Mariah Carey On Being ‘Marketed’ In The Music Industry

Mariah Carey’s memoir The Meaning of Mariah Carey was released in October. In the New York Times bestseller, she opens up her struggles with the music industry and racial identity. In a sit down with Questlove for his new podcast Questlove Supreme, the singer and songwriter talks about  how she navigated those issues while being a superstar.

In the episode that airs today, Carey states , “What I wanted was to tell my actual story, which doesn’t begin with, ‘Mariah Carey put out Vision of Love in 1990.’ No, it doesn’t begin with that. It begins [with me] coloring in the ‘wrong’ crayon with a brown crayon for my father, so they all freak out at me.”

Mariah’s mother is white and her father is Black. 

RELATED: Mariah Carey Is Releasing A Memoir Called ‘The Meaning Of Mariah Carey’ Later This Year

She continued, “It begins with, ‘I don’t understand my hair because I’m [half-Black]. It begins with all these identity issues, these issues of race, these struggles. Then it goes to the issues of control.”

Carey also added, “There’s a thing where there’s a constant theme [with] being a woman in a male-dominated industry. Then [I was] a woman of color with all this ambiguity and [had] people deciding how they’re going to market me [at the time].”

Hear more on the Questlove Supreme podcast, available on Apple.