FEATURE: Spotlight: Mariah the Scientist

FEATURE:

Spotlight

Mariah the Scientist

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AN artist who has been on my radar…

for a little while low, the unbelievable Mariah the Scientist is one of the most fascinating and engaging artists around. Creating such wonderous music that cuts deep and has this directness, I have no doubt she will be an R&B icon and legend of the future. Inspired by the likes of Frank Ocean, she very much has her own style and layers. Atlanta-born Mariah Amani Buckles is someone who should be on everyone’s radar too. Her second studio album, Ry Ry World, was released last year. There are a few interviews that I will bring in. I am going to also highlight a review of Ry Ry World. It is an album that did not get a load of coverage. Considering it is brilliant and has no weak spots on it, I hope that people do pick it up and bond with a truly awesome young artist primed for the super leagues. There is something about Mariah the Scientist’s voice and the way that she commands a song means that every note makes its mark and has its place. An utterly instinctive and accomplished artist who released a new E.P. recently. I want to go back to 2020 and an interview from Pitchfork. The year before, she put out her remarkable debut album, Master, on the RCA label:

“The details she discusses in her songs resonated with a lot more people than she originally anticipated. Not that she totally understands why. “It’s strange to me that people say shit like they really feel me because… they don’t!” she says. “You don’t know what the fuck I’m talking about. At the end of the day, you don’t know. You’ll never know.”

Mariah’s songs are specific, and she says they’re completely true to life. But they’re not literal narratives, instead something closer to autofiction via ballad. Her observations are wry, charming, precocious, but not pretentious. And, as a 21-year-old woman making her way through a dumb man’s world, she has a perspective not always prevelant in R&B, as her thoughts on love include critique, not just lamentation. It’s as if someone wrote the woman’s perspective to the debauchery bragged about in the Weeknd’s songs: If his music offers tales of aspirational ridiculousness told live from the party of a lifetime, hers gives us the view of the girlfriend who had to live with his ego when he woke up the next the morning after doing too much coke.

Pitchfork: How did you start writing?

Mariah the Scientist: It sounds so corny when I say it, but I feel like my first notions of writing were poems in my dorm room. It was to no beat. It was just things that rhymed.

Why is that corny?

It’s almost uneasy for me thinking about it sometimes, because I feel like my whole life my parents really instilled structure. The creative thing wasn’t as appreciated in comparison to hard work and academics.

What were you writing about initially?

Anything, anything. I started harping on the fact that in the back of your head there’s something called a hypothalamus, right? And that’s where all of your hormones are secreted, and your hormones are responsible for every feeling. Back in the day, I was smoking a lot of weed, so I was doing a lot of research on how THC affects your hypothalamus, and the secretion of hormones, and little things like neurotransmitters, and how when you smoke weed it falsifies your sense of happiness, because it’s secreting dopamine. I was writing about that kind of stuff.

You were writing science papers for school about it, or you were just writing for yourself?

It was a combination of the two. I feel like when I think about it now that’s probably why I liked doing it, because I could combine what I was learning in school—because I really do fuck with science, that’s a real thing for me—with the shit I was going through, wondering why I was feeling the way I was feeling. I couldn’t help but try to dissect that. So it’s like: Your heart is broken, and you feel so shitty, what is responsible for that? And then it turned more sentimental, almost like storytelling”.

Last year, VICE featured Maria the Scientist. Even though Lil Baby and Young Thug feature on Ry Ry World, it is very much the Hip-Hop queen who is at the centre and creating the biggest waves and impressions:

“In 2019, Mariah released Master, her major-label debut led by the melancholy ballad “Beetlejuice,” a song so personal that the listener feels special by being made privy to the intel she reveals. Mariah’s superpower is in the intricacies of how she writes this love story, coming up with creative ways to describe that her man’s deception was eventually just another way to control her. “Cause you’ll lie to my face / And then you’ll say that even Jesus forgave,” she sings. In the two years since Master, Mariah has only strengthened that skill. And although Ry Ry World’s was also completed two years ago, the former science major kept tweaking it for precision. The result is a project that is both a haunting yet sentimental musing of relationships, and break-ups, that have held space in Mariah’s heart.

