Q 1

PLAYBOY: On the song "Get Your Number" from your album The Emancipation of Mimi, you sing about picking up a guy at a club and taking him home. Is that something you would ever do?

Mariah Carey: No. Here's the problem with me--well, one of them. [laughs] I can be flirtatious when I don't mean to be. Let's say we are at a club, me and some friends, and we're hanging out with guys. If I'm sitting there and a song I like comes on, because I'm a singer, I start moving. It's just what I do. I don't realize I'm sitting there doing a video in somebody's face. I end up being very flirtatious, and people take it the wrong way. I'm very much a prude. But I don't want to disappoint people, so maybe we shouldn't discuss that.

Q 2

PLAYBOY: But on the song "Say Somethin'" you sing, "I'm over here looking at you / You're over there watching me too / Both painting pictures of how we'll kiss and fuck." That doesn't sound prudish to us.

Mariah Carey: I didn't say that! There's an f and a few squiggly little letters. [laughs] And that was the producer Pharrell's idea. He just wanted to shock everybody. I was like, "All right, Pharrell, if this will make you happy." That was one of those little sexy moments.

Q 3

PLAYBOY: Last year you clashed with Eminem after he claimed the two of you had been romantically involved. Then he reportedly sent you a letter of apology. What did it say?

Mariah Carey: Something is clearly askew with him, and I'm not quite sure what it is. I just heard something else he recently said about me. I'm curious as to why he's so obsessed with me. I never got an apology letter, by the way; I don't know what they're talking about. Then again, I wasn't exactly searching my mailbox for it.

Q 4

PLAYBOY: Your mother is Irish American and your father was African American and Venezuelan. When did you realize being biracial made you different?

Mariah Carey: When I was in kindergarten. Our assignment was to draw our family. The two kindergarten teachers were really young. I don't think they meant any harm, but they were looking over my shoulder and giggling because I drew my family the way I saw them. My mom was peach, my brother and sister and I were in the middle somewhere, and my father was brown. They said to me, "You've made a mistake, Mariah." I said, "No, that's my father. That's what he looks like." They didn't believe me. It was as though I'd taken a green crayon and made him green. All of a sudden they stopped laughing because I was confused and upset. Their laughter kind of trickled off, and they walked away and started whispering. They never looked at me the same way again.

Q 5

PLAYBOY: On "I Wish You Knew" you sing about having an inferiority complex. What makes you shy?

Mariah Carey: I think I have an all-around inferiority complex from growing up biracial and feeling as if I didn't fit in. I didn't feel pretty as a little girl. The entertainment business is an extension of high school, so I'm still my own little class clown. Maybe I overcompensate by having a big personality. I'm usually pretty boisterous now.