If there's one modern R&B/soul singer who knows struggle, it's Mary J. Blige. She's struggled to overcome alcohol and drug addiction and K-Ci Hailey and sometimes she even struggles to hit the right notes and find the right material, but we still love Aunt Mary all the same. So when it came time to find someone to sing the theme song to the new movie about the struggle of black domestic workers in Mississippi the 1960s, The Help, MJB was the natural choice. The resulting production is the track "The Living Proof," the video for which premiered yesterday, the same day that the film opened in theaters. Although The Help has been criticized for being grossly inaccurate, I found myself getting a little choked up watching strife-filled scenes from the movie mixed in with Mary singing in a studio sans diamonds, furs, and her usual drag. Whereas the song didn't move me the first few times I heard it, I see now that within the context of the film and the feel-good story that it purports to be, that the music fits and illustrates that trouble don't last always.
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