The Breakthrough

Release and reception

The Breakthrough was released by Geffen Records on December 25, 2005, to generally positive reviews from critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream publications, the album received an average score of 76, based on 20 reviews. Andy Gill of The Independent deemed it perhaps "her best, the most vivid realisation of her gripping, confessional style". David Browne believed The Breakthrough marked a return for Blige to her dramatic strengths, writing in Entertainment Weekly that the music's "messy sprawl of conflicted emotions feels true to her fierce, prickly personality (not to mention life itself)". In The New York Times, Jon Pareles credited the singer for bringing together "hip-hop realism and soul's higher aspirations, hip-hop's digitized crispness and soul's slow-building testimonies". Stylus Magazine's Thomas Inskeep viewed it as a "return to form" for Blige, calling it her "finest full-length since '99's Mary", while Rolling Stone journalist Barry Walters said that unlike with her previous albums, The Breakthrough's ballads genuinely stand out. Andy Kellman from AllMusic said each song proved Blige had been given her "best round of productions" since the mid 1990s. Los Angeles Times critic Natalie Nichols credited the producers for "adeptly weaving beats and live instruments, vocals and rapping, melody and rhythm in configurations alternately stark and lush".

Jason King was less impressed in The Village Voice, feeling that The Breakthrough had improved on Blige's 2003 album Love & Life but still lacked the creativity of 1999's Mary. Blige's penchant for "hermetic, clinically slick production values doesn't complement her soul-baring aura", King wrote. Spin journalist Tom Breihan felt the production's "awkwardly programmed drums and cluttered synthetic arrangements" generally failed to give her a conducive space for an effective performance and left "the songs' chin-up aphorisms ringing false". Slant Magazine's Sal Cinquemani was more critical of the lyrics, finding them distastefully sentimental, unsubtle, and "the epitome of formulaic, giving you the feeling that you've heard this all before".

In the first week of release, The Breakthrough sold 727,000 copies and debuted at number one on the Billboard 200, becoming Blige's third record to top the chart. It was later awarded a triple platinum certification by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). The album spent the next two weeks at number two, behind Jamie Foxx's Unpredictable, before reclaiming the top spot in the week of January 18, 2006, when it sold 118,000 copies. According to Robert Christgau, the album's commercial success and the 16-month R&B chart run of "Be Without You" were "very nearly miraculous" in the wake of Love & Life's disappointing performance and an overall downturn in the music industry. The record also "embodied Blige's 'breakthrough' from 'Queen of Hip-Hop Soul' to best-selling R&B diva", Christgau wrote in Rolling Stone. The Breakthrough earned Blige eight nominations for the 2007 Grammy Awards, the most of any artist that year. "Be Without You" was nominated for both Record of the Year and Song of the Year categories; it won for Best Female R&B Vocal Performance and Best R&B Song, while The Breakthrough won in the category of Best R&B Album. By December 2009, the album had sold 3.1 million copies in the United States.

Track listing

Credits adapted from album liner notes.

Personnel

Credits for The Breakthrough adapted from Allmusic.