Photo Courtesy of Wikipedia
This morning The Today Show featured Mariah Carey debuting her newest single You Don’t Know What to Do, a powerful duet with rapper Wale. This is the second rap duet to feature on Carey’s newest album after Rich Homie Quan contributed to the single “Thirsty”.
The song does benefit quite well from Wale’s steady Rap to contrast Carey’s belting. By the end of the song, Carey lets loose her unrivaled vocal range for a triumphant crooning of “You don’t know what you’re doing to me! You don’t know what you’re doing to me! You don’t know!”
Mariah Carey has enjoyed great critical and commercial acclaim ever since her self title debut in 1990. Celebrated for her impressive five-octave vocal range, Carey spent the 90’s alongside Whitney Houston as one of the most powerful female singers. However 2002 resulted in a huge slump via the underwhelming album Charmbracelet and the box office bomb Glitter in 2002. The rough year led to a mental breakdown for Carey that would dislodge here career for a few years. However, Carey returned back with The Emancipation of Mimi in 2005 that would once again put her among the most celebrated singers in the genre.
Wale’s collaboration with Carey is an unexpected one, though it may be attributed to Carey’s marriage to rapper Nick Cannon. The Nigerian American and Washington D.C. based rapper rose to fame in 2010 with multiple hits that earned him a Best New Artist nomination at the BET Hip Hop Awards. With the release of his third studio The Gifted in 2013 Wale arched the top of the Billboard 200 for the first time in his short but already prolific career. This collaboration with Mariah Carey should expose him to broader genres for his future.
In addition to the new single, Carey also performed Always Be My Baby and Touch My Body for the extremely receptive crowd. On the song, Carey told Radio.com that her “career has been my entire life. I never thought that I would be a mommy to babies.”
Check out here video here and be on the lookout for her new album Me. I Am Mariah…The Elusive Chanteuse on May 27th