I was discussing Mariah Carey with a friend who felt she originally debuted as a r&b singer and then transitioned to pop. Im curious what others think?

She seemed more like a Whitney clone to me, and Whitney was pop/adult contemporary. Mariah seemed to get more hip hop based once she left Mottola.

people claimed she started as adult contemporary/soft rock and even ebony magazine called her white in some article about black music (their words, not mine) and then went r&b/hip hop, when truthfully, even her early pop stuff had r&b/soul and even some hip hop elements to it. Someday is a great example, as is Can't Let Go, Emotions, Vision of Love, I'll Be There.

MickyDolenz said:

She seemed more like a Whitney clone to me, and Whitney was pop/adult contemporary. Mariah seemed to get more hip hop based once she left Mottola.

She actually started out as a backup singer to Brenda K. Starr and was discovered by her then soon-to-be-husband and Sony Music chief executive Tommy Mottola. He groomed her to be a clone of Whitney Houston and pushed the more pop/AC aspect of her early career. She had to fight to get some R&B flavored songs on her early albums, and it wasn't until she did Daydream that a more urban sound began to develop from her. But once she divorced Tommy Mottola, she definitely went full in on the R&B and hip-hop sound.

She started with Pop and AC music.

alphastreet said:

people claimed she started as adult contemporary/soft rock and even ebony magazine called her white in some article about black music (their words, not mine) and then went r&b/hip hop, when truthfully, even her early pop stuff had r&b/soul and even some hip hop elements to it. Someday is a great example, as is Can't Let Go, Emotions, Vision of Love, I'll Be There.

She's not white?

trueiopian said:

alphastreet said:

people claimed she started as adult contemporary/soft rock and even ebony magazine called her white in some article about black music (their words, not mine) and then went r&b/hip hop, when truthfully, even her early pop stuff had r&b/soul and even some hip hop elements to it. Someday is a great example, as is Can't Let Go, Emotions, Vision of Love, I'll Be There.

She's not white?

she's mixed

trueiopian said:

alphastreet said:

people claimed she started as adult contemporary/soft rock and even ebony magazine called her white in some article about black music (their words, not mine) and then went r&b/hip hop, when truthfully, even her early pop stuff had r&b/soul and even some hip hop elements to it. Someday is a great example, as is Can't Let Go, Emotions, Vision of Love, I'll Be There.

She's not white?

Her mother is white, father is black. He's from South America I think.

This was the song that put her on the map:

Pop...it most certainly AIN'T! [img:$uid]http://i37.photobucket.com/albums/e70/SexyBeautifulOne/maryluvs_ohnoyoudidnt.gif[/img:$uid]

The reason I said they called her white is because they put her in a category of white people doing r&b like music, and did not acknowledge her blackness.

HatrinaHaterwitz said:

Pop...it most certainly AIN'T! [IMG]

It's adult contemporary to me. I have the album.

trueiopian said:

alphastreet said:

people claimed she started as adult contemporary/soft rock and even ebony magazine called her white in some article about black music (their words, not mine) and then went r&b/hip hop, when truthfully, even her early pop stuff had r&b/soul and even some hip hop elements to it. Someday is a great example, as is Can't Let Go, Emotions, Vision of Love, I'll Be There.

She's not white?

you bought into the Motolla Fairy tale. White pop princess.

No Mariah is biracial... and I bet her birth certificate lists her as Black. And she started out in RB music.

Thanks for the comments. I remember when she came out and Vision of Love was a pretty big hit with black r/b radio in my area. I don't really remember what happened after that, but on those same readio stations I do recall Can't Let Go being a regular Quiet Storm staple.

In terms of race (since it was brought up), I thought she was black from jump. I wasn't surprised when I learned she was biracial, but black ancestry was never a question to me or my black circle. Her look then was certainly not what it is now. Boo on Ebony if they were acting ignorant at that time.

Edited to add-how was it an "open secret"? The woman didn't look white. What was the secret?

[Edited 3/5/11 22:40pm]

Totally adult contemporary. It was already an open secret Mariah was biracial since the beginning but she didn't confirm it until '93.

alphastreet said:

people claimed she started as adult contemporary/soft rock and even ebony magazine called her white in some article about black music (their words, not mine) and then went r&b/hip hop, when truthfully, even her early pop stuff had r&b/soul and even some hip hop elements to it. Someday is a great example, as is Can't Let Go, Emotions, Vision of Love, I'll Be There.

No, they didn't.

http://books.google.com/books?id=xcwDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA54&lpg=PA54&dq=ebony+magazine+not+another+white+girl&source=bl&ots=k2N2AZVH40&sig=nXVVSDc_361pCAlf-m7MspCr6w4&hl=en&ei=_ipzTfW-OMTQrQf3r5TSCg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBMQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=ebony%20magazine%20not%20another%20white%20girl&f=false

119 said:

I was discussing Mariah Carey with a friend who felt she originally debuted as a r&b singer and then transitioned to pop. Im curious what others think?

