My father identified as a black man. No one asked him because he was clearly black. But people always ask me. If we were together, people would look at us in a really strange way. It sucked. As a little girl I had blond hair and they'd look at me, look at him, and be disgusted.

Although now anyone is free to use this idea the success of "The Emancipation of Mimi" suggests that it still belongs to Carey. 1 on the R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart making it only the second Christmas album to top that chart.

In 1998 Mariah Carey was honored as the world's best-selling recording artist of the 1990s at the World Music Awards. Aside from her commercial accomplishments Carey has won five Grammy Awards 17 World Music Awards 11 American Music Awards and 31 Billboard Music Awards. During the recording of the album Carey began to deviate from her R&B and pop beginnings and slowly traversed into hip hop.