Album Review: Here For It All - Mariah Carey
"He just grabs my hand, I don't know what he's doing," said Mariah Carey, straightfaced, to Gayle King when asked directly about whether she and Anderson .Paak are dating after seeing photos of them in linked arms. And then she spoke the pièce de résistance: "He's [in] a hand-holding club." Whether or not Carey and .Paak are indeed in more than a "hand-holding club," Bruno Mars' Silk Sonic collaborator has his sonic fingerprints all over her 16th album, one of her best in years.
The anachronistic, '80s version of neo soul favored by the drumming/singing/rapping polymath is instantly recognizable from the opening moments of the audacious "Mi," which also shares Silk Sonic's under-the-breath injections of humor. When Carey sings how you couldn't walk a mile in her shoes, she quickly ad libs "'cause they hurt like hell." That's followed by the actual .Paak collab, "Play This Song," which pulls out the usual Blue Magic/Delfonics stops with glockenspiel and sitar decorating the retro production gloss. Carey has rarely had an opening one-two so fluttering and gorgeous. It sets up the old-school rap-flavored single, "Type Dangerous" as a tempo-shifting palate cleanser rather than a reason to lean on every word, and "Sugar Sweet," a more contemporary-sounding cut featuring Shenseea and Kehlani.
But it's the '70s and '80s soul pastiches on Here For It All that make for some of Carey's finest work in ages on her first full-length in seven years. The Smokey Robinson doo-wop of "In Your Feelings" and the inspirational, "Save the Best for Last"-esque "Nothing Is Impossible" are some of the most impressive and mature tunes in her oeuvre. And lest you think Carey is holding back or incapable at 56, she finishes off the easy-funking Babyface-style lope of the title closer with overdubs of her famous whistle register.
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Daniel Aaron/Qobuz 
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