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Toni Braxton two-times rapper Dr. Dre with Q-Tip in the video for her current single.

In the clip for "Just Be a Man About It" (RealAudio excerpt) — which is at #42 on the Billboard Hot 100 — Braxton's character grows tired of being neglected by Dr. Dre and seeks solace in the arms of his fellow rapper.

"[Dr. Dre's] this player, and he's out at the club and he calls me and says, 'Toni, I'm not coming home,' " Braxton said.

"I play his girlfriend, and I'm upset, I'm angry, I'm throwing things around the apartment, and then I say, 'Enough of this,' " Braxton said. "This is like the 30th time he's done it to me, so I call this other guy. It happens to be Q-Tip, and he comes over. Dr. Dre comes home finally at 7 or 8 o'clock in the morning, and I'm on the couch with Q-Tip."

The scene sounds like an explosion in the making, but Braxton noted that she gets off a lot easier in the video than she probably would have in real life.

"[Dr. Dre] just gives me the middle finger and calls me a name and walks out," Braxton said. "Well, we know Dre wouldn't do that. I thanked him for making me look like Superwoman in the video, because we know he would do something. That was cool to let people see another side of him, and he was like, 'I'll just do it.' So it was kind of fun for him, I think."

The song comes from Braxton's The Heat, which has gone platinum after 16 weeks in stores. But the album's success was hardly a sure thing for the singer, who had been sitting out of the record biz since releasing Secrets in 1996.

"I was gone for so long, longer than I had anticipated," Braxton said. "It's like two, three years, in between [albums], so in the two years that I was gone, music has changed. It's like 20 years passed, so I didn't know what to do."

So far, so good, as the album has launched two hit singles: the gold "He Wasn't Man Enough" (RealAudio excerpt), another tale of love gone awry, and "Just Be a Man About It." The singer has picked "Spanish Guitar" to be the third single from The Heat, and she plans to release it to radio in the coming weeks. Braxton also said she's considering releasing the album's title track (RealAudio excerpt) as the fourth single.

The singer also described the film in which she'll make her silver-screen debut. She stars alongside Whoopi Goldberg, Jada Pinkett-Smith, Vivica A. Fox and LL Cool J in "Kingdome Come," due early next year.

"It's a dark comedy that shows the comedic side of what happens at funerals," Braxton said. "It's not 'Soul Food,' but it's endearing."

Braxton's movie debut follows her 1998 turn on Broadway in Beauty and the Beast.

— Curtis Waller and MTV News Online staff report