Mariah Carey: The exclusive interview

Urban Essentials: Well Mariah, it's good to see you again. Welcome back to the UK. I look at you and I see an artist that has sold 160 million albums. That's a phenomenal amount of albums. To be honest it makes me think what spurs an artist like you on because you could easily retire now if you wanted to.

Mariah: But how bored would I be? It's not like I'm 50 years old and I'm like let me retire. I've got a lot of energy and started doing this when I was right out of high school, so that's why it's weird to me. I hear these facts and figures and I don't even feel like its me they are talking about. My whole adult life has been in the spotlight, so it feels like I've grown up doing this. I guess I could retire but I love making music. I love the studio and I love doing what I do.

Urban Essentials: You're one of the few artists that has actually made it to the super star level but then actually kept with an urban music feel. How important do you think urban music is in making you the success you are today?

Mariah: I grew up on urban music so a lot of the mainstream public who doesn't listen to hip-hop stations and don't go to clubs, don't know DJs, they don't live that life style. They didn't realise in 1995, I was working with Old Dirty Bastard from Wu-Tang-Clan, like if you're gonna work with any of them, that would be the most surprising, the shocking one. Because the remixes were not on the albums and because they would be on BET as opposed to MTV because it would be on the hip-hop stations, the mainstream audience didn't really know about that side of my music so for me those moments were the fun moments. The moments when working with Snoop or working with Jay Z, Mobb Deep, Nas. The many people I have worked and collaborated with, for me it's working creatively. Working with Busta, there's so many - Da Brat, working with Missy. Those are the moments that make me happy as a fan. I love doing ballads and I will always do ballads but I would be bored as hell if that's all I ever did. I keep being honest because people who don't know how many collaborations I've done. Finally hip-hop is being accepted on pop radio and embraced around the world, they're like "so you gonna change your sound and like work with rappers now?" I'm like "no, I've been doing this for years. Do your research."

Urban Essentials: To be honest, you was one of the pioneers of the vocal/rap collaborations.

Mariah: I feel that Mary J. Blige did a lot of the ground work for it, a lot of the collaborations, a lot of other things and she as an artist, I credit her a lot with that. In terms of people that were known in the pop world, songs like "Hero", I think I was pretty much kind of the only one going there.

Urban Essentials: You are without a doubt, one of the most successful female recording artists in history. You were the biggest selling artist of the decade in the 90's but what did it feel to receive the Blue Diamond Award for the hundred certifications because that's an amazing achievement for somebody especially as young as yourself?

Mariah: It was incredible and it didn't actually soak in until somebody actually explained to me that when you go gold, when you go platinum it counts as a certification and obviously I knew I received diamond awards for albums in the past but the hundredth certifications was like "wow, amazing". Then we had the party to celebrate with Andre Herel, it was fun. It was good, Andre knows how to throw a party!

Urban Essentials: Since we last spoke, you've signed to Def Jam, you've got a brand new album out which is absolutely phenomenal, in my opinion, one of your best albums. Butterfly was a great album but you've set a new milestone with this new album. It's a fact you could have picked anyone to go with. What made you go with Def Jam?

Mariah: Honestly, Lyor Cohen called me the day after the September 11th and it was like "ok, when are we doing this?" and I wasn't even off that other label yet and he knew I was in the situation and it wasn't working. The fact that he was so focused and cared enough to even call, we continued having dialogue. Then Doug Morris, who I really respect and I think is one of the few good honourable people left in the music business, was very instrumental. They came over my house and they was like "ok, here's the champagne goblets and here's the champagne for when we do business". It wasn't even like I had a choice! I sat with everybody else and talked to the people that I really respect and love and really appreciate the way that they dealt with the situation and the way that the smart record executives were saying to me we know that you're going to take this situation, use it, write about it and make it your best work ever. They predicted what I felt but I just made the choice because it felt right and Lyor was very pro me having my own label, which is very important for me. I was getting approached by investors that were saying that you should just have your own label and not even deal with this whole thing, the Universal system is so powerful. Also Def Jam is more artist and music related and I felt like it was the right place for me to establish my own label and the right people to be working with.

Urban Essentials: Lets talk about the label MonarC. We obviously know you've got this label and obviously we know you're gonna have artists coming from this label. Can you drop any names yet and can we get any inside information on who to watch out for?

