Mariah Carey

Mariah's first album out from under the thumb of ex-husband and boss Tommy Mottola finds her moving even further away from the vanilla world of adult contemporary radio and into an urban R&B setting. Even the requisite ballads she smokes her way through have a bounce and groove that used to be saved for the opening cuts of her earlier albums.

On what is something of a transitional album, the recently separated Mariah Carey moves
still further away from the warmed-over Whitney Houston of Carey's early recordings and
firmly into the milieu of modern, hip-hop-inflected R&B. The surprise is that she does it
rather well. Carey couldn't have wished for a better start than "Honey," the latest in the
apparently unending series of Sean "Puffy" Combs-produced chart toppers this y... More >