You can be on top of the world—or in the case of Mariah Carey, be a globally renowned, Grammy-winning singer and songwriter with millions of records sold—and the universe will still find a way to count you out.
In 2001, Carey's film Glitter was greeted with less-than-steller reviews. Her 2002 studio album, Charmbracelet, met a similar fate. Now, sometimes, setbacks light a fire within us. Sometimes, setbacks force us to creatively recalibrate. Sometimes, if you're Mariah Carey at least, setbacks inspire what eventually becomes career-defining work. Enter The Emancipation of Mimi, Carey’s 10th studio album—a feat of lyrical prowess and pristine R&B production—which celebrates its 20th anniversary this week. The singer herself describes creating the project as a “freeing kind of moment.”
“Well, [the record came out] following a couple of moments that weren’t that successful for me. Like, I loved Charmbracelet—that’s one of my favorite albums—but you can’t make something sell a certain amount or have the label do the right thing about it to make it successful,” Carey shares with Harper’s Bazaar. “When we got into making The Emancipation of Mimi, it was just like a breath of fresh air. It really was good.”
Emancipation might be the most thorough piece of musical storytelling Carey has ever created. Looking back, 20 years on, it seems to symbolize the life of a woman liberated from the constraints of critique. In 2005, Carey had nothing to lose—so why not make the music that had always existed within her? She famously began writing and recording the album on the island of Capri, Italy, with its original edition being filled to the brim with collaborations with R&B and hip-hop heavyweights like her longtime producing partner Jermaine Dupri, Pharrell, Snoop Dogg, Twista, Nelly, and the late Fatman Scoop. Thanks to an all-star cohort of directors that included Brett Ratner, Jake Nava, and Paul Hunter, each of the album's accompanying music videos resembled mini movies, with leading men to match; Eric Roberts, Wentworth Miller, and Michael Ealy all made impressionable cameos.
The album also has one of the strongest home run opening sequences in modern music: “It’s Like That” became an instant club hit that birthed hilariously shady one-liners like “Them chickens is ash and I’m lotion,” while “We Belong Together” went on to top the Billboard charts for 14 non-consecutive weeks and later was named Song of the Decade. (When I mention to Carey that I don’t think they even give songs that honor anymore, she laughs.) “Shake It Off” remains to this day the ultimate no-fucks-given breakup anthem for many a millennial. Every now and then, an X user hoping to go viral will post, “When I say the song ‘Shake It Off,’ what artist do yall think of first????” and like clockwork a loyal lamb will dutifully respond, “Mariah Carey. Please do not piss me off.”
To celebrate the album’s milestone, the superstar is releasing The Emancipation of Mimi (20th Anniversary Edition), a special 45-track, five-LP offering. Available on May 30, 2025, and compiled by Carey herself, it will combine tracks from the original record, singles from the Ultra Platinum Edition, and dozens of bonus tracks, dance remixes, instrumentals, a cappella edits, and more. Fans will also be treated to a new remix of “Don’t Forget About Us,” produced by Kaytranada, which is available to purchase and stream today.
“[This album really] seems to span across different age groups, even if fans were super young when it came out,” says Carey. “I’ll be performing some of these songs from Mimi and seeing people really knowing all the words. It’s always so nice.” The singer also admits she’s seen the countless TikToks of people spreading the gospel of the album’s enduring impact. “Some of them are pretty funny.”
The record symbolized a creative awakening for Carey, not only musically but stylistically as well. The outfits from that era were just as memorable as the songs. Similar to when the singer switched up her style for the release of Butterfly (coinciding with a well-publicized divorce), Emancipation embraced all of Carey’s aesthetic staples. She wore camo capris and a side-slung studded trucker hat in the “Shake It Off” video and a rhinestone Tory Burch tunic while belting a run for the ages in “We Belong Together.” The late André Leon Talley styled her now and then throughout that period and even made an appearance in the music video for “Say Somethin’,” which featured her on a Parisian shopping spree with a pre–Louis Vuitton Pharrell.
“It was really about breaking free of things that I would have done in the past,” she says of her 2005 style, “whether it was wearing the Dsquared2 dress from the ‘It’s Like That’ video or the orange Roberto Cavalli [cutout] dress to [the VH1 Save the Music Benefit]. There was the Vera Wang wedding dress for the ‘We Belong Together’ video too. Everything I was wearing was all different but also [at the same time] all fun.”
Even today, Carey is surprised by the album’s enduring impact and how much it’s grown alongside her over the years. In a way, The Emancipation of Mimi is still guiding the singer.
“It was just one of those things where you find yourself working on something and you find it to be really special. It’s a project one day, and then come the next day it’s the project,” she says. “I think [the album is] still teaching me that music is long-lasting and that you can really be your true self through it. In terms of what that says about me and my work … I hope people remember it and love it. [Making this album] got me through some moments that weren’t so great by really living through the music.”
Looking back at the cultural impact of The Emancipation of Mimi, does Mariah Carey believe in the concept of a magnum opus? And is Mimi hers?
“I love when there’s a big magnum opus, but this is one of those things where [over time] it’s kind of just grown with me,” she says. “And I love that.”
