Mariah Carey’s unlikely to give Eminem a charm bracelet, much less extend an olive branch.
The pissed-off pop songstress, who’s relaxing in the Caribbean before setting sail on a six-month world tour in support of her new album, Charmbracelet, had some pointed words for the rap superstar after hearing reports that Em threatened to include samples of several rambling voicemail messages she left him in an upcoming tune.
“I don’t know what the hell he’s doing,” Carey grouses in the New York Daily News on Thursday. “It’s a little excessive. Doesn’t it seem a little bit girly? Like we’re in a cat fight?”
The audio pinings purportedly reveal a different side of the diva-one who adores mixing “baby talk” with other “weird and graphic” messages.
Whatever their content, Carey downplayed their naughtiness.
“Graphic? I’m like Mary Poppins when it comes to that type of thing. I’m a jokester,” Carey tells the Daily News. “I have little voices. I do little things like that that are fun and games…If somebody has nothing better to do than sit around listening to old phone messages, I’m a little concerned about that.”
The story, first circulated earlier this week by the gossip mavens at the New York Post, claimed that Eminem had saved every one of the songbird’s “gushy” voicemails to use as payback when Carey dissed him in her song “Clown,” after he went public with their relationship.
Emimen told Rolling Stone last summer that the pair briefly dated, before he realized he “didn’t like her as a person.”
“Don’t believe the hype?She doesn’t really have it all together,” he said at the time.
For her part, Carey denied they were ever an item. And on “Clown,” she sang: “You should have never intimated we were lovers. I gotta break it to you delicately/who’s gonna love you when it’s over? Who’s gonna care?”
Eminem’s rep says the rumor that the hip-hopster was going to go public with the messages from his purported paramour was “the most erroneous thing” he’s ever heard.
“He’s not using Mariah’s phone messages. Nothing’s being used in an album,” says Interscope Records spokesman Dennis Dennehy.
Either way, Carey says she’s too busy prepping for her upcoming trek around the globe to worry about the likes of Eminem.
Carey will kick off her jaunt in Seoul, on June 21, and plans to visit more than 113 cities. This time around, the popster is booking smaller venues for a more intimate feeling and is also letting fans help choose her set list via her Website. She’s slated to launch the North American leg of her tour on July 18, in Anchorage.
Charmbracelet, meanwhile, has sold more than 1 million copies since its December debut and has proved that Carey is back on track after her 2001 emotional breakdown and career meltdown following the movie and album debacle Glitter.
As for Eminem, when he’s not busy dissing Weird Al Yankovic or having the biggest year of his career with the 2002 release of his multiplatinum-selling The Eminem Show or scoring a blockbuster hit with his movie, 8 Mile, which netted him an Oscar for Best Song, the Detroit bad boy is expanding his presence into video games.
Eminem and Conspiracy Entertainment have teamed up to offer Mix TV Presents: Eminem, which debuted Wednesday, at the Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles and features four music videos by Em, including “My Name Is” and “The Real Slim Shady.” The object is for one or two players to unscramble different types of puzzles created by the game’s four videos before the song ends.
Both a teen-rated version and a mature-edition of the video game are expected to ship this summer, selling for $14.99 or less, for use on PlayStation One and PCs.
