Mariah Carey’s voice is raspier than it used to be, but that’s okay because it’s barely noticeable until she gets loud. Besides, she’s over 40 and even the best voices generally start to degrade at around that age. What isn’t forgivable is the clunky title of this album, which reads more like 3 she couldn’t decide on. I would’ve picked the third. Not that a fancy title can compensate for mediocre music.

Meteorite sort of soars, but most of these songs lack the (melodic) charisma of her early stuff. The worst moments are the annoying ones. I understand why she and other pop divas (cough-Beyoncé-cough) think it’s cute to hear their kids voices on their songs, but I don’t get why they think other people will want to hear them. Wale is almost as bad and the Fabolous feature has too much Fabolous on it.

my rating : 3 of 5

2014