Does Grammy love Mariah?
 | Mariah Carey stands in the middle of Manhattan's Gotham Hall practically motionless. A whirlwind of makeup artists, stylists, publicists and assistants orbit her, touching up her eye shadow, hydrating her throat with a spray bottle and prepping her for her next interview. A horde of reporters, photographers and cameramen orbits her entourage, looking to get a piece of her, a sliver of reaction to her eight Grammy nominations.
"When they told me it was eight, I was like, 'Are you serious?'" Carey said in December with a smile and a slight flip of her perfectly feathered hair. Of course they were serious. Grammy voters are very serious about comebacks - from Tina Turner and Bonnie Raitt to Ray Charles and Tony Bennett. And few comebacks in pop-music history have been as spectacular as Carey's rise-fall-and-return in the past five years.
There was no way the Grammys wouldn't want a piece of that story, especially when it is a true one built on extraordinary sales and fan support. Given the Huntington native's incredible 2005, it's no surprise that Carey, along with rapper Kanye West and his neo-soul protege John Legend, comes into Wednesday night's Grammy ceremonies in Los Angeles with a leading eight nominations, including all three major categories.
Her long-running No. 1 hit "We Belong Together" is up for record of the year, song of the year, best female R&B vocal performance and best R&B song. Her album "The Emancipation of Mimi" (Island) is nominated for album of the year and best R&B album. Her single "It's Like That" is nominated for best female pop vocal performance. And the album track "Mine Again" is up for best traditional R&B vocal performance.
"I'm a big believer in sort of the perfect storm where you have to have everything aligned," says Rick Krim, VH1's executive vice president of music and talent relations. "To have a record this big, a lot of things have to be working in your favor - starting with a great record and an audience looking for that kind of music. You can't make people buy a record. You can't manufacture a comeback." Breakdown before success
Carey knows that firsthand. Island Records worked her previous album, "Charmbracelet", just as hard in 2002. It featured appearances from Jay-Z and Cam'ron and songs co-written and produced by Jermaine Dupri, who had a hand in all four of Carey's singles from "The Emancipation of Mimi".
But "Charmbracelet" had disappointing sales and failed to yield any major hits. It began to appear that EMI - which wanted her to leave the label so badly after the disastrous "Glitter" soundtrack in 2001 and her erratic behavior during the album's promotion that it paid her a reported $28 million to go away - may have been right.
It looked like Carey's support was wide, but not deep, something that her Grammy track record reflected. Her decisions to limit touring and interviews - the way most musicians keep in touch with their fan base - had hurt her, especially as her music moved more toward hip-hop and away from her pop audience. She became the punch line to any number of jokes, both on late-night talk shows and in the industry. But Carey wasn't ready to give up.
When she began work on "Mimi", which is her family and friends' nickname for her, Carey hired Benny Medina, best known for guiding Jennifer Lopez to superstardom, as her manager and took a hands-on approach for completing the album. Fat Man Scoop, the Hot 97 DJ up for two Grammys himself for his work on Missy Elliott's "Lose Control", says Carey called to ask him to be on her album. But he didn't believe it was her.
"I was doing overnights at the time and I get this call, 'Hi, it's Mariah and I want to talk to Scoop'," says Scoop, who ended up on the first single, "It's Like That". "It's 2:30 in the morning so that's like saying, 'Hi, this is George Bush and I want to talk to Osama bin Laden.' I hung up on her. So she calls back and I say I don't have time to play games over here and I hung up on her again. So then DJ Clue calls and says Mariah's been trying to call you for the last 15 minutes. Then, Jermaine Dupri calls and says, 'Will you accept this call from Mariah? Because she's thinking you're dissing her.'"
Scoop says Carey was open to collaborating with him, letting him take the lead on his part of the song and following his rhymes with her vocals. "She did it her way," he says. "She went and did what she wanted to do." Returning to her roots
Kid Kelly, senior director of pop programming for Sirius Satellite Radio, says the first time he heard "Mimi". he could tell something major had changed. "She had the right people around her this time," says Kelly, who calls Carey's comeback "the resurgence of the century". "She went back to her roots to that rhythmic ballad-y thing that she started. It's like she said, 'Here's what I can do really well' and went back to that. Before, she was exploring the fringes. She's not a rap artist. There's no credibility there. She is a mainstream mass-appeal artist. A lot of people wanted to get behind her if she went back to that."
Kelly says Carey has now found some collaborators that she listens to. "She knows her limitations and she's getting good advice from people who are part of the effort," he says. "She was probably not getting that before."
What surprised most people about the overwhelming success of "The Emancipation of Mimi" is how it brought Carey a new generation of fans, as well as energizing her older fans who have dropped off over the years. "If you're a teenager today, you haven't been around for a big Mariah Carey hit before," says VH1's Krim. "It's been awhile. For us; it's fantastic. She's a superstar and there aren't many of those around that we can show our audience. The label did a great job, they set it up great, marketed it great and ultimately people responded. But a label can only do so much. She had great songs that connected with the audience." Awards not always forthcoming
It remains to be seen how much goodwill Carey has cultivated with Grammy voters. To win in the top categories Wednesday, she will have to surpass Grammy favorites such as U2 in the album and song of the year categories and Kanye West, who is seen as music's strongest artistic force.
Even though the Recording Academy's love of comebacks is strong, it has not always embraced Carey in the past. Despite having more No. 1 hits than any artist except The Beatles and Elvis Presley and selling more than 150 million albums worldwide, Carey has only managed to convert two of her previous 38 nominations into Grammys - both in 1991, one for best new artist and one for best female pop vocal performance for "Vision of Love".
For Carey's part, the nominations and the recognition of her work are enough. "I'm really blessed to be making the music I love," she says. "My year has already been validated, but all these nominations really are incredible."
Fat Man Scoop says that all those people who had slammed Carey over the past five years need to see her resurgence as a lesson. "Never count out somebody who has that much talent," Scoop says. "It's over when she says it is." (AM New York)
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