In a career-spanning interview, the pop legend talks to GQ about Prince, Paul McCartney, deep cuts, AI covers, and her soulful new album Here For It All. Plus, Dev Hynes, Jermaine Dupri, and Daniel Moore on the icon behind closed doors.
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Mariah Carey famously doesn't acknowledge time. She celebrates anniversaries, not birthdays. She's "eternally 12", despite having 16 studio albums to her name. And in a recent supercut for her MTV Video Vanguard Award, it was often hard to tell which clip was from this year - when she hit number one on the R&B charts for the first time since 2005 with "Type Dangerous" - and which was from 1995, the year she became the first female artist to have a song debut at number one (the ebullient, Tom Tom Club-sampling classic "Fantasy").
But it's the passage of time that has allowed her true legacy to crystallize. Early in her career, press around Carey celebrated her athleticism. A powerhouse singer revered for her dexterous vocal runs and piercing whistle notes, she was defined by vocal extremes - the whistle notes she accessed liberally on songs like "Emotions", the whisper she began to harness on Butterfly, the earthy alto she deployed on songs like "Melt Away".
But as the years have gone by, she's revealed herself to be something else: a distance runner, a singer-songwriter-producer whose artistic depth and musical consistency have only gotten more inarguable with time. Those distinct sonic touches - that masterful melisma riding hip-hop beats, the amusingly referential songwriting, the Brill Building ear for a pop hook - have accrued into a signature sound that has gone on to influence generations of artists, from Beyoncé to Grimes to Drake to Ariana Grande.
We look back at the highs of her blockbuster '90s run and against-all-odds mid aughts resurrection with such golden-hued nostalgia that it's easy to miss what she's achieved in the latter part of her career. Unwilling to bend to the sounds of the charts for a quick hit, she has remained steadfastly Mariah, pushing deeper into that signature sound with each new album. The contemporaneous critical celebration of her 2018 album Caution felt like the culture finally acknowledging Carey as the auteur she's always been. It was her Time Out of Mind, a later-career masterpiece that signaled that she's no nostalgia act, but an artist still actively writing her story.
Here For It All, her first studio album in seven years, is more proof of that. Once again, we get the diva at her best, splitting the difference between the soulful fervor of albums like Charmbracelet and the sleek R&B of albums like Memoirs of an Imperfect Angel. One moment, she's fabulously bragadocious, singing "In another class from those ladies... you couldn't walk a mile in my shoes" over a taut hip-hop beat on the opening track "Mi." In another, she's breathtakingly vulnerable, singing "Seemed like I'd never rise again... haunted by desperation and long harrowing nights" on the ballad "Nothing is Impossible".
It's her first album since her mother and sister passed on the same day last year. And in a time of great emotional distress, Carey seems to have dug deep into the music that raised her; she raises a glass to the vintage soul of idols like Gladys Knight on "In Your Feelings" and the soft rock of '70s radio on the Wings cover "My Love", channels a little Donny-Roberta on "Play This Song" with Anderson .Paak, and is audibly moved by the spirit on the Clark Sisters collaboration "Jesus I Do".
It's easy to get caught up in the numbers when it comes to Carey: 320 million records sold, 19 number one hits, a five-octave vocal range, a record-breaking 97 weeks at number one. She's undeniably "done enough" - but three decades into her career, it's a pure passion for musicmaking that seems to keep her in the game. There are very few genuine living legends working in music today and she's perhaps our most prolific - a flesh-and-blood icon still in active conversation with contemporary sounds, whose love for the craft seems undiminished.
Still, some mysteries remain. How did an interracial girl born into a turbulent, unstable household, who grew up in near-poverty, with no formal musical education or true proficiency on any musical instrument, grow into a generational talent, standing beside legends like Paul McCartney and Dolly Parton as one of the most successful singer-songwriters of all time? And how does it feel to sit beside her at the piano, trying to find the chords to support the golden melodies that seem to come fully-formed to her?