Mariah: The only inside information I can give you is there's a group I've been working with, they are young [about] 14 [or] 15 but they're very much grown in their minds. One's a rapper from Oakland, one's a singer and I don't think there's ever been a duo like this, it's very unique, really fun working with them. They're like my little sisters, it's real cool. There's another extra surprise artist that I'm working with plus Trey Lorenz who sang "I'll be there", he and his partner have been making a record that is I don't want to say it's the new back packerish R&B but it falls more into that lane. It's very real and it's very good. There's also some gospel artists that I've been talking to because its very important to me, I love gospel music and there are so many talented gospel artists.

Urban Essentials: Quincy Jones Lifetime Award, Grammy Awards, the American Music Awards, various other awards, numerous number 1 singles, albums that have gone gold, platinum, whatever you wanna say, various accolades, acting. But what do you feel is your biggest achievement?

Mariah: My biggest achievement, well I would have to break this down into a fan section. People have come up to me and said your music has helped me get through some difficult times in my life - that is very important to me. Also being a mixed race person, I know how I felt growing up - I felt like an outsider, I didn't really have somebody to look at and say this person is mixed race like me and they're ambiguous looking and they've made it and people understand who they are, what they are. Kids come up to me and say that, like when you come out with the album, I didn't feel like I was unworthy anymore. A lot of people will say stuff like that when they found out I was mixed because it made them feel better about themselves because they were seeing somebody else like them. For me that's a huge achievement.

Urban Essentials: We'll talk a bit about your private life, you went through a divorce in a public eye, tabloids that say rubbish about you weekly. If you so much go to dinner, you're surrounded by the press. How hard is it to be in the constant glare of the public eye with your private life?

Mariah: The funny thing is, the private life that they create for me is like bizarre and so I read the stuff and sometimes it just makes me laugh. They wrote this thing about a fat farm breakdown, "her staff were forced to go on the same diet and then they snuck out to eat cheese burgers, then took breath mints so she wouldn't know." I'm sitting there and thinking I was not in a fat farm, I was in a spa, with fattening food there that I could've eaten. I don't even care about fast food and if they wanted to eat hamburgers till the cows came home, I don't care. That I had plastered on my wall as a joke, I put it up on my kitchen, because I thought it was funny. It's weird to be in the public eye but I feel like I'm the same person when I started internally and I notice a lot of people before they're successful and after, they change. Fame really twists them out and I think because I didn't feel famous until lately, that it didn't do that to me.

Urban Essentials: Do you think that is probably one of the things that fans love about Mariah, that you have kept you feet on the ground. You hear so many stories about Divas. I've only met you a couple of times but you seem like one of the nicest people we've met in the industry. Do you think because you've kept your feet firmly on the ground that that's something that the fans can tap into?

Mariah: I think maybe they feel that, maybe they understand that. When I meet fans, we talk like we're talking now, unless somebody's crying because when somebody's crying, it makes me cry. I think they can sense that because the real fans know that I care about them and appreciate them.

Urban Essentials: Personal favourites on the album for yours truly are "You Had Your Chance", "You Got Me", "Boy (I Need You)", "Irresistible". On this album you've used some real retro beats as well as taking it to another level. Was that a purposely planned thing or did that just fall into place?

Mariah: It just fell into place, like I've done that before. A lot of things I've done more like remixes - take "Heartbreaker" which was Snoop Dogg's "Aint No Fun", the one with Missy and Da Brat. That I think was a template for a lot of different things, using "Aint No Fun" is not like using an old, old record but it really worked for the clubs because people would mix "Aint No Fun" into that so I gotta give credit to DJ Clue for that idea. I think for this album is was like using some new school things like "Boy (I Need You)", being the new Just Blaze track and "You Got Me" the one with Freeway and Jay Z, it sounds like a loop but it's a track that he created from scratch.

Urban Essentials: About four years ago, we saw you perform at Wembley, just after "Rainbow" had been released. The tickets were sold out in a matter of hours. Are there any plans for Mariah to come back to the UK and tour because there's so many people that wanna see that.

Mariah: Definitely I will come back and tour, in October and I can't wait to perform live in the UK again.

(Urban Essentials)

Many thanks to Mariah Daily.