The pop superstar"s birthday plans are likely to be on ice due to the coronavirus lockdown in the US, though like other celebrities the singer has been keeping herself busy - posting handwashing PSAs with her twins Moroccan và Monroe (Roc and Roe) và working out in rubber gloves in her home gym.
Mariah Carey has enjoyed plenty of highs (and high notes) as she taps into her sixth decade. This year she became the first artist to lớn hit number one on the Billboard 100, topping out in the 1990s, Noughties, 2010s & 2020s with "All I Want For Christmas", she has also sold more than 200 million records worldwide & invented the word "camouflagian."
/ Getty Images
In what would go on to lớn become one of the biggest pop shades in history - and a true meme for the ages - in the early 2000s Mariah Carey was asked about Lopez by a German TV interviewer.
"I don"t know her," the popstar replied with a smile.
Getty Images
It would have been impossible for Carey khổng lồ not know fellow New Yorker J.Lo by that point. Lopez was already world-famous thanks khổng lồ both her music & Hollywood. Career Her 2001 album J.Lo had stormed the charts, featuring the essential R&B hit "My Love Don"t Cost A Thing," và she starred in the rom-com The Wedding Planner with Matthew Mc
Conaughey the very same year.
Bạn đang xem: How mariah carey’s ‘i don’t know her’ became pop’s shadiest power move
The "I don"t know her" line appeared to lớn be the perfect diss (what"s more insulting lớn a world-famous rival than pretending they don"t exist?) và Carey would maintain her position as shade queen for years.
Mariah Carey in 2001 (Getty Images ) / Getty Images
In 2009, she was asked again by a radio interviewer about Lopez và replied, "I don"t know the woman."
She said, "There were things in the past that are from the past. I think there was more confusion courtesy of a record company issue."
The line became so iconic in the Mariah hall of fame that fans began creating their own "I don"t know her" merch.
Jennifer Lopez in 2001 / Getty Images
"I really wasn’t trying lớn be funny" she told The Cut in 2014, "I was just being honest và everybody’s kind of blowing it out of proportion. This guy had a shirt on và it was a picture of me that he made and the quote was underneath it — and I’m going lớn leave you hanging as to what it was."
What of Lopez herself? The popstar has insisted the pair vì know each other và that Carey must have had a "forgetful" moment.
"She"s forgetful I guess" Lopez told Wendy Williams, "We"ve met many times! I don"t know her that well."
Clearly aware how legendary the "I don"t know her" line had become, in 2016 Carey was asked by TMZ what she thought about people referencing it "all these years later" and replied with a smile, "I still don"t know her" before sweeping into a car.
She also used it on Demi Lovato, who had called Carey"s treatment of Lopez "nasty":
“I don’t know her either,” Carey quipped lớn Andy Cohen. “And so I wouldn’t say anything lớn her. She should come up, introduce herself to me, say, ‘Here’s my opinion, what vày you think about it?’ That’s how you handle s**t, OK?”
Later, she said of Ariana Grande, “Honestly, I’m not familiar – I listen to lớn hip-hop more than I listen khổng lồ pop music.”
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The superstar pretending her rivals don’t exist has become an iconic putdown – with Lil’ Kim the latest to lớn use the damning technique
Pop has had some incredible disses. Rihanna saying Diplo’s music sounds “like a reggae tuy vậy at an airport”. Beyoncé’s smirk và eye roll when Kelly Rowland claimed khổng lồ be the “second lead” singer in Destiny’s Child. Drake asking Meek Mill: “Is that a world tour, or your girl’s tour?” on Back to Back. But the greatest – & most enduring – shade of all time has to be when Mariah Carey claimed she didn’t know Jennifer Lopez.
Let’s go back: in the early 00s, when asked about her pop rival by paparazzi, Mariah shook her head and innocently answered: “I don’t know her.” She did know her: last year, Irv Gotti claimed that the singers started their feud in 2001 when Mariah was surprised to lớn hear a sample she’d bagged for her then-unreleased tuy nhiên Loverboy pop up on Lopez’s hit single I’m Real.
But instead of slagging her off, Mariah decided khổng lồ pretend Jennifer Lopez simply didn’t exist, a position she maintains lớn this day. The success of this tactic means Mariah has also used it on other pop stars, such as Demi Lovato (“She should come up lớn me, introduce herself,” she told US talkshow host Andy Cohen) & Ariana Grande (“Honestly, I’m not familiar”). In 2016, she told TMZ: “I still don’t know
Carey holding her famous quote. Photograph: Buzzfeed
Realistically, there are a lot of things that Mariah Carey probably doesn’t know about: Hollyoaks, that M&S dine-in-for-£10 meal deal, the time Jesy from Little phối tried to vày a Jamaican accent & made up a new word. But the multi-award-winning, internationally famous Jennifer Lopez? She knows her.
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But the phrase’s enduring legacy (and THAT gif of the moment) means it’s the diss that just won’t die. Lil’ Kim recently rolled out an approximation of it when asked about Nicki Minaj, which is sort of perfect, as Mariah & Nicki also hate each other, following their short stint together on the judging panel of American Idol in 2013. When asked what she thinks of Cardi B and Nicki Minaj, Kim replied: “Cardi is my girl. I don’t know the other one, but Cardi is my girl.”
Really, it’s the ultimate diss, a lesson in the art of throwing shade: just denying the very existence of anyone you don’t like. We all know the gut-punch of someone saying: “So nice to lớn meet you!” when you’ve actually met them 12 times before. Claiming not to know someone means you don’t sound bitchy – how could you be, you don’t know them? – but it’s a sly way of saying that someone’s personality is unmemorable. In Mariah’s case, it’s an overt way of saying that Jennifer Lopez’s art – her pop career, her movies, her TV work – has made so little impact on the world, Mariah just hasn’t come across her yet. Subtlety? She doesn’t know the meaning of it.