Mariah Carey: E=MC2
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A month into spring, the weather is flirting with warmer breezes and sunshine so brilliant it calls for my biggest pair of MK-wannabe shades (that's “Mary-Kate”). Artists hit the radio waves with an early brightness, bartering for a chance to claim unofficial entitlement over Song of the Summer. Our ears lighten up to jam out with more playful, fluffed songs. Who else but Mariah Carey should meet us, strapped with iced coffees in each hand?
It’s the timing. Timing is everything, right? So just as things cooled from her 2005 release The Emancipation of Mimi, MC’s back with E=MC2. At fifty-two minutes in length, the album holds airy, mid-tempo songs of love/heartbreak, balanced with fun dance songs. This album is equipped to serve equally as a soundtrack to pre-Saturday-night going out and to a pre-Thursday-night date.
A Damian Marley-assisted track spices up the (otherwise unsurprising) musical palette with a pinch of reggae. Here, over Jermaine Dupri’s production talents, Mariah stylizes her vocals to resemble a seemingly, hopefully light-hearted attempt at Jamaican-accented reggae singing. The opposite of “surprise” is T-Pain’s guest appearance on “Migrate,” a club song that documents the migration, from one VIP area to the next, of girls who come in flocks. “I’m That Chick,” bell-tones and handclaps aplenty, is that disco-R&B/pop blend that recalls some “Rock With You”-era MJ (squared). “I’ll Be Lovin’ U Long Time” hits the peak of seasonally-appropriate, feel-good vibes, a song, as imagination allows, best played from a shiny convertible. “O.O.C.” shows diva MC getting loose and out of control.
Breaking from her usually guarded demeanor, Mariah occasionally offers listeners a look into the “private hell” of her abusive/destructive marriage. “When I space, am I still dreaming 'bout them violent times?” she asks herself. Once she “finally built up the strength to walk away,” Mariah’s left with the side effects. “Still little protective 'bout the people that I let inside…/ Still a little depressed inside, I fake a smile and deal with the side effects.” Young Jeezy’s appearance on this Scott Storch-produced track is superfluous, only distracting from the realness of the situation.
Where “Side Effects” falls short of matching sound to subject matter, “Bye Bye” fills that emotionally-unmatched musical gap. The song centers around the death of Mariah’s father. Having come from a nonexistent father/daughter relationship, her father absent after her parents' divorce when Mariah was three, she now finds herself never having gotten to repair the distance between them. “There's so much more left to say/ If you were with me today, face to face.”
The lack of personal material is not a problem, ultimately. The familiarity and anticipation of warm, bright weather as a natural mood enhancer comes each year, but it’s not every year we get to rely on a seasoned artist who can always deliver vocally. For this spring’s hot brand of pop/R&B sounds, it's Mariah. How refreshing! No need to funk with that formula now.
It’s the timing. Timing is everything, right? So just as things cooled from her 2005 release The Emancipation of Mimi, MC’s back with E=MC2. At fifty-two minutes in length, the album holds airy, mid-tempo songs of love/heartbreak, balanced with fun dance songs. This album is equipped to serve equally as a soundtrack to pre-Saturday-night going out and to a pre-Thursday-night date.
A Damian Marley-assisted track spices up the (otherwise unsurprising) musical palette with a pinch of reggae. Here, over Jermaine Dupri’s production talents, Mariah stylizes her vocals to resemble a seemingly, hopefully light-hearted attempt at Jamaican-accented reggae singing. The opposite of “surprise” is T-Pain’s guest appearance on “Migrate,” a club song that documents the migration, from one VIP area to the next, of girls who come in flocks. “I’m That Chick,” bell-tones and handclaps aplenty, is that disco-R&B/pop blend that recalls some “Rock With You”-era MJ (squared). “I’ll Be Lovin’ U Long Time” hits the peak of seasonally-appropriate, feel-good vibes, a song, as imagination allows, best played from a shiny convertible. “O.O.C.” shows diva MC getting loose and out of control.
Breaking from her usually guarded demeanor, Mariah occasionally offers listeners a look into the “private hell” of her abusive/destructive marriage. “When I space, am I still dreaming 'bout them violent times?” she asks herself. Once she “finally built up the strength to walk away,” Mariah’s left with the side effects. “Still little protective 'bout the people that I let inside…/ Still a little depressed inside, I fake a smile and deal with the side effects.” Young Jeezy’s appearance on this Scott Storch-produced track is superfluous, only distracting from the realness of the situation.
Where “Side Effects” falls short of matching sound to subject matter, “Bye Bye” fills that emotionally-unmatched musical gap. The song centers around the death of Mariah’s father. Having come from a nonexistent father/daughter relationship, her father absent after her parents' divorce when Mariah was three, she now finds herself never having gotten to repair the distance between them. “There's so much more left to say/ If you were with me today, face to face.”
The lack of personal material is not a problem, ultimately. The familiarity and anticipation of warm, bright weather as a natural mood enhancer comes each year, but it’s not every year we get to rely on a seasoned artist who can always deliver vocally. For this spring’s hot brand of pop/R&B sounds, it's Mariah. How refreshing! No need to funk with that formula now.
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