Mary J. Blige's 'Breakthrough'

Mary J. Blige has issues. Trust issues. Love issues. Father issues.

They form a skein of intertwined tribulations that have earned the R&B diva her reputation for being prickly and self-destructive. (Blige has admitted to alcohol and drug abuse in the past.)

But on her newest album, the self-described "soul hip-hop queen" seems to have achieved a breakthrough, which makes the album's name, The Breakthrough, quite appropriate.

A Bitter Past
Trace it, perhaps, to her December 2003 marriage to music exec Martin Kendu Isaacs, known in the biz simply as Kendu. His tough love seems to have gotten her on the wagon once and for all when, before they were married, he threatened to leave her if she ever came home drunk again. He seems to be the first man in her life to actually care enough to prod her toward the right direction.

Born in 1971, Blige saw her father walk out on the family when she was 4 years old. Her mother was left to raise her and her sister in one of the toughest housing projects in Yonkers, N.Y. Perhaps this painful memory leads Blige to outright steal Bono's thunder in The Breakthrough's best track, a duet of the U2 song "One," which the Irish rocker wrote about his strained relationship with his father. (Blige puts an achingly bitter spin on the line "Did I disappoint you?")

She later dropped out of high school and dropped into the street scene, becoming by her own confession a recreational drug user. And her relationship with Sean Combs (aka Puffy, Puff Daddy, P. Diddy, now just Diddy and soon to be Did and then Done), who helped break her into the music business in 1990, was at best dysfunctional, and it's an open question as to who was helping whom.

A Father Figure
For these reasons, Kendu appears to be the father figure Mary never had, and the song "Father in You" is dedicated to him. "When I was a little girl/I didn't have a father/And that's why/I'm leaning on you/When I was a baby/I didn't get a hug/From Daddy that's/Why I need a hug from you/... That's why I need the father in you."

Blige is amazed that anyone could love her with the trainload of baggage she brings to the marriage, the subject of a song named, well, "Baggage" ("I got this baggage with me/Don't wanna make you pay for/What somebody else has done to me/... Every time I hurt ya feelings/It's what someone's done to me, and I don't mean to hurt you/... But nobody has ever treated me this way/Please be patient with me 'cause I want you to stay").

And this healing has led her to reach out to other downtrodden women. On "Good Woman Down," she seems to confess to having contemplated suicide ("Felt like I had enough/Went to the edge of the ledge, but I couldn't jump"). Of these women, any one of whom could very well have been her, she sings, "See it every day in every other young sister's face/See them crying out/Running in the streets, low self-esteem/That used to be me/... Doesn't matter what they say or do/Don't let it get to you/Don't be afraid, you can break through." (Of course, a multimillion-dollar recording contract would go a long way in that direction, something most of those women can never hope for.)

A Leopard's Spots
Still, this is the Ms. Blige, so a certain amount of sass and sexuality is to be expected—even after a breakthrough. On "Enough Cryin'" she disses and dumps an abusive boyfriend, although she admits the sex was good. Also, for someone dealing with a past of drug and alcohol abuse, she really shouldn't be singing lines such as "Lil' something for the clubs and feels so 'hood/... Pop bottles got it crunk, that's what we came to do" ("Gonna Breakthrough").

And the ego just pours out of "MJB Da MVP" in which she first whines about the pain of fame and then taunts, "Go ahead and envy me/I'm the soul hip-hop queen/And I ain't goin' nowhere/But you already know me."

Then again, this is probably the most positive album MJB has produced in her 15-year career, despite sporadic off-color language and questionable content. She has often credited her success to Jesus Christ, and this album's liner notes are no different in that regard. But this time she explicitly sings about Him on "Take Me As I Am" ("She's on solid ground/She's been lost and found/She answer to G-O-D/And she's confident this is not the end/Ask me how I know, 'cause she is me").

I hope she means that, and I hope her next CD is even more in tune with G-O-D than this one.