by Roger Friedman - March 04, 2017
This is really real, and I hope Mariah Carey really reads it. I ran into her on Sunday night. We walked into the Vanity Fair Oscar party together. There was no one in the long entry tunnel but her, me, and her manager Stella Bulochnikov. Stella is not a day at the beach. She is tough. And I don’t mean that she’s a bitch. She is fiercely protective of Mariah. But it may be too much. Back to that meeting in a minute.
Yesterday — Monday– I caught word that Epic Records is very unhappy with Mariah. That recent single, called “I Don’t”, was a total failure. It was also a total surprise to Epic. They were sent the track all completed, with no forewarning from Carey’s camp that it was coming, I am told. They hadn’t heard it. “We were just told to put it out,” says a source. So they did. And it flopped.
Now my sources say Epic chief L.A. Reid is considering dropping Mariah from the label. In the time since she signed with him, Carey has had two singles– "Infinity" and “I Don’t”. They were not sellers, no YouTube views, and didn’t get played on radio. There is no work being done toward an album, and no conversations are taking place between Epic and Carey’s team.
I wrote a few weeks ago that Carey’s friends and former employees felt that Stella had cut the singer off from everyone. L.A. Reid is apparently one of those people. “He can’t reach her,” says a source. “That’s really bad.”
I asked Mariah about a new album. She said, “We’re doing a series of singles. No one wants albums anymore. We have one now with this great rapper YG.” I’m not sure if she realizes “I Don’t” didn’t, and has come and gone.
I don’t know what happened to Mariah and Stella after that. No one saw them at the party. I saw L.A. Reid across the room, but she wasn’t with him.
I wish she’d made an album of great ballads like "Vision of Love", and give up the hip hop. We have no great theme album of Mariah showing off her voice on classics.
:lol: