Sorry not sorry! Mariah Carey admitted in a new interview that she can be difficult.
The pop star, who poses topless for new issue of Paper magazine, and opened up to the publication about her diva reputation. “Actually, I have had diva moments, and then people can’t handle it. I guess it’s a little intense, because I come from a true diva: My mother is an opera singer,” Carey explained in the interview posted on Monday, August 21. “And that’s a real diva, you know — Juilliard diva. And so other people that are like, ‘I’m a diva,’ it’s like, ‘Honey, you don’t know what a diva is, you didn’t grow up with my mom.’”
Still, the Grammy-winning artist insisted being a diva isn’t a negative thing. “And I mean it as a compliment, or I wouldn’t be the person I am without experiencing that,” she continued. “And so when people hear me say, like, ‘Dahling da da da da’ and talk that way, it’s kinda like I’m channeling my mother. Not that she says ‘dahling’ all the time, but like that voice is … it’s like I inadvertently do it, and I don’t do it to be disrespectful, I just do it and it just happens and it’s like, [in diva voice] ‘I don’t even know why.’
The self-proclaimed diva revealed that she got starstruck herself around the late Prince. “When he was living we had had lots of conversations, and he helped me through certain moments that were not easy,” she shared with the magazine.
But not everyone thinks Carey’s diva rep is a good thing. Carey’s former choreographer Anthony Burrell slammed the singer’s recent performances, telling Complex in August: “Mariah is clear: when she doesn’t wanna do something, she doesn’t do it. She’s performing with lackluster and no f—ks given, and it’s taking away her star.”
