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Emancipation marks the first time Carey feels free to say what she wants, to sing the way she wants, even to dress the way she wants. Even though 2002's Charmbracelet was supposed to be the album that freed her from the bad vibes of her disastrous 2001 album/film Glitter and her subsequent much-publicized meltdown, she still felt a need to conform to what she thought the public and her advisors wanted from her.
"Everybody was like, 'She needs to do those middle-of-the-road ballads, she needs to get back to that,' " she says. So she did, and the resulting album wound up selling more than a million copies in the U.S. alone. An impressive number to be sure, but not when compared with her multiplatinum past sales history — and the album failed to counterbalance the bad press from what she calls the "supposed breakdown."
At that point, she says, "I really started second-guessing myself. And then I realized, like, all right, I have to go with my gut. Because everybody's got an opinion, and so many people's opinions about me are like polar opposites. They're like, 'We love it when she does ballads, make her do the ballads.' Then they're like, 'We want to hear a hip-hop record.' 'Why is she dressing like this? She should show less skin.' 'She should show more.' You know what I mean? I'm like, 'Stay in your lane, and I'll figure it out.' "
She says she faced similar problems in the wake of her meltdown. "Every interview became a '20/20' moment. Everybody was like, 'Be vulnerable,' you know? And it's like, can I just be me? Because honestly, this whole thing" — the breakdown — "was blown out of proportion, and I just would love to not even talk about it. But that wasn't possible."
So, she reverted to an earlier version of herself, one who wasn't concerned about the public or its expectations. On Emancipation, she says, "I felt I did the album I wanted to do." She moves beyond her recent save-the-pipes moves of cooing or breathing songs, and really sings. There are collaborations with Snoop Dogg ("Say Somethin' "), Jermaine Dupri ("Get Your Number"), Twista (the call-and-response "One and Only") and Nelly ("To the Floor"). There are innocent love songs and spiritual ballads ("We Belong Together," "Fly Like a Bird"). There are party songs ("It's Like That"), let's-get-busy songs ("Get Your Number," "Stay the Night"), send-off songs ("Shake it Off"), and songs of lost love, too ("Circles"). Being emancipated means you can go anywhere you want.
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"When L.A. Reid heard that people call me Mimi, he said, 'I feel your spirit on this record.' "
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The album, she says, "is not about making the older executives happy by making a bring-down-the-house, tearjerker ballad, or [something] steeped in the media dramas of my life. What I tried to do was keep the sessions very sparse, underproduced, like in '70s soul music, when all the musicians were in there at once, feeding off each other — me showing them vocally where I'm going and giving them the vibe in which to take it all musically.
"When [new Island/Def Jam label chief] L.A. Reid heard that people call me Mimi," she continues, "he said, 'I feel your spirit on this record. You should use that name in the title, because that's the fun side of you that people don't get to see — the side that can laugh at the diva jokes, laugh at the breakdown jokes, laugh at whatever they want to say about you and just live life and enjoy it.'
"So I'm kind of just living in this moment right now, and just enjoying it. It's a happy space that I'm in."
Besides, she adds, "To say 'The Emancipation of Mariah Carey' would've been so obnoxious."
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