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Rainbow

by Mariah Carey

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Rainbow, Mariah Carey's seventh studio long-player, is something like a concept album. Its theme is the various stages of the "emotional roller coaster," as she puts it, of her divorce and subsequent rebound. Carey continues to walk the line between streetwise hip-hop soul and adult-contemporary acceptability, with the former not surprisingly offering most of the disc's high points. "Heartbreaker," the first single, is a likeable piece of bubble-gum R&B with grit borrowed from guest Jay-Z; the remix, with Missy Elliott, Da Brat, and DJ Clue on board, is a different enough piece of work that its appearance only a few cuts after the original version doesn't jar. Another groove-intensive track, the Snoop Dogg duet "Crybaby," is so sly that one hopes the two collaborate again. Of course, it wouldn't be a Mariah record without at least one major lapse in taste; here that bill is filled with a cover of Phil Collins's melodramatic "Against All Odds." --Rickey Wright