She provides some clues to that songwriting genius in The Meaning of Mariah Carey, her acclaimed 2020 memoir, calling the art of making records "kind of a spiritual science." But she's largely refrained from going into detail about that process the way white men with guitars are wont to do, a possible reason why a long-deserved Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction has so far eluded her.
At the end of summer, I had the privilege of an audience with the queen. In a wide-ranging interview, Carey talked about everything from Prince to Paul McCartney, from deep cuts to AI covers. Most of all, I tried to talk to Carey about that songwriting process - something she seemed to appreciate while also elegantly refraining to go into detail. Even in that, she was iconically Mariah - reserved but humorous, direct but likely to go on a tangent, warm but elusive.
In the weeks following our interview, I would talk to three of her musical collaborators - her musical director Daniel Moore, her longtime songwriting-and-producing partner Jermaine Dupri, and Blood Orange's Dev Hynes, an unexpected but inspired collaborator on her 2018 album Caution - about the Mariah we never see, the studio rat working tirelessly into the night, writing, producing, and singing the soundtrack of our lives.
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GQ: I feel like it's appropriate to talk to you at the end of summer. In a lot of your work, there's this nostalgia for a carefree summer from the past - songs like "Underneath the Stars", "Dedicated", "Giving Me Life". I've always been curious where that comes from.
Mariah Carey: I think when you're writing, you lean on a [certain] texture or vibe. And summertime is such a vibe. I just tend to occasionally lean into that. You know what I mean? Because I remember, like you were just talking about, So it's summertime, a splash of wine and forget about it... (Mariah sings the opening verse of the 2018 deep cut "Giving Me Life".) It's just a vibe.
A few weeks ago, your new single "Type Dangerous" hit number one on an R&B Airplay chart - your first number one on that chart since "Fly Like a Bird" in 2006. I still always watch that Grammy performance. I feel like you were moved by the spirit in that moment.
Oh, thank you! I definitely was. It was a moment that I'll never forget.
By the time you performed at that Grammys, you had already swept the R&B categories. What was going through your mind?
Well, they don't televise those R&B categories, so we were excited we had won them but it was just... it's different than when you go up and you're winning on TV. So, that was its own thing. I was just thrilled to be there, but - I don't want to go on a tangent - that night, my stylist, I'm not going to say who she is, but she was my stylist for that...
Azzedine Alaia, who was still living, did a dress for me. He did two dresses for me, one black, one red, and the stylist convinced me to wear another dress from another designer, and it was a drama. It was such a drama, it took down how good I was feeling after winning the awards.
Well, I almost feel like that performance was the acceptance speech.
Thank you.
Okay, I love the new album Here For It All. I feel like half of it feels like a tribute to the music that raised you - there's an Aretha "Rock Steady" type moment on "I Won't Allow It", a little Donny Hathaway-Roberta Flack on "Play That Song", some Quiet Storm, some Paul McCartney - and then the other half is the sound you created, that has trickled down to every singer who's come after you. Going into this album, did you have that in mind?
No, I think it happened naturally. I mean, we were doing all types of different music and I was working with lots of different people. It just came out that it was an eclectic album, that had a lot of different textures to it.
Was that why you decided to title it Here for It All?
I titled it Here for It All because it's my favorite song on the album - and I didn't want it to get lost. I wanted to make sure people listened all the way through the album to that song, specifically because it goes all the way out with that outro. You've heard the whole thing, right? It just goes into this whole segue. It's a moment when it gets to "Here for It All".
It's so interesting to me that you named the album that, specifically because you wanted to make sure that people didn't overlook that song. It is such a powerful song. It starts off as this song about an up-and-down kind of love - you're saying, "shakes and withdrawals," "bouncing off the walls" - and then as you sing higher and more powerfully, it transforms into a gospel song. It reminded me of how people like Aretha Franklin and Sam Cooke - two artists I know you revere - always toed the line between secular and the sacred. Can you tell me how the song came together?