The album art for her latest project, which features the singer smiling with an arrow through her chest, is the first indicator of Mariah’s pain tolerance. She is reflective on Ry Ry World, acknowledging that sometimes, she’s stayed in situations she should’ve left a lot sooner. On “Aura,” which samples the Isley Brothers’ “Make Me Say It Again Girl,” she’d use her last breath to salvage her relationship—even if he’d rather be friends. Elsewhere, on “2 You,” she sings “Should’ve left you last July, but I was only trying to save us.”

Where most love songs offer bouquets of flowers, Mariah’s music might as well commemorate her old flames on tombstones. VICE sat down with the singer to talk about her real-life love for science, heartbreak, and working with Lil Baby and Young Thug.

VICE: How would you say that Ry Ry World continues the narrative that you started on Master?

Mariah the Scientist: It’s a different narrative now. [Master] was a little more down. I was down when I was writing it. I was down when I was recording it, but now I feel different. The dynamic has changed and the perspective has changed. If there’s any correlation between the two it’s just that I’ve grown and evolved and this project, when you deep dive and read between the lines it’s the most multifaceted depiction I could give of how I’ve changed in the past two years.

Your music is a little dark and twisted. You describe your relationships like a Tim Burton film. Would you attribute that to being in toxic relationships, or is that just the lens you gravitate towards?

Someone can say there are a couple of different sides to a story. I can’t say how they interpreted those situations, but when I’ve looked back on those situations it just seemed so gruesome. I was done really dirty in a lot of those relationships. Even though I wasn’t literally murdered, it felt like a lot of things were taken away from me, or maybe I sacrificed a lot. It felt like a lot of things were killed off in me, and I felt like the only way I could show it imaginatively was what I can create”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Gunner Stahl

The penultimate interview I want to grab from is VIBE. Again, they spoke with Mariah the Scientist last year. Some really interesting answers and observations came up. A step up from her 2019 debut, Ry Ry World is an album from an artist reaching new heights:

“Do you think that singing about your experiences and your personal ups and downs is an important part of your own healing process?

I think that when I have something on my chest … like something I just want to get off my chest. I do think it’s easier to relieve myself of that when it comes to writing a song, but a lot of times I don’t have much to talk about. You know at all like, go on long binges of not writing anything and then like, all of a sudden, I’ll have something to talk about again and then I’ll just binge write for maybe a week or two weeks at a time. It definitely goes back and forth a lot. I think overall it’s just…I don’t know, it just comes down to honest emotion. I feel like it comes in waves, you know?

What made you decide to name it Ry Ry’s World? If it were a real place we traveled to, what are we going to see? What does it smell like in Ry Ry’s World?

Initially, there was a different title and I think I just sat on it a little too long. I didn’t like it as much by the time the project was coming out. Plus, like the dynamic of songs and everything it was just shifting. I felt like it was just more oriented around myself, and I didn’t really want it to be… I don’t like the idea of this project necessarily being fully about somebody else I kind of feel like it’s just more about me

I think it would just be a lot of scientific sh*t going on (laughs). Literally, I swear I love science. I know a lot of people don’t really make that correlation, I think it’s just a name, but I’m obsessed with it. If Ry Ry World was a place, I would bring space closer to the skyline, the skyline will be like the planets. I think you will find the most exotic plants and flowers and fruits, as the norm, like you can go outside and pick it. I think it would be colorful. I think it would be just like a utopia, to be honest. All of the natural things in life but enhanced. Like on steroids, the most beautiful things but just really more vibrant.

Do you think you’ll ever branch off your music career and get back into science professionally?

I’ve definitely thought about it, especially over Corona. It [coronavirus pandemic] just changed my perspective on a lot of things including [my] career. I had a lot of time to … I don’t want to say studying and reading books every day, but I definitely was more in a place where I was trying to pick up more information on subjects that I found interesting. I definitely would go back into it [science] professionally for sure. I’m trying to see if I can find some sort of avenue to make a hybrid out of my career. I don’t really like the idea of having to pick and choose. I feel like you should be able to have everything. I don’t like the idea of being categorized or having to pick a category. I just feel like life is really vast and you should be able to jump around, to be honest. It’s not like we just are single faceted.