Mariah came right out of the box having universal appeal. I'm old enough to remember when she debuted. There was no period in her early career where was she just acknowledged by the "urban" market. She was equally welcomed by pop, R&B, AC audiences.

[Edited 3/5/11 23:24pm]

I remember when Mariah was marrying Mottola, there was an interview with Mottola and he was asked his feelings on marrying.... (trying to remember here, ) a woman of color or something like that... and he replied something like "oh she's not black, she white, Venezualan,... etc)

So that seemed to solidfy in some people's minds that Mariah was not black. When I met my husband he swore up and down that Mariah was not black and that she was white.

therevolutionwillnotbe said:

119 said:

I was discussing Mariah Carey with a friend who felt she originally debuted as a r&b singer and then transitioned to pop. Im curious what others think?

Mariah came right out of the box having universal appeal. I'm old enough to remember when she debuted. There was no period in her early career where was she just acknowledged by the "urban" market. She was equally welcomed by pop, R&B, AC audiences.

She was all over all three radio formats. As far as videos go, each representative station (pop: MTV, R&B: BET, AC: VH1) played her on regular rotation.

Is it sad that I remember that the video for her third single, "Someday," was the third video to debut on Video Soul in 1991 (after "Same Song" by Digital Underground and "Wrap My Body Tight" by Johnny Gill)?

Harlepolis said:

alphastreet said:

people claimed she started as adult contemporary/soft rock and even ebony magazine called her white in some article about black music (their words, not mine) and then went r&b/hip hop, when truthfully, even her early pop stuff had r&b/soul and even some hip hop elements to it. Someday is a great example, as is Can't Let Go, Emotions, Vision of Love, I'll Be There.

No, they didn't.

http://books.google.com/books?id=xcwDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA54&lpg=PA54&dq=ebony+magazine+not+another+white+girl&source=bl&ots=k2N2AZVH40&sig=nXVVSDc_361pCAlf-m7MspCr6w4&hl=en&ei=_ipzTfW-OMTQrQf3r5TSCg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBMQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=ebony%20magazine%20not%20another%20white%20girl&f=false

I was finnta say! I had that issue and clearly remember her explaining she was biracial from JUMP. And I agree, she was played in heavy rotation by stations of varying formats from Day 1.

[Edited 3/7/11 2:57am]

728huey said:

MickyDolenz said:

She seemed more like a Whitney clone to me, and Whitney was pop/adult contemporary. Mariah seemed to get more hip hop based once she left Mottola.

She actually started out as a backup singer to Brenda K. Starr and was discovered by her then soon-to-be-husband and Sony Music chief executive Tommy Mottola. He groomed her to be a clone of Whitney Houston and pushed the more pop/AC aspect of her early career. She had to fight to get some R&B flavored songs on her early albums, and it wasn't until she did Daydream that a more urban sound began to develop from her. But once she divorced Tommy Mottola, she definitely went full in on the R&B and hip-hop sound.

Correct!

alphastreet said:

The reason I said they called her white is because they put her in a category of white people doing r&b like music, and did not acknowledge her blackness.

Tommy's master plan for Mariah was a direct rip-off of Clive's original master plan for Whitney. It's basically have the vocalist to play down their racial/ethnic background in order to gain crossover-pop success as quickly as possible.

The only difference is that we all can see in plain sight that Whitney is a dark-skinned black woman. But sadly, Clive didn't want her to act like it! But THAT's another story for another thread.

But anyhow, Tommy's master plan for Mariah was working. They even went a step further by having a few pieces of Mariah's hair to kind of block the nose on the cover of her self-titled debut album. Keep in mind that when it comes to ethnic features, the nose don't lie. And when the entertainment news media called Mariah out on her cultural background (again, it's the nose!), she finally told the truth about her black father & her white Irish mother.

119 said:

I was discussing Mariah Carey with a friend who felt she originally debuted as a r&b singer and then transitioned to pop. Im curious what others think?

As others have said, she was groomed to be more of a pop/AC performer a la Whitney, and I'm fairly sure it was Mottola who downplayed her biracial roots to facilitate this. As far as being R&B, three out of her first 5 number one songs also went to #1 on the R&B charts; the other two went top 5. So I do think she was embraced as an R&B singer as well from the beginning.

