The Remixes - Carey, Mariah (CD 2003)

Ah, Mariah...once one of the bright lights in contemporary music now reduced to a punchline. Whereas once when we thought of you we considered the immense voice punctuated by dog-whistle high notes and a sort of there/not there bland personality, you are now known as the loose cannon of divas. Slipping into a tub wrapped in a towel on "Cribs", performing a striptease on "TRL", "Glitter" and it's aftermath-Mariah Carey has officially become the diva you love to hate.

Not that much of her early music was cause for celebration. After making an excellent debut album, Mariah settles into a heavy ballad groove, veering between chaste declarations of love to hackneyed emotional pick-me-ups like "Anytime You Need A Friend" or "Hero". The problem? Many of Mariah's songs lacked spice. That wily intangible that turns a song from "hey, that sounded OK on the radio" to "Damn! I love this song". Well, all I can say is thank God for "The Remixes".

Mariah's first remix album goes back almost a decade and a half and contains reworked versions of songs from the beginning of her career (well, almost) to the present. With two discs-smartly divided between dance reconfigurations and hip-hop spiced reworkings-it's a pretty good bang for your buck (it's priced as a single CD). However, much like Mariah's regular work, the novelty wears off about 3/4 into the album, ending with a series of predictable samples, boring guest rappers, Mariah's grating "cooing" voice and way way way too much Jermaine Dupri & Da Brat. Ugh.

I must say, I don't have much use for modern dance music. I was born in the age of disco (which is still very much alive-although it's allegedly been dead for twenty-five years) and came of the age at the dawn of house. Unfortunately, we are now in the age where the preferred mode of dance music is Euro trance/techno/whatever-a mindd numbing amalgam of synthesized thump thump thump and keyboard squiggles with no such thing as an actual melody or vocals. Thankfully, the dance mixes Mariah gives us here are more of a homage to the dance days of old than some nauseating melange of synthesized mess. The best of the bunch is the "Heartbreaker" remix, which speeds up, slows down, and takes a pinch from the 1986 dance classic "If You Should Ever Be Lonely" by Val Young. Mariah has historically re-cut her vocals for her remixes, and it's kinda cool to hear her fit the lyrics for her song into the melody of an old-school classic.

Other highlights on the dance side include the original reworkings of "Emotions" (by C&C Music Factory) and "Dreamlover" (by David Morales). Both play up the choral/gospel angle of Mariah's vocals, with "Emotions" adding the excellent full-bodied intro that Mariah performed live for "MTV Unplugged" back in 1992. This side's other remixes are less annoying than most current dance music (although they're not great) and I'm sure they will find homes in gay bars across this great nation of ours.

Now for the other side-Mariah has long been a hip-hop fan, and has long appeared to have aspirations of being the mulatto Mary J. Blige. Beginning in a low-key fashion with "Dreamlover", Mariah has slowly morphed into "Honey B. Fly"-same old Mariah, yet more scantily clad with occasional terrible taste in hip-hop collaborators.

Her obvious favorites are Jermaine Dupri & Da Brat. Dupri (probably most famous as Janet Jackson's (ex?)-boyfriend) is a mediocre producer and barely adequate rapper. Da Brat was once called the female Snoop Dogg and now looks like she ATE Snoop Dogg. Together, they've created a wildly inconsistent melange of tracks over the years. The 'Always Be My Baby" remix is a winner, with killer background vocals from Xscape, a subdued vocal from Mariah, and a sample of "Tell Me If You Still Care" by The S.O.S. Band. "Honey" is another winner. One of the few tracks that Dupri actually sounds good rhyming on, it's bolstered by a strong Mariah vocal and a Jackson Five sample. Actually, about 2/3 of these hip-hop remixes are actually good. Mariah interweaves Loose Ends' 1986 club classic "Stay A Little While" into "My All", teams up for an all-female party with Brat and Missy on "Heartbreaker", and is joined by a slightly-off-his-game Nas ("Getting very sentiment-ell/Sipping cosmos/With a cherry in the midd-ell") and Joe, one of her best duet partners ever, on "Thank God I Found You", which turns into a reworking of Keith Sweat's 1988 "Make it Last Forever". And let's not forget her historic summit with the ODB on 1995's "Fantasy", on which Ol' Dirty gives the most unglued verse on a pop song ever! (Of course, their shared mental histories may suggest more of a bond than we'd imagined initially).

However, it all goes pie-eyed at the end. "Crybaby" and "Sweetheart" are not remixes. "Crybaby" is a terrible misuse of Snoop Dogg, has no discernible melody, and rips Guy's 1988 "Piece Of My Love", while "Sweetheart" is a note-for-note remake of the 1985 dance hit by Rainy Davis and features JD trying to rap AGAIN. The albums ends with this, as well as the previously unreleased "Miss You", which features Jadakiss rhyming over the "Benjamins" beat AGAIN, a remix of "Charmbracelet"'s "The One", which is defecated on by semi-talented rotund rapper Bone Crusher and features yet ANOTHER Guy sample (this one is "Goodbye Love"), and she concludes with the overplayed "I Know What You Want" featuring Busta Rhymes, AKA the biggest waste of rhyming talent of the past fifteen years. Is this the same guy who ripped the frame out of the "Scenario" and "Flava In Ya Ear" remixes? Hard to believe.

Anyway, this CD is a mixed bag, but its sheer volume of music leads me to recommend it (particularly if you can get it for a good price-there's enough material on here that you'll lsiten to more than once), especially if youo're a casual Mariah fan and get the feel that some of her original studio recordings are a little on the bland sample. Yes, she relies a little too heavily on the "name rapper/recognizable sample" formula-but she's struck gold a lot more than she's missed, and this is the only way to get most of these remixes, many of which have been out of print or hard to find for years.

rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Key Tracks: "Heartbreaker/If You Should Ever Be Lonely", "Always Be My Baby (Mr. Dupri Remix)", "Thank God I Found You"