Well, it's hard to explain. I started when the song didn't have a whole outro or a whole thing, we added to it. I think it was initially meant to be a straight-up ballad, but then once I started living with it I knew it needed to go on and on. We definitely let the song play out to the end of the album.
As someone who's listened to your album, your music through the years, it's been interesting with "Here for It All" and even "Giving Me Life" from your last album, to see you make songs that are less structured, more freewheeling... More of a tangent, as you would say.
(Laughs) It's definitely a tangent, the way it goes at the end.
I've always wondered if or when you would do a gospel album, and I feel like this album almost feels like your version of that. A lot of songs end up being about God.
I mean, especially "Jesus I Do", done with The Clark Sisters. That was amazing. I can't even tell you how much I was having goosebumps singing along with The Clark Sisters. I couldn't believe it was happening.
One of my favorite people to work with is Daniel Moore, and he put a call in to the Clarks and we were just like, "Wow, this is amazing." They're just the top of the heap with everything, I love them.
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Interlude #1: "The great thing about M is she's a 'Honey', as much as she is a 'Hero'," says Daniel Moore, Carey's musical director. Moore initially joined her team as a keyboardist in the mid 2010s. In recent years, he's become one of her chief songwriting partners, especially on more introspective album cuts like "Portrait".
"Usually, she just starts singing the melody," he says about their songwriting process, "then I try to find chords that match this melody. And then we kind of go back and forth on what feels like a verse, what feels like a chorus."
Through the years, Carey has used her album tracks to write songs that are more directly personal, discussing her traumatic family history ("Close My Eyes", "Petals"), the difficulties of growing up biracial ("Outside"), the breakdown of a relationship ("Camouflage", "Breakdown").
"When I first worked with her on Caution, she told me upfront that on those deep cuts, the lyrics are hers," Moore says. "She has a diary where she writes all of the lyrics down. It's really her personal thoughts and just whatever she's feeling at the moment."
On 2018's "Portrait", for example, their first songwriting collaboration, she sang: "Where do I go from here? How do I disappear?" "Only she knows that part of her life," Moore says. "Only she knows that God-given moment. I don't think it would feel as authentic if it didn't come solely from her."
Moore was Carey's co-writer on the song "Here For It All", perhaps the new album's emotional and musical climax, a soulful ballad reminiscent of early Carey songs like "Vanishing" that then transforms into a radiant, triumphant gospel song just when you think it's about to end.
"We started writing that during the COVID era and we were doing The Butterfly Lounge," he says, referencing an intimate studio set-up that Carey used during the pandemic to stage performances and record material. "The first thing we released from that was a Valentine's Day mix of 'We Belong Together'. We kind of re-imagined it and we went into these vamps. Those kind of felt like jam sessions... 'Here For It All' was kind of birthed in that same space. It kind of feels like a love song, but then it does take that turn because that's what we were doing when we were in The Butterfly Lounge. It was like, no more rules, no more 'It has to be three minutes and 30 seconds to make the radio.'"
Until now, Moore is floored by his boss' prodigious songwriting skills. "My predecessor, Big Jim Wright said they had just finished (recording the Emancipation of Mimi album cut) 'Circles' and she was getting ready to leave. She goes to the restroom, he's packing up and she comes back. 'Hold on, I got one more thing.' She sang, da-ra-da-ra-ra-ra. And that's where 'Fly Like A Bird' came from. It was just in the moment. That's who she is."
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GQ: Speaking of collaborators, you do have this great roster of regular collaborators, people like Bryan-Michael Cox and Jermaine Dupri, but then also every so often you bring in new people into the fold. What do you look for in a new producer or songwriter when you're bringing them into the fold? When you met Dev Hynes or Anderson.Paak, what made you feel like there's someone you want to collaborate with?
Carey: Somebody had mentioned Dev Hynes to me, and I reached out to him because I really love Blood Orange. And we were just vibing and whatever, me and Dev Hynes, and it became ... That's a tangent! That's a tangent on that song "Giving Me Life" and that outro.
