Mary J. Blige Reflects On Multimillion-Dollar Debt

During the height of her financial problems, R&B legend Mary J. Blige says she “owed hundreds of millions of dollars” in unpaid taxes.

“I owed so much money I never thought I’d ever get out of debt,” the singer said during a panel discussion at her second annual Strength of a Woman Festival and Summit in Atlanta. “I’m out of debt now. I owed millions, millions…like hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes.”

Blige says she came out on the other side of that debt experience all the wiser.

“Now I look at my payroll… that’s not my money. My taxes are not my money, so I’m like, ‘Pay my payroll, pay my taxes, pay my tithes.’ All of that money, I don’t even wanna see it because it doesn’t belong to me,” Blige explained to the audience.

Blige suggests her ex-husband and manager, Martin “Kendu” Isaacs, was the root of her financial troubles.

“But he was in control of everything,” she added. 

In 2013 TMZ reported that the IRS filed a tax lien against Blige for $3.4 million. This occurred while she was also being sued for defaulting on two bank loans in 2012 and 2013, amounting to $2.7 million. According to Bossip, the IRS also filed a tax lien against Blige in 2019. The agency claimed she owed the federal government $1,198,161 in back taxes.

The Start of Financial Trouble

Blige and Isaacs were married from 2003 to 2018. She says it wasn’t until after their divorce, that she realized all the money Isaac spent during their marriage.

“By the time I got to the deposition and saw everything that he did, I didn’t have a dollar left,” she said in an interview with “The Breakfast Club” last year. “He spent everything, and he knew he spent everything but he was still asking me for more money.”

During that interview, she also admitted that her song “Rent Money” was inspired by her ex-husband’s irresponsible spending.

“I had to give up all this alimony, and I didn’t have no more money to give because he had spent it all,” she said. “I had to go on tour and make all the money back to pay the alimony.”

The post Mary J. Blige Reflects On Multimillion-Dollar Debt appeared first on 21Ninety.