ARTIST: Mariah Carey ¦
¦ TITLE: E=MC¦ ¦
¦ LABEL: Island/Def Jam/UMG Japan ¦
¦ GENRE: R&B ¦
¦ GRABBER: EAC (Secure Mode) ¦
¦ ENCODER: LAME 3.98b6 / -V2 –vbr-new ¦
¦ QUALITY: 192 Kbps Avg / 44.1 KHz / Joint Stereo ¦
¦ PLAYTIME: 1h 00min 02sec total ¦
¦ SIZE: 82.42MB ¦
¦ RELEASE DATE: 2008-04-14 ¦¦
¦ RIP DATE: 2008-04-24
01. Migrate (Feat. T-Pain) (Produced By Danja) 4:17
¦ 02. Touch My Body (Produced By C. “Tricky” Stewart & The-Dream) 3:24
¦ 03. Cruise Control (Feat. Damian Marley) (Produced By Jermaine Dupri) 3:32
¦ 04. I Stay In Love (Produced By Bryan-Michael Cox) 3:32
¦ 05. Side Effects (Feat. Young Jeezy) (Produced By Scott Storch) 4:22
¦ 06. I’m That Chick (Produced By Stargate) 3:31
¦ 07. Love Story (Produced By Jermaine Dupri) 3:56
¦ 08. I’ll Be Lovin’ U Long Time (Produced By Toomp) 3:01
¦ 09. Last Kiss (Produced By Jermaine Dupri) 3:36
¦ 10. Thanx 4 Nothin’ (Produced By Jermaine Dupri) 3:05
¦ 11. O.O.C. (Produced By Swizz Beatz) 3:26
¦ 12. For The Record (Produced By Bryan-Michael Cox) 3:26
¦ 13. Bye Bye (Produced By Stargate) 4:26
¦ 14. I Wish You Well (Produced By James Poyser) 4:39
¦ 15. Heat (JP Bonus Track) (Produced By Will.i.am) 3:36
¦ 16. 4Real4Real (Feat. Da Brat) (JP Bonus Track) (Produced By 4:13
¦ Bryan-Michael Cox)
__ [ RELEASE NOTES ] ___________________________________________ ____ __ __ _
¦
¦ Ripped by request using LAME 3.98b6.
¦
¦ For internal distribution only!
¦ -
¦ 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 nanvetT 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, “Touch My Body” is all about sound, rhythm,
¦ and texture and not so much about song, something that helps sustain Mariah
¦ Carey’s run at the top the charts, but something that also pushes melodic
¦ hooks, and in the process singing, into the background. As Carey’s
¦ multi-octave voice has always been her calling card, the one thing that even
¦ her biggest critics have grudgingly acknowledged as her unassailable
¦ strength, this is a little odd — especially on the T-Pain duet “Migrate,”
¦ where she succumbs to auto-tune — but it not only makes Mariah modern, it
¦ also camouflages her slightly diminishing range, so it does have a dual
¦ purpose. Sometimes all this production is good and occasionally it’s married
¦ to a full-fledged, hooky song, as on the excellent “I’m That Chick,” a sleek
¦ slice of Off the Wall disco that’s nearly giddy in its energy and melody, and
¦ perhaps on “I’ll Be Lovin’ U Long Time,” which also has a lightness that so
¦ much of E=MC2 lacks. Everything else pushes the rhythm and bass to the
¦ forefront and mixes Mariah into the middle, so it becomes a wash of sound –
¦ sound that is designed to be fashionable, but like so much fashion, it’s tied
¦ to the time and dates quickly. Which is why it’s misleading to judge Mariah
¦ based on her new record of possessing the most number one singles, as she’s
¦ not about longevity, she’s about being permanently transient, a
¦ characteristic E=MC2 captures all too well.
¦
¦ Don’t forget to support the artists! We did
