Butterfly, boasts some edgier grooves, pointedly personal lyrics, and a decidedly sexier look. Overnight, Carey became the object of gossip-column fascination. Every man she encounters is declared her new bean. While making the "Honey" video, she was snapped while having her hair done by stylist - and the photo wound up in an Australian tabloid captioned "Mariah frolics on the beach with mystery man." She's been linked to Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter, David Fumero (the chiseled model in the "Honey" video), rapper Q-Tip - basically "everybody from Puff Daddy to Donald Trump!" she marvels.

Carey has been wearing the notoriety as comfortably as her body - hugging outfits. Unlike some other professions, the music business, personal drama can be a commercial boon - just ask Madonna or Courtney Love. And Carey is clearly game: The "Honey" video showcases her body as never before and portrays her as imprisoned in a mansion and threatened by dark - suited goons. In the lust title song, "Butterfly," she asserts, "Wild horses run unbridled or their spirit dies, Spread your wings and prepare to fly." Butterflies Are Free "I'm not this one - dimensional girl who sits in a field wearing a flannel shirt or stands onstage singing only ballads," Carey says, referring to her former image. "And I feel I'm in a better position to express myself at this point.

"All the personal things I went through while making this album were very draining," she says of the more than year - long process, "but I'm the type of person to throw myself into my work. When I was a child, music was always my saving grace, the thing that pulled me through, made me feel special, gave me hope." Butterfly, she says, feels like her most gratifying achievement, "because it's something that I feel fully responsible for and because I took chances." Previously, she'd been cautious in her musical and visual presentation, she says, "because of the way I grew up, I always felt like the rug could be pulled out from under me at any moment."This attitude resurfaced recently when she began taking acting lessons. Her teacher asked her to remember a place where she felt safe in her life, and Carey says, "I didn't have one. I couldn't think back to a place that didn't give me a feeling of shakiness or some negative memory." She is referring to her tough childhood. Her parents separated when she was two and divorced when she was three. She and her sister and brother, both nearly a decade her senior, are products of an interracial marriage. Her father, Alfred, and aeronautical engineer, is black and Venezuelan; her mother, Patricia, who was trained as an opera singer, is Irish. "I'm triracial," Carey says. Living in white neighborhoods on Long Island, New York, the family experienced a lot of racial hatred - "my family had their dogs poisoned, cars blown up, my brother was beaten up," she recalls - which no doubt hastened the divorce. Her mother, who once had sung professionally, worked different jobs to get by. "My brother was supposed to watch me when she went off to work.

" Carey says. "I was, like, 6 and he was probably 16, and he would leave and go out with his friends; he was wild. I got very used to being on my own and feeling very vulnerable and scared. I saw a lot of craziness in my house." She won't get too specific, but drugs and other seedy elements were around. "I could've ended up psycho drug - addict nut case." she says, "but I made the right decisions by looking at people who made the wrong decisions and saying, I'm not going to be like them." Her family moved "at least 10 times" and was sometimes forced to stay at friends' homes. They were so poor that at one point, her family couldn't afford to buy her a new pair of shoes. By high school, Carey had convinced herself she was going to escape by becoming a successful singer. She was often absent from class, leading to her nickname Mirage, because she and then - writing partner Ben Margulies were spending late nights in New York City, working on a demo tape. For the proverbial "something to fall back on," Carey took 500 hours of beauty school. She learned "pin curls, roller sets, finger waves, manicures, pedicures," she recites. "Our style was tacky, but hey babe, it was the '80s." She took a job sweeping hair in a pretentious salon and quit after one day, when the owner demanded she change her name to Echo."I was like, 'Bing bong, these are not the slave days, good - bye."

Mariah 3

Click next

Mariah / Mariah 2 / Mariah 3 / Celine / Celine 2

G.R.A.F.E.

LINKS

Grafe & Bowman Web Design

Daily

FastCounter