Mary J. Blige's tearful plea: I've got to be me' - rhythm and blues singer on her life

Ebony, Oct, 2003 by Kevin Chappell

The new offering reunites Blige with Sean (P. Diddy) Combs, who produced My Life and was instrumental in promoting the derisive image of Blige that she now finds difficult to shake. The two have a well-documented love-hate relationship, but put aside their differences to team up once again. "After [we] established our business, what's going to be what, and who's going to get what, and how we're going to do it, we locked in, and got to work," she says. "This music thing, we have a chemistry. The process of growing up has taught me that Puff cared for me more than I thought he did as far as my business is concerned. I didn't understand certain things, but now I understand. We fight. We make up. That's what families do. They tell each other the truth."

Sporting a seven-and-one-half-carat diamond ring, Blige talks openly about her engagement and pending marriage to fiance Kendu Isaacs, a music industry insider who is an established producer and musician. The two have been together for three years. While details of the wedding are being kept secret, she says the union will happen soon, but she's not going to rush into it. "I love this man," she says, pointing in the direction of Isaacs, who is eating lunch in the next room. "I'm in love with him. I'm so happy that he's in my life. But I don't want him to marry some crazy girl. I'm letting God continue to work on me so that I can get it right. He's letting God continue to work on him so that he can get it right. I don't want to be divorced. I don't want to get married for Hollywood. I want to get married for me and the Lord and us so that we can be happy, and so that we can be together until we are 100 years old. I've never been married before. I don't want to do this again."

Blige says that she realized she had found true love "when I stopped drinking. I stopped drinking for him," she says. "It was a choice I had to make. I realized that I loved him when I told myself as I headed to a show at the Apollo [Theater in Harlem] that I was going to come home sober. I wasn't going to come home drunk. He told me that he couldn't sit around and watch me destroy myself. I knew he loved me, when I came home sober that night and he lit up. He was so happy. He hugged me and we've been together every since... We do everything together. He's bringing me back to life. He's loving me like nobody's ever loved me before. He is unreal. I didn't know people like him existed."

Since that day, the two have been inseparable, although only recently has the couple ventured out more and more in public. They often go out to dinner, and take vacations together. But they mostly spend quiet evenings at her New Jersey home, sitting around, watching movies, working on the computer and talking.

She says that she has thought quite a bit about married life, envisioning a wonderful union full of give-and-take, love and respect. "There's a lot that comes with it. There's a lot of respect and real love," she says. "And real love requires a lot of respect, and a lot of space. It requires a lot of giving of you and not always thinking of yourself only. You might be having a bad day, and he might be having a bad day. But who will put on a smile so that the other person can have a good day? There's a lot of giving."