Rainbow
Rainbow, Mariah Carey's seventh studio long-player, is something like a concept album. Its theme is the various stages of the "emotional roller coaster," as she puts it, of her divorce and subsequent rebound. Carey continues to walk the line between streetwise hip-hop soul and adult-contemporary acceptability, with the former not surprisingly offering most of the disc's high points. "Heartbreaker," the first single, is a likeable piece of bubble-gum R&B; with grit borrowed from guestJay-Z; the remix, withMissy Elliott,Da Brat, andDJ Clueon board, is a different enough piece of work that its appearance only a few cuts after the original version doesn't jar. Another groove-intensive track, theSnoop Doggduet "Crybaby," is so sly that one hopes the two collaborate again. Of course, it wouldn't be a Mariah record without at least one major lapse in taste; here that bill is filled with a cover ofPhil Collins's melodramatic "Against All Odds."--Rickey Wright