| Thursday 10 November 2005 |
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Mariah Carey by Jermaine Dupri
I first met Mariah Carey years ago, when we were both on Columbia Records and I was this hot little producer. She was more talkative than I was; I was kind of nervous being around her. What impressed me about her was that she knew exactly what she wanted and how she wanted to do it. She's still like that. Vocally, she knows exactly where she's going. She's like a Jedi master - we have yet to hear all the octaves Mariah can sing.
When I was in the studio with Mariah working on The Emancipation of Mimi, everybody asked me how [I could get her to] compete with Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera. And I was like, "Why are we even having this conversation?" They can't compete with her because they look up to her. The original is back. She put songstress divas on the map. And "We Belong Together" [which Jermaine coproduced] is the biggest record of my life, and it only took a day to do, start to finish. To do a record that big, that quickly, says a lot about Mariah.
This year, she came back and picked up her crown. She's a great, loving person with a really warm heart. She's always concerned about other people's feelings, even when she shouldn't be. And she's the diva of all divas - although she's not what you'd call [an ordinary] person, she is very cool and down-to-earth. A year or two ago, people were calling me asking, "Is Mariah crazy? How do you feel about her losing her mind?" And all those people who said bad things about Mariah, well, they're trying to get an interview with her now. I was sick of people dissing my friend, so I'm really happy to be talking about her now as one of the Artists of the Year. (Teen People)
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