That is one of my favorite songs of yours. When he just starts shredding at the end?
Yes, I love it.
I mean, when I think about someone like Dev Hynes playing electric guitar on that song, and how you've always through the years covered a lot of rock songs, it's almost not a surprise that you once had a secret rock band.
Have you heard it?
No. I mean, how are we going to hear it? When are we getting the album?
I don't know! I don't know when we're going to hear it.
Is it still in the archives?
It's half in the archives, half outside the archives.
Well, that's good to know for now - at least we know half is with you. You said in an interview that your daughter listens to Olivia Rodrigo...
Mm-hmm.
She's very Chick, very Someone's Ugly Daughter. I feel like she would cover one of those songs.
(Laughs) "She's kind of very Someone's Ugly Daughter." I love that.
I feel like you need to get her to cover one of those songs.
I feel like I need to get her a T-shirt, my daughter, that says, well... not "Someone's Ugly Daughter", she can't have that. (Laughs) I'll wear it! I'll wear the shirt.
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Interlude #2: Dev Hynes, the producer and songwriter who records as Blood Orange, still remembers how he fell in love with Carey's music. "My sister had the Butterfly album," he says. "I was definitely a fan." He would follow her to 1999's Rainbow and of course, 2005's Emancipation.
As the songwriter of such indie hits as Sky Ferreira's "Everything is Embarrassing" and the composer behind the scores for films like Rebecca Hall's Passing, Hynes seemed like an unlikely collaborator for a chart-conquering R&B artist like Carey. His best work tends to live in a kind of hazy, liminal space, reaching back to '80s pop as it does to the work of the late great minimalist composer Julius Eastman.
But it seems Carey knew exactly who she needed to create the sultry, simmering "Giving Me Life", the standout track of 2018's Caution. "It's funny because that song has this really long kind of out-there outro that happens," Hynes tells me. "And I think people think that was me - but that was all her. That was her idea."
Their first meeting was at the studio session. "We did this thing where we sat down and we listened to just a lot of music, just to connect musically," says Hynes. "The first thing that struck me instantly was, okay, she has insane musical knowledge, off the bat. And in two ways - in the way of somebody who makes music and understands just melody, chords, and all that kind of stuff. But also as a fan of music, she was mentioning like, 'track four on Stevie's Innervisions.' It was really sick. And then after that, we actually started talking about her music, and that was really cool to realize how self-aware and knowledgeable she is of her own catalog."
What seemed like moments later, they were sitting down at the piano crafting the song that would become "Giving Me Life."
"Look, obviously I know she's next level, but this moment really stuck with me." Hynes says. "I was trying to find where to go next on the piano, and she's thinking and then she sang seven notes really quickly. I found the notes and it was a perfect mixed chord, not a regular chord. It was like a diminished ninth, something crazy," he recalls, incredulously. "It was fun and loose too but it's one of those times when I really had to be on it, musically. I had to be on my game because she's so fucking clued in. While she might not be touching the boards, she really knows what to do."
They continued working late into the night. "I just remember, she told me. 'I'm a studio rat. I live in the studio. I've been in studios since I was 20. That's where I thrive.'"
I told Hynes that I found that Carey didn't always love going into detail about her songwriting process, almost as if the songs just come to her and that's that. He found that to be true too.
"It's funny, when I think about people who are constantly [explaining] how they write, it tends to come from a place of insecurity," Hynes says. "I think she's so secure and so confident in her choices that she never feels the need to. That's why she doesn't really feel the need to put it out there so much."
"I think that's why I was so shocked in the studio, of how efficient and insanely knowledgeable she is, because of maybe the image that's been put out there by her."
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GQ: Okay, so tell me about working with Anderson .Paak. The songs you did together on the album are so great, like "Play This Song" and "In Your Feelings." There's real musical chemistry there. How did you end up working together?
