made on Jimmy Napes' piano. We took that and gave it a Disclosure-y feel with some drums that (brother) Guy made. Mary leaves the instrumental side to us and gets much more involved when it comes to writing vocals."
Tom Horan of The Observer spoke on the Naughty Boy produced and Emeli Sandé co-written track "Pick Me Up" stating, " mixes sub-bass with clarinet and a percussion sound that recalls early 00s UK garage." The Sam Smith penned "Therapy" was described as a doo-wop track.
Sam Romans spoke on a song he produced for the album saying, "I'm doing a track at the moment with Naughty Boy – a soul track – and he was saying it's amazing how a Pakistani singer from Watford and a Jewish producer are making something that would be described as black music. That is the interesting thing about England."