'cause to fly, gotta have no fear...

While working on The Emancipation of Mimi, Carey was hoping to bounce back from Glitter and Charmbracelet, both of which failed to meet her towering commercial expectations (though the former has developed a fervent following in the years since). She found herself in a similar position as she prepared to release Caution last week. Her last major hit, the “#Beautiful” duet with Miguel, came out five and a half years ago, marking the longest absence from the Top 20 of her entire career. On top of that, her new album was also her first release on Epic Records after a decade-plus relationship with the Island Def Jam Music Group (which split up in 2014) and then Def Jam on its own.

The ease and polish of Caution, though, belies the stakes. Carey doesn’t try to juice her streaming numbers by packing the album with a zillion songs, and there are no ill-fitting team-ups with impetuous SoundCloud rappers or awkwardly cobbled-together international collaborations. Instead, the album stays resolutely unrattled. More importantly, a few of these songs are the strongest Carey has released in a decade.

In practice, this meant a rearrangement of personnel. In place of Dupri and Bryan-Michael Cox, who helped with much of the star’s last album, Carey brought in a host of new names. This group included Bibi Bourelly (Rihanna, Usher), Lido (Ariana Grande, Halsey) and Luca Polizzi (Roy Woods, Yo Gotti), younger musicians who don’t know a pre-Mariah pop universe. Carey also called in Skrillex, best known for his role in pushing frenetic, buffeting electronic music into the mainstream, and the Stereotypes, whose love for bouncy, sumptuous production on Bruno Mars’ “That’s What I Like” won them a Song of the Year Grammy in January [of 2018].

Though Skrillex has been working with more pop acts lately (Fifth Harmony, Justin Bieber), he’s still an unexpected presence on Carey’s album; she usually works with artists from hip-hop and R&B. “He seemed to want to bring himself into her world, and vice versa — it was a great musical marriage, so to speak,” says Lewis, the A&R. “And the result was some of the most progressive R&B you’re going to hear right now.”

After wresting back control, the results were a return to form for Carey. “It was very classic Mariah,” Ray Romulus says happily. “It felt like Part 2 of Emancipation of Mimi.”

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https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/making-of-mariah-carey-caution-album-757429. (Adaptado).