Carey: Well, I called him first because Silk Sonic was so great, and actually my son, Rocky, was obsessed with them. And he would listen all the time, he wore the shirt - it was a whole thing. And I reached out to them and we went to the studio, and we started writing. The first song we wrote together was "In Your Feelings" and also we did, "I Won't Allow It" in that session. It was great chemistry, great musical chemistry.
How did you guys decide to make "Play This Song" a duet for you and Anderson?
I think we were both singing it and it wasn't like a definite, "Oh, we're going to do a duet." But then, we made it a duet, and were excited to work together on it again, as a duet.
It's like a Donny-Roberta moment. It's great.
I love that you said that.
You were saying earlier how your son was into Silk Sonic, and I know you've said in the past that your daughter listens to Olivia Rodrigo and Sabrina Carpenter, all the pop girls. Now that your kids have developed such great musical taste, do you ever run musical ideas by them or make them listen to songs and see what they think?
Sometimes, I run musical ideas by them, but not really. I don't care what they think. (Laughs) No, I'm only kidding. I do care what they think, but I barely run songs by them, because I'd rather wait until the song is completely done, the album's completely done, because that way they won't be like, "Mom, why'd you do this? Why'd you do that?"
Listening to the album, it crossed my mind that this might be maybe your most nakedly emotional since Charmbracelet. I think about tracks like "My Saving Grace" and "Sunflowers for Alfred Roy" - you can almost draw a line from those songs to "Nothing is Impossible," "Here for It All." In your memoir you called Charmbracelet "a cocoon, a place of shelter, healing and growth that made it possible for you to bloom again." Do you feel that way about this album too?
Yeah, I do. I feel like it's very similar in that way. I love Charmie. I love Charmbracelet, and it's difficult because only the real true fans know Charmbracelet. I haven't listened to it in a long time.
Well, as someone who has listened to it recently, it holds up. It's a really good one.
Thank you.
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Interlude #3: "I actually transform into what people think she is and she more or less acts like what people think I do in the studio," says Jermaine Dupri, the legendary songwriter and producer behind chart-toppers like Usher's "Yeah" and "Nice & Slow", Kris Kross' "Jump," and Monica's "The First Night".
"I'm trying to get Mariah to make beautiful, singing songs. And at times, she's just trying to be like, 'I want to sample this beat.' Her conversation in the studio is more like a rapper than a singer - and that's been like that since day one."
Dupri is one of Carey's go-to collaborators, a partnership that's spawned era-defining hits like "We Belong Together", "Shake It Off", and "Always Be My Baby". He's worked with her through the different eras in her career too, from the glories of 1995's Daydream to the post-Glitter comedown of 2003's Charmbracelet to the transitional Me. I Am Mariah... The Elusive Chanteuse from 2014.
"She comes to the studio pretty much with what she wants to do. She's not in there trying to find it. She knows what she wants to do before she books the studio session," he says. In that way, he calls her "one of the most unusual artists I know." "Most people go to the studio and they don't actually know what they're going to do and they let the studio just be the studio."
"She comes in with her notebooks, dictionary, everything," he says. "It's a real thing for her. It's not a 'stumble upon' type of thing in the studio. She knows what type of song she wants to make, the features she wants to be on the records. It's not a whole bunch of 'Who should we get?' and 'Who do you think?' No, she knows immediately what she wants to do. 'I want to make a record with this person. I want to sing over this beat. I want you to sample this.' She's very direct with what she wants to do." Her collaborator's job then is to help her bring those ideas to life.
While Carey is often credited as the pop artist who bridged the gap between pop and hip-hop, with the innovations of the "Fantasy Remix" with Ol' Dirty Bastard, Dupri says it goes beyond that. "I mean, she started hip-pop music, period. You know what I mean? A pop artist singing over looped beats with melody put on top of it, that's Mariah Carey. She's the one who started this. I think that should be talked about more than even the remixes. "
"Even the 'Fantasy' record prior to the ODB version still has that same sample in there," he says. "'Honey', 'Fantasy' - all of these records have this underlying hip-hop thing going on. Most of the pop artists who are out now, they weren't out when Mariah came out. They all studied that formula."
