So basically Billboard, London blokes, and other foreign press and media (okay Australia and Taiwan)in recent weeks had a chance to listen to the new Mariah Carey album and here is just some of what was made clear to us..fans who never get to hear anything first BOOO! Anyways...yea...
Mariah Carey has set an April 1 release date for the follow-up to her mega-selling album "The Emancipation of Mimi," which was the biggest selling album of 2005. Dubbed "That Chick," the set features production from Jermaine Dupri, will.i.am and Rodney Jerkins, plus collaborations with the likes of T-Pain and Damian Marley.
The album veers between breezy pop tunes like "Lovin' You Long Time" and the title track, ballads like "Love Story" and urban club bangers like the standout "Migrate."
The latter features T-Pain in a guest slot, providing the counterpoint to Carey's anthemic "single girls on the town" lyrics with the killer line: "Don't wait for me to buy drinks, or you're going to dehydrate."
Other highlights include the frisky R&B of "Touch My Body," with Carey cooing, "If there's a camera up in here then I best not catch this flick on YouTube," and the catchy "OOC" -- short for "out of control." There's also a new sound for Carey on "Cruise Control," which features Marley and sees the artist try her hand at Jamaican patois.
"It's kind of strange but I heard a lot of her records and it sound like the album is better than the last album," Dupri recently told Billboard.
Here is the track list for "That Chick":
"Lovin' You Long Time"
"Touch My Body"
"That Chick"
"Thanx for Nothin'"
"For the Record"
"Migrate"
"Cruise Control"
"Love Story"
"OOC"
"Bye Bye"
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Last night in a central London hotel theatre, Def Jam head L.A Reid invited a very exclusive VIP audience to hear the new albums from both his 2 top divas Janet Jackson and Mariah Carey. With stringent rules laid down at the top of the evening about not leaving the room for a bathroom visit, handing over all gadgets and returning song word sheets we knew it was about to go down.
Beginning with Janet's new material which sees Janet reworking her old sounds from the days of Velvet Rope and Control, Janet's material was quite sexually overt and a little gross ("real heavy like my first period"!) but it was really Mariah's new material that blew everyone away.
Mariah's new album, tentatively titled That Chick, saw collaborations with T Pain, Young Jeezy and Damien Marley with production by her long time friend and producer Jermaine Dupri, Will I Am, Rodney Jerkins and The Dream.
The new music with catchier hooks and melodies than ever, even sees Mariah taking on an exciting new musical adventure where she sings in Jamaican patois on her Damien Marley duet "Cruise Control" where she references "dramas" and "baby mamas" and like your favorite rap star Mariah throws down a new Mariahism ("you love yourself some me!") soon as the album gets into the public domain.
Urban music lovers in the house were really excited about that track as well as hip-hop banger "Heat" produced by Will I Am, "For Real, For Real", and "Migrate" where 2007's hit man T Pain hooks up with Mariah but it was the title track "That Chick" with its double entendres which includes a tip of the hat to Michael Jackson with references to his "Of The Wall Classics" that had pop chart taste makers excited claiming it was the number 1 track on the album closely followed by likely international pop hit "Love You Long Time".
In typical Mariah fashion there were the legendary ballads "Love Story" and tear jerker "Bye Bye" (an ode to people who have passed away) that will have reality pop contestants singing away for decades to come!
One track titled "O.O.C." summed up the night and the return of Mariah - once the albums out it's gonna be "Out Of Control!".
To recap, here are the confirmed tracks from the new, tentatively-titled Mariah Carey album, That Chick:
• "Touch My Body"
• "Migrate" ft. T-Pain
• "Heat"
• "For Real, For Real"
• "That Chick"
• "Cruise Control" ft. Damien Marley
• "O.O.C"
• "Bye Bye"
• "Love Story"
• "Love You Long Time"
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Carey - That Chick
Their old diva (in terms of contract, not age, of course) is Mariah, who is riding high after the 7xPlatinum-selling Emancipation Of Mimi.
We got to hear 10 tracks from the follow-up, That Chick, which I have to say sounded more polished and commercial than Janet's effort.
One track in particular is set to make big bucks, and that's Bye Bye - a torch song for people "who lost they grandmothers". I guarantee that Simon Cowell will be sick of hearing badly-realised auditions of it by the end of the year.
Lyrics were never Carey's strong point, mind you, so her paean to loss is summed up with not-very-insightful Hallmark platitudes like "I'd give the world to see your face" and "Life goes on". Profound, eh?
Still, at least it's better than when she desperately attempts to prove how bang up to date she is. In Touch My Body, she purrs to her lover: "If there's a camera up in here then I best not catch this flick on youtube (youtube)". Not exactly the sexiest boudoir come-on you've ever heard, is it?
But there are plenty of good tunes to counter the awesomely bad lyrics. Migrate, about a night out with Mariah while she wears jeans ("yeah, they fit", she informs us) is sure to be a candidate for heavy MTV rotation, although I hope to God they excise T-Pain's hopelessly strained vocals. Lovin' You Long Time, meanwhile, is a strutting uptempo number very much in the style of It's Like That.
So, what have we learnt from this listening "event"? Well, I wasn't overwhelmed by the music - despite (or perhaps because of) the fact it was played so ear-splittingly loud that it felt like I was being punched repeatedly in the ears by a cyberman. Both artists have turned in a tuneful, competent set of R&B songs, but I'm not sure that any of them have the charisma or vitality to compete with the Rihannas and Beyonces of this world.
Both albums: 6/10 (scores may go up or down after further listens at levels tolerable to the human ear)
Source: Mariah Daily, Billboard, MTV UK, Discopopuk, The Daily Telegraph
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