Love & Life

08/25/2003 9:00 PM, Yahoo! Music
Dan Leroy

After years of struggle in the spotlight, Mary J. Blige is finally, in her own words, "spiritually successful." With a new relationship in her personal life and near-universal respect for her professional endeavors, life is sweet at last for the queen of hip-hop soul. So you’d expect more of that joy to be audible on Love & Life, her reunion with P. Diddy, who helped jumpstart her career a decade ago. Instead, the pairing seems to have triggered a strange regression, as the album often revisits the troubled vibe of her early days, in sound if not lyrically. The club cuts are mostly taut, restless R&B; "Let Me Be The 1" and "Love @ 1st Sight" feel more like the outpourings of a stalker than a significant other. "You’re my soulmate, sent for me," she declares on "When We," but the queasily unmelodic gospel undercuts the declarations of love and redemption. Among such mixed messages, the tenderness of "Special Part Of Me" and "Ultimate Relationship" comes too late to counter the impression that Blige has a few demons remaining to be exorcised.