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GQ: This album follows your grand tradition of having covers on albums. Your cover of Wings' "My Love" is so beautiful. It's almost Quiet Storm, would you agree?
Carey: I think that's correct. I mean, it's not fully as soulful as I would go for a pure Quiet Storm record, but I love that song. I don't want to tell too much about it, but I heard that Paul McCartney might play some instruments or something. I'm waiting for my agent, Rob Light, to help me figure this out. I don't know what's going on. Seems like it's not going to happen.
No, it's going to happen!
Wait, what? (Mariah talks to someone on her side of the call.) Oh, come on. (Someone on Mariah's side of the line says, "That's what he said.") They're saying that he can't do it. Whatever. (Laughs)
Well, listen, it's amazing as it is.
Thank you.
One thing I was curious about the "My Love" cover is, that song is from 1973, and a lot of the songs that you covered in the past are 80s songs. So, you would've been a toddler when that song came out. What about that song resonates with you?
Well, don't forget, I also did "Without You", which was probably around the same time.
Oh, you're right. You're right.
My mom said she used to play that song for me all the time, "Without You".
Was "My Love" also a favorite of hers?
I don't know if it was her favorite. I know that I remember going on a motorcycle with my mom's friend's daughter and her boyfriend, and I was listening to that song, "My Love". I never forgot it.
I love when songs conjure up memories. Speaking of Paul McCartney, it reminds me of the moment you guys had at Live 8. Wasn't he encouraging you to sing louder during the group performance of "Hey Jude"?
Oh yeah, he was! That's so amazing. Thank you for reminding me of that.
A lot of the covers you've done are of 80s songs, like Prince's "The Beautiful Ones" and George Michael's "One More Try".
Yeah, it's because it's when I was growing up. It's that thing. I love "The Beautiful Ones" so much. And I remember Prince, he didn't like people to redo his songs. He said to me, "I love 'Honey' though." It's like, "Prince likes 'Honey'!" (Laughs) But about my cover of "The Beautiful Ones", he said he didn't like when people did covers of his songs. And I was like, "Oh no, he doesn't like it." But then he told me that he liked "Honey".
Listen, at least he listened to the Butterfly album.
Yeah, I know! I couldn't believe he listened to the album.
I mean, we were just talking about how Prince famously doesn't like people covering his songs. I've always been curious, do you like when people cover your songs?
Not really. (Laughs)
Okay, because I meant to ask you, recently there was a little controversy when people thought you didn't like Muni Long's cover of "We Belong Together". And obviously, I know you love her - you worked together on Caution and all of that. So for the record, what did you think of the cover?
I didn't even hear the cover. I didn't know it happened. No one told me.
Muni Long, at iHeartRadio?
I love Muni Long! I just didn't know that she had done "We Belong Together" as a cover 'cause her song was so similar to "We Belong Together". I had no idea that she did "We Belong Together".
She did change it up where it sounded different. She made it her own.
Well, I'm very honored and flattered that she did it. I love Muni Long, she's a great person, umm, but I just don't like people doing my songs. (Laughs)
Recently, you did do remixes for Muni and Ariana Grande - two artists who are big fans of yours - on "Made For Me" and "Yes, And?" I was curious, as someone who's like, the queen of remixes, what is the process like when it's you writing a new verse for someone else's song? How do you slot yourself into songs that are hits in their own right?
Well, when they're already a hit it's kind of difficult to add my thing to it, but I do the best I can. When Muni had her song and I added my verse, I was into it. I really liked it. I remember exactly where I was when I was writing it, I loved it.
And Ariana, when she did the "Yes, And?" remix and then she opened it up and said, "Do you want to be a part of it?" I loved that, I really did. Because it's the dance music that I enjoy a lot.
