Mariah’s iPhone joins the call and a cheerful ‘Hey y’all!’ rings through the speakers. She’s chatty, charismatic, and bubbly but with a sprite of shyness. “I’m just happy to have started a new year,” she exhales after our initial chit-chat, mostly about her chilled start to the day and plans to head to the studio. “Things seem different. This year has a different vibe – and in a good way.” She’s not wrong. 2023 ended with the release (and success) of her third studio album To Be Eaten Alive, the announcement of a North American and European tour, and a surprise collaboration with rapper 21 Savage. So rest assured, Mariah: 2024 is yours for the taking.

But predictions aside, not even this R&B maestro envisioned how glitz and glam her life would eventually turn out to be. “I wasn’t planning on making a career out of it,” the 26-year-old superstar shares, detailing the whirlwind that has been the last five years for her as a musician. “It was a shot in the dark.” And don’t we all wish we could hit our targets like she has?

Walking us through the genesis of ‘Mariah the Scientist’, she shares it interestingly began in her college dorm room. “I was just cooped up,” she says, quite nonchalantly. Finding herself alone most of the time, acknowledging that she tends to isolate herself, she would explore writing songs within the four walls of her bedroom. “I didn’t have many people to talk to or confide in about the way I was feeling so, at some point in time, I began to write it out.” But she doesn’t look back on her college days with regret or remorse, rather she’s appreciative of the time it gave her to blossom in other ways than expected. Unbeknownst to the students patrolling the campus of St. John’s University in New York City, they were amongst a shy yet incredible lyricist who would soon become a household name globally.

She credits a consistent admiration for films and movies as being pivotal in building stories and appreciating the value they add to fantasy. “But eventually, you pick up on the fact that everything in movies is so meticulous, and everyone is a character,” she says. So, that’s when the music comes in. A natural storyteller, she recalls moments as a child with her younger cousin at her grandmother’s, singing along to her namesake, the queen herself: Mariah Carey. “I was so shy,” she says. “Even then in the house with our family, I couldn’t do it [as in perform].” But she could always appreciate the words they’d sung.

She was lucky to grow up in a golden age of music, in a city like Atlanta, Georgia where music was making a name for itself – not to mention, all of the formidable artists that came before that time. She cites the likes of anyone from Michael Jackson and Diana Ross to Tame Impala and Pink Floyd; back to Faith Evans and Monica as sources of inspiration and whose music she fell head of heels for. She even jumps forward to explain how, whilst still in college, she flew across the country from New York City to Irvine, California by herself to see Brent Faiyaz perform live. So really, for Mariah, it does start with music. “I’ve always had a thing for music,” she says. “I guess you don’t look at it like that until you have inserted yourself in the world of music, and from the outside looking in, it’s nothing like what it looks like.”

Being vulnerable with her music is something that Mariah always seeks to do, and is something both she and her fans cherish within her work. But she admits that sometimes that emotional tug-of-war can be a challenge.“ I don’t know if I’m being as deep as I want to be[with my lyrics],” she says. “I start by trying to get in tune with how I’m truly feeling and sometimes it’s a big blur and is hard to tap into. It’s like a current in the ocean, sometimes the tide is high but sometimes it’s not.” She walks me through a few of these currents, describing her first album master, as coming from a place of oppression.“It looks at submitting to the wrong relationships, which would explain the guy with the hand on my shoulder,” she says, describing the cover art for the same album. In the next project [RY RY WORLD], she explores being a victim of her guilty pleasure “as far as love is concerned.” Earnestly, she admits:“I knew what the issue was, and I was running from it.” That’s what the album cover expresses; the oxymoron of being obviously hurt and even going as far as to acknowledge the pain yet still being blissfully unaware. “Buckles Laboratories Presents: The Intermission”, the EP after that, embraces a break-in that narrative, an opportunity for a blank slate. She reveals that it was her way of embracing how long it was taking her to move on to another project. It’s then where it feels like Mariah begins to gradually unravel the build-up in her mind of how gruelling the process of songwriting can be.

“I hate (sometimes) how long it takes me to move into the next character – but then, maybe I don’t hate it. I feel like people don’t realise how much it takes to do that because it’s not like you’re telling somebody else’s story, you’re telling your own story. Sometimes you don’t know what part of the story you’re in because you’re in it. At the time, you don’t know what chapter it is, what characters are going to be prominent or not, or if they’re going to be out of the chapter or the book totally – it’s a lot of different factors. You try to fake the essence of the person you are at the time and turn it into something but it could change, and it changes a lot,” she says. “I feel like that’s why it takes me so long sometimes to come up with the character that I want to be this time round or whoever I am now because I’m growing as a person. As a woman, I’ve changed or had some sort of epiphany – multiple epiphanies – and that shapes your outlook, the way you express yourself, and it shapes your creativity, in my opinion.”

It’s this vulnerability however, that is one of her greatest strengths, if not so first and foremost. It’s what has Twitter (sorry, X) users running to their feeds to make bold statements such as ‘I love any song with Mariah the Scientist on it’ and ‘Mariah the Scientist will eat any song she’s on’. “Some of the most exciting moments are as simple as writing a song that I like, because I write a lot of songs, and I don’t like them all,” she confesses. But it emphasises just how curated the stories that she does end up sharing are.

Her third studio album To Be Eaten Alive is a poetic and punchy body of work that chalks up her trials and tribulations of the last year. It’s apparent in this album how the singer’s approach to music making is meticulous yet effortless, expected of both a natural and intentional storyteller like herself. “Heaven is a Place on Earth”, the introductory track to the album, is a heartfelt and slightly eerie almost-lullaby that details the uphill battle that love can be; the hope, the despair, the loneliness and the fullness. Her favourite song, “From A Woman”, presents a first for the artist. “I love that song. It might be the first love song I ever made,” she proclaims. “[Writing] it was different from what I’m used to doing. Every other song expresses this disdain for love, but [“From a Woman”] was more open. It was a test to see whether I can make a meaningful song about things that are not negative, and I think it’s hard to do that.” But in true Mariah fashion, she was able to set – and achieve – that goal.

Mariah admits that she sometimes has a habit of underselling herself. So, the collaboration process isn’t something that has come so easily for her. She expresses how difficult she has found it to find her footing amongst her peers within music, a space that particularly likes to pit talented women against each other. But she almost shrieks with excitement at the possibility of being able to do so. “There are a few girls out there who have been nice to me and left the window open to collaborate like Bia and Chloe Bailey.” Fingers crossed for when those linkups occur. But she doesn’t let that negate the collaborations she’s done in her career so far. When the opportunity arose for her to work with fan-favourite DJ and producer Kaytranada on “Out of Luck”, she was truly stunned: “I thought that he was out of my league!” Well, Mariah, you proved yourself wrong.

As for now, she is preparing herself for a North American and European tour that will last for just over three months.“I’m excited to be going to different places that I have never performed in,” she says. “A lot of these places I have been to and I’m just excited to return and on a larger scale. We pretty much sold out the entire tour, which is amazing to me.” And her first stop? The beautiful Hawaii.

Amidst the backdrop of plenty of whispers and an abundance of noise, however, Mariah isn’t shying away from the spotlight. Now, she’s coming out of her hermit’s shell and embracing being a “woman of the world”. Each song throughout her discography has become a moment in time, a snapshot of history, and ultimately, a story to tell. So, despite the different phases she’s passed through, she’s warmly anticipating ‘the next’: the next song, the next story – the next Mariah. What will this look like? Only time will tell.

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