Music: Queen Mary

The hip-hop diva takes a look at love, and herself

There's a long, strong history in R. and B. of female singers taking lovers to task. Pop music, of course, is full of songs about romance gone wrong, but when R.-and-B. divas dress men down, they're often a bit more real. Blues great Bessie Smith, in Hard Time Blues, sang about leaving a man with "dirty ways"; today Erykah Badu castigates her cell phone-hogging lover on her song Tyrone; TLC ridicules deadbeat men on No Scrubs, and the vocal group Destiny's Child cries out for men who can pay their girlfriends' Bills, Bills, Bills. Hip-hop soul singer Mary J. Blige, on...

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