With the breakdown of her marriage last year and the recentdeparture of her
manager, Mariah Carey is free and single onceagain - and in control of her
career. Her latest album Butterfly, featuring contributions from Sean 'Puffy'
Combs,Bone Thugs-n-Harmony, Mase, and the Trackmasters, is the firstproof
of this new sense of freedom. Diana Evans talked to herabout life on the loose.
The Queen of Nineties Pop lets a limp arm fall over the side of her
™880-a-night king size. She's tired and her exhaustion, if somewhat
overstated, isn't unfounded. Over 80 million record sales in only seven of her
27 years means a hell of a lot of work. "I haven't stopped", she sighs, her voice
soaked in stardom. "I've put out more records than people who have been
around twice as long as I have. Basically, since right after high school, I've
been making records year after year after year." Not that she's ungrateful to be
where ex-hubby and Sony mogul, Tommy Mottola, and ex-manager, Randy
Hoffman, have taken her. Still, the tone of resentment in her voice suggests she
could have done with a little more time off.
For someone so overworked, Mariah Carey looks as fresh as the dawn.
Scantily clothed in a belly-airing vest and a pair of teeny boxer shorts, she is
both alert and open. "You can lie down if you want, I mean it's fine, be
comfortable", she assures. Unless she hits the stacks dolled up every night, it is
clear from her heavy black eye make-up and Honey lip-gloss that, however
homely her chosen interview set-up may seem, she's still working. Just a
couple of night before, she'd finished an 18-hours-a-day New York schedule:
completing Butterfly, her fifth album, running her own label, Crave Records,
and co-directing three of the four videos from the album. The last of these was
'Breakdown', featuring Bone Thugs-n-Harmony. "See this glitter on my nails ?"
she holds out her hands, "I had eye make-up like that all over my eyes and two
sets of lashes. It was like a showgirl theme [see picture opposite], so I had all
these snazzy lil' outfits and make-up on, but getting on a Concorde in a
daylight with gold make-up on isn't really the look that you wanna be sporting.
Snazzy lil' outfits are about all Mariah's been sporting lately. The video for
'Honey' (the first single off the album with went straight in at No.1 in the US
and reached No.3 over here), depicts her imprisoned in a San Juan mansion.
She's wearing a slinky black number and a pair of pin-sharp Gucci stilettos
which somehow she manages to run and even swim in. When she's escaped her
fiendish abductors by jumping out of the windows into a
conveniently-positioned swimming pool, we witness an underwater striptease
living nothing but a skin-coloured bikini and the clinging Guccis. Bass kicks in.
Her attire then changes from bikini to cleavage-humping wet-suit to boob-tube
to bra and back to bikini.
And so it goes on. The videos for 'Butterfly' and 'The Roof' are no less lacking
in graphic sensuality, and as she enjoys a sexy self-ogle in the ladies loo in 'The
Roof', it becomes all too clear that Mariah's image has taken on a whole new
emphasis. No more the sweet baby-doll who trilled us to tears with her gloomy
yet beautiful ballads, such as 'I Don't Wanna Cry' (1991) and 'Hero' (1993).
The urban chick with the hot booty and feisty attitude has finally been
exercising in preparation for this new show of flesh. "Y'know, it's funny", says
Mariah, somewhat flattered, "the reason they say that is because I never really
showed my body in the videos before. It's basically me making decisions about
my own imaging - as opposed to being shadowed by the overly protective
clutch that record companies tend to have when they can get away with it.
Especially with someone who's impressionable and who's a commodity."...
For an artist so obviously clued-up, it might seem disappointing to see her
prancing around bimbo-style, apparently obsessed with love, lust and her own
undeniable beauty. "I don't think my image will ever be about beingovertly
sexual in a perverse way," she retorts, "that's not who I am. But I'm also not
Marry Poppins. A lot of people who meet me are like, 'Wow, you seem so
different in person !', like they expect me to be 5ft 2in and really little Miss
Prim-and-proper."
We are interrupted by Mariah's personal assistant who places a cup of honey
and lemon on the bedside table. Every so often the diva lets out a delicate
cough. She has one of the most gifted voices ever heard and it's a gift not to be
mistreated. Cigarettes are a thing of the past. "I kept loosing my voice. One
time I was really afraid it wasn't gonna come back. And I prayed and I said if I
get my voice back I'll never ever smoke again. Got it back, never smoked
again."
This level of determination is at the root of her achievements, not just the
fierce agenda set by Mottola and Hoffman. For Mariah, music is sustenance
for the soul. "I'm an emotional person and music is like the emotional thread
and I'm bound together by," she says, characteristically meticulous with her
wording. After a short marriage of four years, she quit the marital home in May
last year. The divorce is still pending. This is the man for whose promises she
turned down a deal with Warner Brothers when she was a broken-home kid
walking around with nothing but a demo and a dream. He kept his promises
and Mariah has not forgotten.
This is presumably the reason behind her reluctance to talk about the break-up.
"It's really hard to get specific," she explains, fidgeting beneath the
bed-clothes, "because I don't enjoy hurting people's feelings and I do care
about Tommy a lot. I didn't ever understand marriage because my parents got
divorced when I was so young and I didn't have an example of a perfect
family. Also, I was always so focused on my career that I never thought about
getting married, never really believed in it."
Butterfly is intensely symbolic of her own life. It is, she admits, her most
personal album to date. It's also her most adventurous. The lyrics, though still
tediously stepped in weepy melodramatics and gushy sentiments, are delivered
with a newly-discovered muscle. And - something which has provoked a
number of snide comments - production credits and guest vocals are given to
the most prominent artists in the world of hip hop. Sean 'Puffy' Combs, Stevie
J, Jermaine Dupri, Walter Afanasieff, The Ummah, Mase, the Trackmasters, as
well as Bone Thugs-n-Harmony, have all contributed. All of a sudden, the
accusations go, Mariah Carey is cashing in on a rising black style to which she
does not belong.Mariah is defensive. She takes an exasperated sigh and
retaliates : "Personally, this album was about doing whatever the hell I wanted.
Even back to my first demos there was always an urban influence. There were
songs that should've been on a record but that didn't get on because everybody
else felt they were too progressive or too urban for where they wanted to take
me. I won't just go and make a record and think that suddenly I've like
morphed into Lil-Kim or Foxy Brown. I know who I am, but I also know who I
listen to on a daily basis and I don't think that it's bad to integrate that into
what I do."
Her previous LP, Daydream, saw her collaborating with Wu Tang Clan's
Ol'Dirty Bastard on the single 'Fantasy', but that aroused no criticisms at all. It's
only since Puffy smashed all the barriers that kept rap from commercial
acclaim and demanded esteem as a self-made top dog, that the talk became
nasty. Rumours (which, she confirms, are all "bullshit") were even spread
about Mariah having affairs with Puffy and Q-Tip. "Two years ago", she
continues, "Puffy was just a really hot street producer, y'know, and now he's
done something that's pretty monumental. Even though people will have a lot
opinions about the samples, he's still exposing a culture and the music to all
people all around the world. And maybe in doing that it will open some
people's eyes."...
Pride Magazine, February 1998
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