This record is so not about physics. "E" stands for "Emancipation," meaning "The Emancipation of Mimi," the album Mariah Carey made in 2005, which repaired her hit-making reputation and sold 6 million copies. We're to understand that this is in the same vein, or better. Squared. Or something.

Mario Sorrenti (ENLARGE)
Mariah Carey tries to capture the vibe of her hit-making album 'The Emancipation of Mimi' in her new offering 'E=MC2,' but she falls short this time.
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And it is in the same vein, but much less good. She has tamped down her voice even further, so that she sounds more in line with newer R&B singers; the overuse of her huge vocal range may be part of the past she's escaping, but as a consequence you only hear a fraction of her sound.

Like "Mimi," the new album opens with "Migrate," a song produced by Jermaine Dupri about being in the club — or, since she's upping the ante, about looking for a better club than the one she's in. It mentions Patron instead of Bacardi, and it comes with guest vocals from T-Pain, who runs off his verses with a lot more flexibility and swing. Her part is a questionably sexy act of concealment, just as "Touch My Body," the album's first single, is a questionably sexy striptease: a goofy-sleazy tryst vignette in which she coos, "If there's a camera up in here then I best not catch this flick on YouTube."

In the modern R&B record-making tradition, Carey uses a pile of producers. Dupri crops up most often, but there's also Danja, Tricky Stewart, Bryan-Michael Cox and Swizz Beatz. Scott Storch was the craftsman of "Side Effects," the album's drama bomb, a song that seems to be about living under the spell of the record executive Tommy Mottola, Carey's former Svengali/husband.

James Poyser, who has worked with D'Angelo and Erykah Badu, produced "I Wish You Well," the last and possibly cleverest track, with just voices and piano; like "Mimi," this album ends with quasi-gospel citing chapter and verse four times, and again using the voice of her spiritual adviser, the Rev. Clarence Keaton. Much of the record sounds like urban-radio imitations, without the peculiarities and effective hooks of "Mimi." Maybe emancipation isn't a continuing procedure; maybe it only comes once.

— Ben Ratliff, New York Times