Mariah Carey E=Mc2 CD

The arrival of E=MC2 in 2008 indicated that Mariah Carey's reign as the queen of pop, and her status as one of the most popular and best-selling artists of all time, wasn't likely to end soon. The follow-up to the 2005 multi-platinum, chart-topping, Grammy-sweeping THE EMANCIPATION OF MIMI, E=MC2 reveals no slackening of focus or ambition, thanks in part to an all-star line-up of production help that includes The Dream, C. "Tricky" Stewart, Jermaine Dupri, will.i.am, Stargate, DJ Troomp, and Antonio "LA" Reid (who co-produced the album with Carey).

As usual, Carey's concentration isn't on club-oriented dance tracks but on smooth, mid-tempo R&B that pulses with sexy glamour. The lead-off single, "Touch My Body," is a case in point, a breathy invocation that induces both romantic feelings and swaying hips, and is classic Carey. Other album highlights include opener "Migrate," a moody, slinky jam; the disco-flavored "I'm That Chick"; and the ballads "I Stay in Love" and "Love Story." Nothing here is a radical departure, but Carey just seems to get better at what she does best: making sexy, listenable, flawlessly crafted R&B.

Two weeks prior to the April 2008 release of E=MC2 -- Mariah Carey's tenth album and the sequel to her big 2005 comeback, The Emancipation of Mimi -- the diva broke Elvis Presley's record of being the solo artist with the most number one singles on the Billboard charts. Lots of publicity surrounded "Touch My Body" reaching number one, as well it should: busting an Elvis record is always news, but this particular record served team Mariah well, as it paints Carey as being a diva who's bigger and better than the rest. An unintentional side effect of this very record is that it also tacitly pointed out that Mariah has been around a long, long time: 18 years, to be exact, roughly two years shy of the two decades that it took Elvis to establish his record. Unlike Elvis -- or any other major artist who's been around for two decades, for that matter -- Carey seems determined not to look back, to exist in some kind of eternal now, never acknowledging that she has a past, unless she's wielding her divorce from her ex-husband/ex-record label chief Tommy Mottola for some kind of sympathy, something she does once again here via vague allusions to naïveté and "violent times" on "Side Effects." Mariah refers to that separation so often that it's hard not to think of it as something recent but it happened a long, long time ago -- well over a decade prior to the release of E=MC2, to be precise -- but as the separation was the pivot point for Carey's career, it's easy to see why she keeps returning to it, even if the emotional heft of her singing about the pain has long since diminished.

After that separation, Carey restyled herself as a relentlessly modern R&B diva, chasing every passing trend in a given year, a move that often kept her on the top of the charts -- apart from the post-millennial stumble of Glitter, of course -- but had the side effect of making Mariah a musician who became progressively less mature with each passing year, culminating in the hazy soft-porn fantasies of "Touch My Body," the single that broke Elvis' longstanding record and will likely only be remembered for that achievement. Like so much of Emancipation and E=MC2, which is a virtual replica of its predecessor in almost every way, "Touc

Deluxe Edition

Recording information: Circle House Studios, Miami, FL; Exclustivity Studios, Anguilla, B.W.I; Honeysouth Studios, Miami, FL; Legacy Studios, New York, NY; Oasis Studios, St. Martin; Rock The Mic Studios, New York, NY; Soundtrap, Atlanta, GA; SouthSide Studios, Atlanta, GA; Stone Groove Studios, New York, NY; Triangle Sound Studios, Atlanta, GA.

Photographer: Mario Sorrenti.

Personnel: Mariah Carey (background vocals); Crystal Johnson (background vocals).

Audio Mixers: Marcella "Ms. Lago" Araica; Dave Pensado; Crystal Johnson; Supa Engineer "Dura"; Jermaine Dupri; Phil Tan; Fabian MarasciullEntertainment Weekly (p.63) - "Carey remains a romantic at heart. With the ballads 'Love Story' and 'Last Kiss,' she reunites with Dupri to recapture the passionate splendor of 2005's 'We Belong Together.'" -- Grade: A-
Blender (Magazine) (p.75) - 4 stars out of 5 -- "[This is] Carey's most-fun album, and her best. Not coincidentally, it's also her most propulsive, with strong contributions from A-list producers including Jermaine Dupri, SwizzBeatz, Stargate and Tricky Stewart."