And again her answer in intriguing. The impression is almost of her
having having had to plead to be allowed to do this. Plead with whom
though? The label, presumably, but rather than the logistics, it is her
manner which fascinates me. I can’t imagine Madonna, for example, saying
of her record company that they had an “excuse” to discourage her
creative vision.
I ask if there was then a conflict between expressing herself and
fulfilling the commercial requirements of being Mariah Carey, and she
ducks the question, replying instead with something about gauging
Jermaine Dupri or The Brat’s reaction to her songs to determine their
crossover potential. Crossover from the mainstream into the urban
market, that is, not vice versa.
So is her record label Crave, then, perhaps an outlet for the type of
material she feels unable to release for herslef? She’s quite happy to
acknowledge the truth in that: “At this point it is. In the beginning I
was doing so much other stuff that I wasn’t really focused on a lot of
the details because, and now I really am. It’s hard, because there’s a
lot, and the artists really look up to me for support.” She talk about
the groups on her label, of which Allure are the best known and for whom
she co-wrote and co-produced three tracks. She also tells me about a new
group she has called Seven Miles (sic), who “are really talented, a guy
group from Detroit, like a young Boyz II Men aged 17 to 20.” She also
mentions a rap group called The League, who she says are all that. She
speaks with great entusiasm about these groups and her label; it’s
clearly something she feels - not just a vanity project but definitely
something of a creative outlet for her.
We talk for awhile after that about who an artist writes for, be it an
idealized audience or for themselves. Mariah explains how this was
perhaps the first album since her debut that she has really written for
herself, with her situation in mind - with honesty. “This album, because
of all the personal stuff that was going on, and all the personal stuff
that went into the lyrics, it’s still very moving when I listen to
certain things. I think like, wow! This last year was a very bizarre
experience. But I got through it.” This last said with defiant pride in
her resilience, her self-sufficiency, like ‘I did it’. In that moment I
catch a sense of bizarreness of her life. Moving from the most
unconventional and unstable of childhoods (she hints at something dark,
abusive perhaps; certainly something that happened in her house at night
that kept her from sleeping, the cause of her lifelong insomnia), to the
cosseting and coddling of a career and marriage there were intrinsically
locked together and tended to exclude just about everything of real life
(including sleeping on friends’ couches in Brooklyn). Everything except,
perhaps, unhappiness.
I ask if it has taken a long time to feel like herself again. “It’s
taken ‘til now,” she says, “but I’ve done things in the past that I felt
really good about that weren’t necessarily released, so now people are
like ‘oh, she’s jumping on the hip hop bandwagon.’” So how does she
react to that? “I think it’s ridiculous.” she says, clearly annoyed.
“For example, me and Puffy worked together in ‘95 on the ‘Fantasy’
remix. That’s before Puffy was pUf Daddy, The Artist, and because I live
in New York and I listen to hip hop and I have friends who go out to
clubs every night I obviously knew that he was the hottest person to
work with.” I suggest that’s her point of view, but that others don’t
necessarily see it like that. She nods and agrees, saying, “They see
him, and then they see me.” And they wonder how you got there, I
respond. “Then they appear ignorant,” she replies, vehemently. “They
don’t even realize I worked with this guy two years ago before he even
had a solo record out. When he was very concerned about doing anything
remotely commercial, and we almost didn’t work together - it was like ‘I
don’t know about messing with that pop stuff.’ - but then he heard the
track and he knew, because I already had the song written and I had the
sample, and I said I wanted to work with ODB, and he said ‘what?!’
It became huge, and at this point it’s like, the masses [which,
interestingly, is how she refers to her perceived audience] don’t even
know who Mobb Deep is.” She pauses for breath - all this has come out in
a heated rush - and then finishes her thought more calmly. “People know
me know that I’m a real person. That I’m not caught up in the hype,
which 99.9 percent of the people in this business are.”
The limo moves through the LA night, and the only illumination in the
rear comes from the little fairy lights around the vanity mirrors above
us, which cast their small pool of light onto out faces and very little
else. Mariah Carey sits deep in the seat corner, seems relaxed - tired
but calm, comfortable with it. She does come across very real -
startlingly so, given that she is one of the biggest stars in the world.
Which takes me back to where I started. The relationship superstars have
with their public is a strangely Faustian one. They are there to
vicariously live their fabs’ lives for them, to suffer their losses, to
feel their pain, understand the things they cannot. You can only do this
by being there, for if you’re not down, you can’t understand, and if you
don’t understand then you can’t be down. Being real with your private
people is not enough in this game as, I believe, Mariah Carey
understands. You have to be real to everyone.
So that’s why she’s busting out of her shell, making music with Mobb
Deep and Bone Thugs, partying, hanging out and sleeping on those Brookyn
couches. It’s kinda like a rebirth thing, from the darkness to the
light: “There was a point that it was so bizarre,” she recalls. “I was
running around on my own in a cab thinking where do I go, how do I get
there? Early last year, like, what the hell am I doing, and that was the
start of the resurrection of the true person I am.”
You can by cynical about her motivation but you can also see the change
in Mariah Carey as a tacit acknowledgement of past errors; and recognize
that in a world that’s been more than a little bit crazy, you maintain
any way you can.
Trace Magazine; June, 1998
Return to Mariah Carey articles
Looking In at Mariah
Get your own Free Home Page