Her first two songs "Vision Of Love" and "Love Takes Time" were #1 Billboard R&B songs. Here in Michigan, black radio picked up on "Vision" before white radio did. The entire "Emotions" album was a throw-back to old school Soul music. She really didn't go hard-core Pop until the "Musicbox" album but that didn't last long. Certain songs didn't make it onto "Musicbox" because Mottola didn't want the album to sound as R&B as the previous disc. Like Nippy, Mimi was pretty much always marketed as a Pop/Soul artist.

[Edited 3/7/11 16:06pm]

TonyVanDam said:

And when the entertainment news media called Mariah out on her cultural background (again, it's the nose!), she finally told the truth about her black father & her white Irish mother.

Huh? Mariah said she was multi-racial from the very beginning. The first interview I ever saw of her was on BET's Video Soul in 1990 in promotion of her debut album and she stated it then. Just by looking at her, it was obvious she was not a white woman. She couldn't have hid it even if she wanted to.

kitbradley said:

TonyVanDam said:

Huh? Mariah said she was multi-racial from the very beginning. The first interview I ever saw of her was on BET's Video Soul in 1990 in promotion of her debut album and she stated it then. Just by looking at her, it was obvious she was not a white woman. She couldn't have hid it even if she wanted to.

right.

Her FEATURES look very African American. Her very dark brown eyes, the jut of her chin, the shape of her lips and nose... she looked like a very pale version of my old college roommate named Kim who is a black woman.

People get caught up in the skin tone... black people come in cafe au lait to dark roasted coffee bean.

So I never go by skin tone... Actually, I have found that the VOICE (tone, timber, depth and inflection) as more of a give away then Looks.

But that is not so reliable as an indicator anymore. CNN Soledad O'Brien really really surprised me.

kitbradley said:

TonyVanDam said:

Huh? Mariah said she was multi-racial from the very beginning. The first interview I ever saw of her was on BET's Video Soul in 1990 in promotion of her debut album and she stated it then. Just by looking at her, it was obvious she was not a white woman. She couldn't have hid it even if she wanted to.

Exactly.

Where did this "she finally told the truth" bullshit came from, like she was hiding it? Mariah have always been open about her racial background.

What REALLY fucked me up though, was when she confessed later in her career that she let the record label make her wear dark clothes, heavy make up, and never let the camera shoot her from her left side(or was it the right side?) because supposedly, she looked more "negroid".

Columbia sunk into a new bottom low, but I was disappointed that Mariah let them control her that way.

Harlepolis said:

kitbradley said:

Huh? Mariah said she was multi-racial from the very beginning. The first interview I ever saw of her was on BET's Video Soul in 1990 in promotion of her debut album and she stated it then. Just by looking at her, it was obvious she was not a white woman. She couldn't have hid it even if she wanted to.

Exactly.

Where did this "she finally told the truth" bullshit came from, like she was hiding it? Mariah have always been open about her racial background.

What REALLY fucked me up though, was when she confessed later in her career that she let the record label make her wear dark clothes, heavy make up, and never let the camera shoot her from her left side(or was it the right side?) because supposedly, she looked more "negroid".

Columbia sunk into a new bottom low, but I was disappointed that Mariah let them control her that way.

Don't get it twisted. I said Tommy was trying to downplayed it, NOT Mariah.

I'd prefer 2 say that she started out GOOD..............and ended up not so good.

Harlepolis said:

kitbradley said:

Huh? Mariah said she was multi-racial from the very beginning. The first interview I ever saw of her was on BET's Video Soul in 1990 in promotion of her debut album and she stated it then. Just by looking at her, it was obvious she was not a white woman. She couldn't have hid it even if she wanted to.

Exactly.

Where did this "she finally told the truth" bullshit came from, like she was hiding it? Mariah have always been open about her racial background.

What REALLY fucked me up though, was when she confessed later in her career that she let the record label make her wear dark clothes, heavy make up, and never let the camera shoot her from her left side(or was it the right side?) because supposedly, she looked more "negroid".

Columbia sunk into a new bottom low, but I was disappointed that Mariah let them control her that way.

Yep, Mariah turned me off when she came out with that mess. Shame on her.

uPtoWnNY said:

Harlepolis said:

Exactly.

Where did this "she finally told the truth" bullshit came from, like she was hiding it? Mariah have always been open about her racial background.

What REALLY fucked me up though, was when she confessed later in her career that she let the record label make her wear dark clothes, heavy make up, and never let the camera shoot her from her left side(or was it the right side?) because supposedly, she looked more "negroid".

Columbia sunk into a new bottom low, but I was disappointed that Mariah let them control her that way.

Yep, Mariah turned me off when she came out with that mess. Shame on her.

Cmon ya'll! She was a baby in the woods trynna make it and Tommy was pulling her strings from Day 1. Besides her low self-esteem and insecurities played right into a lot of that. But the pendulum swung too far in the other direction after her "emancipation" IMO.