From the short video, we have learned that Mariah Carey used to dress up like Eminem during the quarantine. Again.
We all had our low points during last year lockdowns, but surely, only a few people had an audience to witness it as big as Mariah has now.
The 52-year-old singer has a TikTok account which she apparently enjoys playing with. As if it was not enough to upload this video there, she reposted it on her Twitter account, where it immediately reached the specific hip hop audience, who recognised Mariah’s reference probably better than a TikTok crowd.
Mariah’s tweet reads:
Just for laughs… from last year’s lockdown when all I did was wipe tings down SpongeFace with tears of joy #HappyAnniversaryObsessed
Just for laughs… from last year's lockdown when all I did was wipe tings down 🧽😂 #HappyAnniversaryObsessed pic.twitter.com/EAgqlZZJpA
— Mariah Carey (@MariahCarey) June 16, 2021
There’s a lot to unpack here. “Obsessed” was released on June 16, 2009, as a lead single for Mariah’s 12th studio album “Memoirs of an Imperfect Angel”. Critics were not happy about her relying on auto-tune too heavily, but the song did well in the charts, peaked at No.7 on the Hot 100, and eventually, supported with all nine of its remixes, went 3xPlatinum in the US.
However, the main talking point was about the lyrics and all subtle hints that this song is, in fact, addressed to Eminem, a relationship with whom Mariah has always denied. Em just dropped “Relapse”, with an open come on at Carey in the track “Bagpipes From Baghdad”:
Mariah whatever happened to us
Why did we ever have to break-up?
Nick Cannon, you better back the fuck up.
I’m not playing, I want her back, you punk.
It provoked the usual outrage from Nick Cannon and, as some saw it, inspired Mariah to write “Obsessed” in response. Carey’s co-writer The-Dream was making public comments even before the song came out:
It’s going to light the blogs up too because you don’t know who she talking about, what she talking about, but she talking about something. And remember The-Dream told you first. So you can start that up right now. Mariah Carey has a record, and somebody’s going to be very upset. I said that.
It sounds incredibly familiar to what Mariah’s team tried to spin recently to hype her book. They promised some upsetting revelations from the singer, revelations that, allegedly, made Eminem “stressed out”. It was hilarious, as any revelations about how bad Eminem was in the relationship with hew would have only proved a relationship between them.
But the only consistency somebody can expect from Mariah it is the return of her main hit to chart every Christmas.
So, the video for “Obsessed” followed the single, and the hype was high even before its release, as the pictures from the set were leaked, showing Mariah dressed up as a man, in a grey hoodie and baggy pants. The resemblance was uncanny, even if unflattering. The claim that Mariah impersonated Eminem in the visuals to take a personal jab at him became the main talking point around the release.
However, Mariah kept coyly reassuring everyone that it was just a pure coincidence. In her comments to P,a href=https://people.com/celebrity/separated-at-birth-mariah-carey-and-eminem/>eople magazine she wrote:
It was weird but I wasn’t playing anyone in particular. We [Carey and director Brett Ratner] were actually inspired by the King of Comedy starring Jerry Lewis and Robert DeNiro. I was just your regular everyday stalker with a few touches of Mean Girls :).
The years went by. Over a decade later, locked in her mansion Mariah dragged out from her dungeons the exact costume she wore in “Obsessed”, including the beard, and posed for a TikTok trend video. Add one more year to the count, and now she is posting this video all over the Internet. The video that is supposed to celebrate her hit, but which does not contain a single not of it besides references to Eminem she denied so passionately back then. Who obsessed with whom here?
