DA BRAT, KRAYZIE BONE AND LAMBS HELP MARIAH CAREY LAUNCH TOUR
SonicNet News Story
Staff Writer Teri vanHorn reports

LOS ANGELES — Mariah Carey was in the mood for celebrating as she kicked off the North American leg of her Rainbow Tour on Thursday night.
 
But she didn't do it alone. Midway through her two-hour performance at the Staples Center, rapper Krayzie Bone of Bone Thugs-N-Harmony and the tour's opening act, Da Brat, joined her for a champagne toast as they performed the remix version of "I Still Believe."

"We're winging it tonight — that's how we do it, when we're with friends," Carey told the crowd.

Carey created a feeling of spontaneity Thursday night, even in the face of elaborate choreography and set and costume changes. The show was divided into several segments, with the stage set transforming at different points into a boxing ring, a beauty pageant and an apartment, complete with a bed and kitchen.

But a massive video screen positioned center stage invariably kept Carey as the focal point. She and her ensemble, which included a five-piece band, backup singers and several dancers, performed songs that spanned her career, including several cuts from her 1999 album, Rainbow — currently at #75 on the Billboard 200 albums chart.

The show began with a video segment featuring soul queen Aretha Franklin, metal king Ozzy Osbourne, rapper Snoop Dogg and talk-show siblings Donnie and Marie Osmond discussing the ongoing battle between Carey and her dark-haired alter-ego named Bianca. "Bianca, yoooze a bee-yatch," Snoop said.

Franklin advised, "Bianca is a mess. Girl, you better check yourself before you wreck yourself." In the strangest clip, Osbourne appeared on a treadmill in a dress and blond wig and proclaimed, "I'm not Ozzy, I'm Mariah."

Ready To Rumble

The video segment also featured part of the "Heartbreaker" clip, in which Carey kicks Bianca's butt in a bathroom brawl. It continued with a retaliation fight, called "Sabotage at the Record Store," this time with Bianca triumphing over Carey by knocking her out and bringing her album-signing session to a tragic end.

The feud then moved onstage four songs into the show, following an opening segment that saw Carey, dressed in jeans and a silver top, performing "Emotions," "My All" and "Always Be My Baby."
Carey emerged from the back of the arena, clad in a boxing getup, and made her way to the stage, while boxing promoter Don King, on videotape, announced a "catfight made in boxing heaven." Meeting "Bianca" —a real-life sub for the original — in a mock boxing ring onstage, Carey knocked her down almost immediately, launching into "Heartbreaker" as her triumph tune. DaBrat, who opened the show with her usual high-energy spunk, joined in to rap on the song, while the boxing referees and coaches danced.

The next segment began with four backup singers posing as beauty-pageant contestants, with their banners reading such titles as "Miss Led" and "Miss Placed." Carey emerged in a tight red dress as "Miss Understood From Guam," to lead them in a rendition of "Dreamlover."

That portion of the show also brought another strange moment. Two frightened-looking lambs were carried onstage for Carey to pet. "People don't understand the beauty of the lambs," she said. She then invited two female fans — each dressed in Carey-style jeans cut off at the top and tank tops — onstage and presented them with stuffed toy lambs.
 
Carey did little to explain the bizarre segment. Later she said the lambs were "an inside joke" and she had hesitated to bring the animals onstage.

An Emotional Peak

The next set change saw Carey curled up in a bed as she sang her new single, "Crybaby," with Snoop Dogg providing his rhymes by videotape. She moved into "Can't Take That Away"  as the screen showed childhood photos and home video of her playing and riding a horse.

An emotional moment came near the end, when Carey, wearing a purple dress and sitting on a huge armchair at stage left, sang "Petals." Tears rolled down her face as she held a dandelion and belted out the sad Rainbow ballad.

"We both cried during 'Petals' and 'Can't Take That Away' because of the stories behind those songs," 15-year-old Gwyneth Yanethcoreas said as she and Danielle Deremo, 14, stood in line to buy T-shirts after the show.

But the performance reached an emotional peak during the encore, when Carey requested that 14-year-old fan Kristen Hultcrist, who was in a wheelchair, be brought up to the stage. Hultcrist had been holding a sign throughout the show that read "Mariah, please don't be a heartbreaker ... Wheel me up for a song." Carey stepped down from the stage to hold the fan's hand as she serenaded her with "Rainbow (Interlude)."

"Oh, man, I was so happy," Hultcrist said after the show.

Carey ended the concert with a powerful rendition of "Hero," during which she walked the front line of the crowd, exchanging hugs and handshakes with fans. Returning to the stage, she pointed to sections of the crowd as she sang the line, "The hero lies
in you."