With Ry Ry World, it’s been about two years since Master was released. What can you say have been some defining moments or some pivotal points for you personally or as an artist between the two projects? How have you been able to kind of keep track of that growth and evolution?

I think I’ve just changed in general as a person, and I think I’m still changing every day. In a good way, though. I feel really good about it. I was just in a completely different place when I was writing and recording Master. It was more dark. I think I still have that capability of being in some darker place but realistically, that’s not what I want to be. That’s not necessarily the kind of person I want to be. I don’t want to be constantly in a dark place. I do appreciate the mysteriousness that I hold but, I don’t think that I would just want to be constantly speaking on dark and dreary moments. I would rather have better things to talk about. Like I said earlier, it’s not that I wanted it to be like that. Those are just the experiences that I had, but hopefully, I’m hoping that it evolves to a better place. I mean, I feel like it is already, but you know it probably gets even better.

What do you think or hope fans take most from this project?

I just want them to like this project. Granted, it seems like it’s about someone else, but a lot of times I’m talking to myself. I just feel like it’s more about the perception. I think you should just be honest. I would like them to take from it that…I think I just have a lot of layers, very many layers. I just feel like I’ve been a million different people in this lifetime, which is weird because I’m only 23. I’m sure things will change more but I just feel like I have just changed so much and I’m still changing.

Even with that being said, that doesn’t mean that I have to be one person. I could just be different things every day. You can just be different. I just want everybody to realize that we’re different on purpose. If we were all the same… which makes no sense as to why everybody’s forcing this narrative to just all be on the same sh*t. Everybody wants a bust-down, everybody wants to go to the club every night, and everybody wants a Birkin bag. That’s cool, but do you want that because everybody else wants it, or do you want it because you really like it? I just feel like you can be different and have a bunch of different layers and they don’t have to look anything like the layers of someone else. This should be respected. This should be cool”.

Prior to coming more up-to-date, Pitchfork were among those who sat down with Ry Ry World. It is an album that I really love and have come back to again. If you have not listened to it, make sure you carve aside some time to experience it:

“Mariah’s second album confirms her as one of modern R&B’s realest talkers, as well as one of its most vivid storytellers. Her earliest songs began as poems, and there’s an imagistic quality to Ry Ry World’s casual evocations of, say, snow on a sunroof during a trip to Toronto, or the “damage in the brain matter” inflicted by a lover’s mixed messages. Less consistent lyricists would make these lines into centerpieces; for Mariah, they’re scenery.

The careful observations endow Mariah’s storytelling with particular heft. “I want to remind my fans to ‘tell it like it is’ because it helps define your character,” she said in an interview last year. “If you’re gonna be the bad guy, own it.” She commits to the bit with flair. With its pitched-down “Cry Me a River” sample, “Revenge” morphs from a confessional to a murder ballad; Mariah bares emotional wounds before imagining righteous payback. “Tell ’em that in death we’ll meet again,” she sings, voice cracking. “Like it ain’t your blood that’s on my hands.” You could imagine it soundtracking some avant-garde production of Macbeth, but it runs deeper than theater, too. It can be easier to pour out your heart by couching its secrets in hyperbole.

Ry Ry World is concise at just 10 tracks; along with recent projects from serpentwithfeet, Jorja Smith, and Victoria Monét, it’s a refreshing counter to the more bloated releases of major label R&B. At times the brevity is frustrating. With production from Swedish duo Jarami (Frank Ocean’s “Chanel,” “Biking”), the 90-second intro “Impalas & Air Force 1s” feels like a blissed-out drift through a coral reef. It would be welcome at triple the length. The unmemorable “Maybe” slides into watery ambience, and cheap shots at “big booty [...] city girls” don’t add to its likeability. Mariah is at her best when she focuses on her own desires and agency. Over Spanish guitars on the raunchy “Walked In,” she plays feature artist Young Thug at his own game. “Off the Tesla, yes sir,” she instructs, before warning, “None of that cappin’ about booin’ up.”

