The secret life of Mariah Carey
She's the super-private diva who doesn't speak for days at a time. But, for Blender, Mariah Carey opens up about her "horrific" childhood, her friend ODB and how to spend $28 million. In his office, Island Def Jam chairman Antonio "L.A." Reid is playing tracks from the unfinished CD The Emancipation of Mimi. The volume is high. A Dyptique candle burns, the Mona Lisa screensaver on his 20" iMac smirks at him as he strides across the room, grinning madly as he plays air keyboards. "Isn't it fantastic?" he asks as he dances.
It is, of course, hard to take the head of a label seriously when he's enthusing so wildly about his own product. What else is he going to do? But that aside, it's clear that what we're listening to is a return to form, of sorts. It may not be a '90s vintage, multi-multi-platinum piece of finely honed diva pop. But it is a compulsively listenable collection of vibrant, self-assured, dare we say understated R&B songs.
And hovering around the album, swooping in and out of each song, is the Voice. If it ever went away, it's back. That sometimes-husky, sometimes-silky thing that is stretchier than elastic and yet simultaneously accurate to at least ten decimal places.
It's been a long journey for 34-year-old singer Mariah Carey. From her position as the MOR queen of the early '90s, she cleverly reinvented herself in the second half of the decade as R&B's first lady with a series of high-profile hip-hop collaborations. Financially, The Emancipation isn't ever going to be the runaway 25-million seller that 1993's Music Box was, but these are clearly songs from someone who's as artistically sure-footed as she's ever been.
L.A. Reid leans across the desk. "The real thing I've learned about Mariah," he says, "is that she's an innocent. At heart, she's a little child." "Really?" says Blender skeptically. After selling tens of millions of records worldwide, after being married to one of the most powerful people in the record industry and dealing with some of the most hardnosed names in hip-hop, she's a little child? "Yes," insists Reid. "In spite of everything..."
To read more about Mariah's traumatic childhood, friendship with the Wu-Tang's ODB and what happened with Glitter, check out the March issue of Blender, on newsstands February 8. (Blender)
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