After recently indicating that she’d be taking a Beyoncé-esque “surprise approach” to her new album, Mariah Carey reverted right back to form, tweeting a photo of the cover art and announcing its title—Me. I Am Mariah—and release date. She didn’t even do her arms different.
Last week, in a cover story for Billboard, Mimi and her new manager Jermaine Dupri intimated that the album, cover art, title, track listing and music would be dropped all at once on a surprise date, just like Beyoncé’s last album. Plus, she said that the album would take its name from a “personal possession of mine that’s part of an entity that I’ve had almost all my life.” So, that personal possession that she’s had almost her whole life is…her? (Actually, she insanely explains it in a YouTube video.)
According to Laura Swanson, the label’s exec VP-media, the album will, in fact, be preceded by a traditional strategy leading up to a “late May” simultaneous digital/physical street date. “Mariah will announce the date and title in advance of the on-sale date,” she said, noting that the cover and confirmed tracklist will all be included.
And so Thursday, Mariah fell in line and tweeted the following:
Her consistency is a comfort to many fans though, right down to her calling-card font and the very Mariah-y vocab of her tagline—”the elusive chanteuse.”