Mary J.'s hip hop soul is much o-Bliged

In the song "It's a Wrap" from her new album Love & Life, Mary J. Blige disses the cheating man in her life and you begin to wonder if Blige gets her sense of empowerment from the deepest depths as well as the highest highs.\nSuch is her nature. Love & Life is such an emotionally-drenched operatic piece of work that after 18 tracks and 70 minutes, I was exhausted and felt a sudden urge for bon bons.\nPushing her along is co-executive producer/svengali Sean "P. Diddy" Combs. P. Diddy knows a thing or two about making hit songs, and working with him will keep Blige in the spotlight. He keeps busting in on the tracks, reminding us that Blige is the "queen of hip hop soul." Blige is actually more soul than hip hop, and in a lot of ways, P. Diddy is providing the hip hop reinforcements on this record. Whatever she needs, P. Diddy gets, be it boasting, bass lines, or guests Jay-Z, Eve, 50 Cent and Method Man.\nWhile P. Diddy powers the musical content, the lyrical subjects aren't so much wide-ranging as they are deeply conflicted. In "Feel Like Makin Love," she's horny and making classic bedroom soul. In "Ultimate Relationship (A.M.)," cuddling afterwards is preferable and more memorable. \nIn "Press On," she's insecure. In "Free," she sounds like she is channeling her identity when she sings, "I'm learning to love me, so I can be free." How Oprah.\nPerhaps the reason for the emotional pounding is all the cooks in the kitchen. Every song has multiple writers with ten (!) different people getting songwriting credit on one particular song. To be fair, Blige has a hand in co-writing 17 of the 18 tracks, and there's no question that the lyrics are deeply personal. But all those writers can't help but make a record more bombastic than it needs to be.\nHer performance at last Thursday's MTV Video Music Awards show seemed canned -- unfortunate given her reputation as a phenomenal live performer. She's not a monster talent, failing to possess Toni Braxton's supper-club huskiness or Beyonce's Vegas-style showiness. She's pure raw emotion, and people love it when they can see it in the flesh.\nIf she can channel that to a record, she's going to make a masterpiece. Now can she use her sense of empowerment to get P. Diddy to buzz off?