Mariah Carey - “Type Dangerous”

From 1990-2009, Mariah Carey was at times the biggest female recording artist in the world, consistently racking up hit after hit and hundreds of millions of records sold along the way. In the last 15 years, things have been less prolific as the artist has settled into middle age and her legacy artist status. These days, most of the general public only thinks about Carey in the last couple months of the year as she annually announces “It’s Time!” to mark the beginning of her perennial reign as the self-anointed “Queen of Christmas”. As a result, Carey can essentially coast throughout the year, singing her classics on various tours before going full throttle in the holiday season, collecting millions of streams (and dollars) largely off the strength of her enduring Christmas classic “All I Want For Christmas Is You”. With her last album coming out seven years ago (the critically-acclaimed but commercially disappointing “Caution”), you can understand why her fans and the general public at large forgot that Carey was still an active recording artist.

However, on June 6, 2025, Mariah returned with her fiery comeback single “Type Dangerous” which likely serves as the lead single from her forthcoming 16th album, tentatively set to be released in 2025. The song’s braggadocious lyrics finds a confident Carey who hasn’t sounded this good in well over a decade. Rather than pushing her voice to hit notes that she used to hit with ease back in the 90s, Mariah’s voice sits at a comfortable range in this track, with most of the work being done by the excellent production which utlitizes a sample from Eric B. & Rakim's 1986 classic "Eric B. Is President". For Mariah, a lover of hip-hop and a real pioneer in the melding of hip-hop and pop music, this is another day at the office.

With any comeback single, the biggest question is always whether it will be a hit or not. At 56, Mariah is well past her commercial prime and her Lambily (her devoted fanbase) is getting smaller with each passing year. Such is the conundrum that legacy artists have to deal with. The music may be great and the hardcore fans will stream and download from iTunes, but will the general public care? Very often the answer is no. The good news is that as of this writing (June 7, 2025), the song is number two on the iTunes global sales charts. The bad news is that the song only has just over 660,000 streams on Spotify after nearly two full days of streaming data. With a heavier weight given to streaming when it comes to chart positions, it will be very tough for Carey to make up the difference and hit the Hot 100 anytime soon. Her best hope is for the song to become a viral hit on TikTok and for there to be a remix with a younger fellow superstar (I think Ariana Grande or The Weeknd will be excellent). Regardless, Carey should be happy that she’s received nearly universal praise for her first single in years. And who knows? 20 years ago, we counted her out and she released “The Emancipation of Mimi” and the rest was history.