Yes, very C+C Music Factory.
Yeah!
We were just talking about covers. Early in your career, Carole King wanted you to cover "Natural Woman", her song that Aretha obviously made iconic, and you said you'd rather co-write a new song with her.
Oh my gosh. And I said, "Actually, we should write something together"? Right?
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, why? Did you find it shady?
No, no, no, no. No, I didn't think that was shady, I thought that was so cool for a young artist to be like, "Actually, legendary songwriter Carole King, let's write something together."
No, I know! I was a little shady for that, kind of. (Laughs)
Well, the song is amazing, "If It's Over". How did Carole take it when you gave that suggestion?
I mean, I think what happened is, she probably felt that I was leaning towards her stuff that she did when she was really young and she didn't want to do a repeat of that. So, I totally understood that.
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Interlude #4: In the last few years, as most of Carey's peers have scrambled, jumping from trend to trend, collaborator to collaborator in search of relevance or at least a TikTok hit, the culture seems to have bent toward her sound.
Two years ago, "It's A Wrap", an album cut off Memoirs of an Imperfect Angel, suddenly became a TikTok sensation, eventually gatecrashing the charts in the United Kingdom, New Zealand, South Korea and the US, 14 years after its initial release.
Dupri says he's only seen Carey grow more artistically confident through the years. "I think it's a testament to her being around for so long. She's made so many records and I think the only way you can maintain or sustain in this space for that long is that you do have to pay attention to who you are and what you do and what you have done and understand the value in that," he says. "There's no value in Mariah making records that sound like somebody else.
During the sessions for "Giving Me Life0," Dev Hynes recalls Carey excitedly telling him about an idea to bring '80s rapper Slick Rick on the track. "'It'll be amazing to get Slick Rick on this.' That's where her mind went," Hynes says. "I kind of relate to it. It's this thing of, I always call it 'posters on the wall,' where you still make the music from the place of [being] in your bedroom, when you put posters on your wall of the artists that you love. I think she still kind of has that. When she was talking about Slick Rick, she was like, 'That was my favorite rapper growing up in New York. I need to get in touch with Slick Rick.'"
"I think when you truly, truly love music and when you truly own and love the things that made you who you are, it's almost more difficult to jump on trends. It's going against nature on yourself," he says.
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In the new Spike Lee film Highest 2 Lowest, Denzel Washington plays a fictional record label executive. There's a moment in the movie when an aspiring R&B singer says she wants to work with Denzel's character primarily because he worked with "Mariah Carey".
Did they say Mariah Carey?
Yeah. She said something like, "I love your work with Mariah." It just felt like a little tribute to you, a hat tip to you from Spike Lee. All these years into your career, you've become this shorthand for musical achievement, this northern star for anyone who's trying to be a singer.
That's amazing. I've got to see the movie. Where is it, on Netflix?
It's in theaters right now, but it's hitting Apple in a week. It's a Spike Lee-Denzel Washington joint. And it's about the music industry, so I think you're going to love it.
Oh, I'm going to adore it. I love that! I love them. Spike Lee once did a short film for me that I was in. I don't know if you ever saw it. It was just a little video of girls in the girls' room.
Oh yes, I did. Have you always liked his work?
Always. I love the one where it's in Brooklyn, Do the Right Thing.
I'm curious how someone like you feels about AI covers. Because you see all these AI cover songs circulating now, and sometimes they'll get a singer's voice and put it on a song that they've never sang, or they'll get a person's vocals from 1965 and put it on a song from 1995. It's pretty crazy. I was curious, as one of the all-time great singers, what do you think about this technology?
Well, I mean, I think that it's something that some people need more than others... But also, I heard a couple different ones where they were like, "Mariah Carey sings..." And they called it "My All", but it was so not "My All" and it didn't even sound like me at all. So, I don't know what to say. I think technology is cool, but I don't know if this is the best thing for all of us.
(GQ)
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