Mary J Blige

Veteran singer Mary J. Blige has become the first person to be nominated for a music award and an acting award in the same year as announced on Tuesday.

The ‘Queen of Hip-Hop’ was nominated for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in Mudbound and Best Original Song nomination for co-writing Mighty River as part of the film’s soundtrack.

The nine-time Grammy Award winner, celebrated for both her singing and song writing skills, has also been acting for years in TV and film.

In Mudbound which is a Dee Rees film adaption of the 2008 novel, Blige plays a mother-of-four dealing with racial prejudice on a Mississippi Delta farm during the Jim Crow South.

In previous years, Oscar-nominated actors have performed songs in the best original song category although the award itself is given to the songwriters.

The 46-year-old R&B icon Blige, who co-wrote Mighty River with Raphael Saadiq, therefore becomes the first person to score a double nomination.

However, they face stiff competition from the Oscar-winning composers of La La Land and Frozen.

Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, who won best original song for City Of Stars last year, are nominated again for This Is Me, from The Greatest Showman.

Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez, who wrote Frozen’s ‘Let It Go’, are nominated for Remember Me, from the Pixar animation Coco.

Mudbound is a 2017 American period drama film directed by Dee Rees and written by her and Virgil Williams, based on the novel of the same name by Hillary Jordan.

The NetFlix distributed movie stars Carey Mulligan, Garrett Hedlund, Jason Clarke, Jason Mitchell, and Mary J. Blige.

The film depicts two World War II veterans – one white, one black – who return to rural Mississippi each to address racism and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) in his own way.