Five-time Grammy winner Mariah Carey says she doesn’t "give a damn" about the Grammys. At least not anymore.
In a recent interview with V Magazine, the legendary singer-songwriter revealed she is working on her first studio album since signing to Roc Nation management in late 2017. Carey said the creative process has been productive and insists she was not constrained to any deadlines—specifically, the Grammy eligibility period.
“In the music business, if you care about the Grammys and submitting your stuff before a certain time frame, you want a single out in the summer, and then you want to have your record [out] before the Grammys [consideration] deadline, which has changed,” she told the magazine. “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn. I mean, I have five Grammys. That’s cute. There’s people that have been doing this half the time that have twice as many [Grammys]. I won two Grammys the first year I started, but after that, [the Grammys] are like, ‘We don’t go with the people that are selling a lot of records and are popular; we’re gonna go the opposite way.’ So I got screwed out of certain years. I wasn’t bitter about it.”
So, what can we expect from the Elusive Chanteuse’s next album. Something “regular” apparently.
When asked about the upcoming project, Carey reassured V Magazine it wouldn’t be another Christmas release. She said she has already conducted successful brainstorming meetings with figures like Jay Brown, Tyran “Ty-Ty” Smith, and Roc Nation boss Jay Z, whom she collaborated with on the 1999 album Rainbow.
“This is before everybody in the world knew who he was. But we lovers of hip-hop knew who he was, and were very in awe of him, his talent, where he came from, his whole story and everything […] We just have a history as friends and as collaborators, so it’s kind of a thing that’s already been established,” she said. “Now, I’ve been getting to know Jay Brown a lot better: I’ve always known who he was and really respected and admired him so much. The way he does business is just awe-inspiring, you know what I mean? Like, they’ve really done an incredible job together, he and Jay. And they’re both named Jay [laughs]. So we’ve been going back and forth with different writers, different ideas. When I say writers, I mean cowriters, because I am a writer.”
You can check out the full interview—in which Carey also speaks about her new generation of fans, her relationship with Karl Lagerfeld, and being inspired by Childish Gambino—at V Magazine’s website.
