MARIAH CAREY'S NO LONGER MANAGED BY JERMAINE DUPRI BUT DON'T GIVE UP ON HER YET

Fortunately Mariah Carey can count Donatella Versace among the people who loved her latest elusive musical offering, but the disappointing sales for Me. I am Mariah…The Elusive Chanteuse apparently prompted the singer to revisit the good ol’ days of Mimi’s emancipation because, as Billboard reported, Mariah Carey has split with her manager Jermaine Dupri. Based on Dupri’s statements, he attributes the separation to “not being allowed to do what I know.” Hmmm…sounds like he thinks Mimi’s a micro-manager.

Despite Carey’s constant manager-swapping over the last several years, this still may be unsettling news for her beloved flock of lambs. However, there remains good reason to keep the faith in a Mariah Carey career revival. For example, after two back-to-back commercially unsuccessful albums in Glitter and Charmbracelet, plenty of doubters prepared to put Carey out to pasture—that is, until she released The Emancipation of Mimi. In true diva fashion, Carey quieted the naysayers when the album opened at #1 on the Billboard charts and earned her the best opening sales week of her career.

As for the present, who knows what went wrong with The Elusive Chanteuse? For the most part, I found it to be a pretty solid album with a few exceptions. Perhaps she cursed herself by announcing it as a surprise album. (Like, how does that even work?) Maybe her other non-musical endeavors took away from her focus. Don’t even get me started on her mystery melodic beverage.

Part of me thinks that for now, Carey should pull back a little from being all front stage and center and focus on other aspects of her career. She could pick up where she left off when she founded Crave Records back in the late ’90s. But then again, the comments she made about Ariana Grande don’t exactly portray her as the type to help anyone along in their musical career, at least not at the moment. I certainly don’t have all the answers for Carey executing another musical comeback, but I’m willing to hang in there see if yet another manager can put her back on top.