Mary J. Blige has had a big week, from dropping her 15th studio album to performing alongside Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg during the Super Bowl halftime show. Now, Blige is opening up and speaking candidly about her personal and professional lives colliding, revealing that she had to go on tour in order to pay for her divorce. Yahoo reports that the iconic singer detailed the origins of her new song “Rent Money,” which is on the new record, Good Morning Gorgeous.
Blige explained that the track is about when she first got divorced from her ex-husband, Martin “Kendu” Isaacs, who was her former manager. “I had to give up all this alimony, and I didn’t have no more money to give because he had spent it all,” she explained. “So, I had to go, you know, I had to go on tour, and make all the money back to pay the alimony.” Blige went on to explain that she was in such dire financial conditions that she couldn’t afford some of her most basic needs. “I didn’t have no money to pay my rent and all this other stuff,” she shared. “But it’s also a metaphor like, I didn’t have my soul. I was just drained of everything.”
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“So it was time for somebody to pay; sometimes you just feel like somebody gotta pay,” the singer added. “And I was very angry then when I made that song. I was very angry. And I was like, rent money due – period!” Blige and Isaacs married in 2003 and split in 2016. Their divorce was later finalized in 2018. According to Yahoo, Blige was ordered to pay Isaacs $30,000 a month in alimony.
His lawyers had initially requested quadruple the amount in order to help him maintain the lifestyle he’d grown accustomed to while being married to Blige. Isaacs claimed that he “has experienced physical manifestations of stress and emotional distress from this matter, which has caused him to become hospitalized.” He also argued that he’d become “unemployable,” and that, without being financially supported by his ex, he would end up “destitute.” Coincidentally, Isaacs also stated that paying rent was “impossible” for him.
Prior to marrying Isaacs, Blige had been in a relationship with Cedric “K-Ci” Hailey of the R&B group Jodeci. The couple had a turbulent romance which inspired Blige’s 1994 album My Life. The singer does not appear to have been romantically linked to anyone since her divorce from Isaacs.
