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The 'Emancipation' Of Mariah Carey

"I don't think I would've been blessed with such a phenomenal success of this album if it were about anger," Mariah Carey says of <em>The Emancipation of Mimi</em>.
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"I don't think I would've been blessed with such a phenomenal success of this album if it were about anger," Mariah Carey says of The Emancipation of Mimi.

Don't call The Emancipation of Mimi a comeback.

Mariah Carey's career is a string of firsts. During the 1990s, the Long Island, N.Y., native created eight smash albums and a string of hit singles, and she also won two Grammy Awards. Carey was the first artist to top the charts in each year of that decade. She beat the Beatles by spending the most cumulative weeks in front of the Billboard Hot 100 Singles chart — only Elvis has been in the number-one slot longer.

In this conversation, News & Notes' Ed Gordon talks to Carey about her early rise to superstardom, her highly publicized emotional meltdown, and her return with a Grammy-winning album.

Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

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