Mariah Carey was born on March 27, 1970, in Long Island, New York, to parents Patricia and Alfred. Her parents divorced when she was only three years old. As a result of her Irish/African-American/Venezuelan descent, Mariah encountered some racial discrimination while growing up.

When she was eighteen, Carey and her friend, singer Brenda K. Starr, went to a party hosted by CBS Records. Starr convinced Carey to bring along one of her demo tapes. She intended to give the tape to Columbia’s Jerry Greenberg, but Tommy Mottola, the president of Columbia Records (later Sony), intercepted it before she could hand it to Greenberg.

After she graduated from high school in 1987, Carey moved to New York in order to pursue her dream of becoming a famous singer. She spent hours working in a studio writing her music and making demo tapes. In 1988, one of Mariah's friends, who played the drums for Brenda K. Starr, urged her to try out as a backup singer for Starr. Although Mariah was a little hesitant at first, she quickly realized that it was better than what she was doing at the present time.

A demo tape of Carey's material reached Mottola, who signed her to Sony in 1988. Her eponymous debut, a slavish copy of Houston's first record that also took every opportunity to show off Mariah Carey's five-octave vocal range, had instantaneous chart impact such as the first single, the ballad "Vision Of Love," hit No. 1.

Her second album Emotions was released in 1992; the title track became her fifth No. 1 single, and included hits "Can’t Let Go" and "Make it Happen."

Her music fuses adult contemporary elements in her ballads with 50s/60s overtones whereas her uptempo material tended to be urban dance-pop in the early 90s before she went hip hop/contemporary r&b in the late 90s. But what is most important and places her one step in front of her big competitors Whitney Houston and Celine Dion is that Mariah writes her own material.