Fans have long gossiped about Mariah’s past relationship with Lil Yachty; in “Brain,” over a beat that rattles like a pinball in a sewer, she namechecks one of his tours and seems to describe her own depressive episode from the time. “I just/Wanted to escape for sure,” she sings, adding pained backing vocals. “I was/Staring out the big window, but I/Should've locked the bedroom door.” Once she starts it feels like she can’t stop, in a raw, diaristic digression that’s unique to Ry Ry World. You might find yourself replaying the song to let its brutal honesty sink in.

Around the time of her debut, Mariah defined her music as “a summation of my agony.” Recently she updated that description. “It’s more like after agony,” she said. “Maybe it used to hurt, and now it’s just a little scarred.” She traces that evolution in the wonderful “2 You,” a bittersweet ballad produced by DJ Camper, co-architect of at least two of the past decade’s best R&B songs. “I never thought it would go up in flames,” Mariah sings, as her voice breaks through an airy beat built of oohs and aahs. “But look at what we made/Sure was beautiful.” In the video, she performs against a starry backdrop, as if surveying her past with a birds-eye view. Her eyes are wide open, ready to experience it all”.

I am going to conclude with Billboard’s interview with Mariah the Scientist from March. The remarkable Buckles Laboratories Presents: The Intermission is a four-track E.P. containing some of Mariah the Scientist’s best work. It is a glimpse of where she might be heading next:

“The Intermission continues the singer’s knack for mixing interstellar themes with grounded tales of romance and heartbreak. On “Spread Thin,” Mariah offers a measured tell-off to an unreliable lover (“You always think the only one who needs any attention is you/ Don’t be so conceited/ Hope you learn honesty was the only thing that could keep me from leaving,” she laments on the hook).

It’s fitting that the first song Mariah plays for me when we meet in an Atlanta studio is the reworked version of “Church,” considering the 24-year-old singer and I quickly discover we both went to the same Christian school as kids. Although she’s known more for her East Atlanta roots, the artist born Mariah Buckles spent her early childhood years in southwest Atlanta, where she attended Believers Bible Christian Academy, the small private school tucked inside a church and located between a liquor store and Church’s Chicken on Campbellton Road. The updated version of “Church,” which serves as the opener for The Intermission, isn’t exactly a religious offering. Instead, Mariah refers to her lover as her “preacher,” who invokes heavenly feelings (and, of course, a few intergalactic messages).

Even if this new project resonates with fans, serving as a buffer from last year’s album and her next project (expected later this year), Mariah knows she has a bit of work to do this year when it comes to other aspects of her career. While Ry Ry World received mostly favorable reviews, the singer’s live performances have been met with the complete opposite response. Videos of Mariah nervously dancing around festival stages and half-heartedly singing along to her music have repeatedly circulated on social media in the past few months.

“I can’t disagree with [the critics],” she acknowledges. “I do agree that a lot of those performances I did in the last year have been really bad. I hate that for myself. But the only thing I can do now is work really hard at trying to make it better. There’s really no way around it, especially if I’m going to maintain this career in any way… I wasn’t intentionally half-a–ing it, but realistically, that’s what it was.”

Mariah is, admittedly, still feeling reluctant about the increased attention that comes with being an entertainer. “A lot of people prepare for this their entire life. I just decided one day I was going to make a career out of something that I was gifting somebody on a whim,” she says. “I underestimated all that it comes with.”

When we talk she tells me about a time when she practically hid in a corner when a club appearance turns into an impromptu performance. Even when she’s recording in the studio, Mariah says she doesn’t like to have a lot of people around. Oftentimes, she turns out all of the lights and locks the door to ensure no one can come in. In interviews, she shies away from confirming who her songs are inspired by. The vulnerability of writing and releasing a song might be fulfilling, but she still prioritizes keeping her privacy, she says.

Still, the singer says she is committed to figuring out how to balance her career with the demands of fame to deliver a worthwhile experience for her fans. “I’m in a little too deep to be trying to cut corners on this s–t. My only option now is to do it full force and that’s exactly what I’m going to do,” she says”.

Go and explore the wonderful world of Mariah the Scientist. After releasing a phenomenal E.P. this year, she will come back from touring – after appearing in London last week, she is currently back in the U.S. – and decide upon what comes next. Maybe album three? Perhaps she wants to do a film or something else. Anything is possible with the always-sensational Mariah the Scientist! You may have only just heard of her now but, trust me, you are going to have to stand back and…