The best part about Mariah Carey's pretty-great Memoirs of an Imperfect Angel isn't the album itself; it's the Mariah Carey-less demos from the album's principal songwriter, The-Dream, which have systematically leaked online.
Though she brings her inhuman voice to the table, Carey has a way of sucking all the humor out of The-Dream's songs; the songwriter's own treatments of these tracks are far more fun. There are better tracks on the album, but the best of The-Dream's demos to leak so far has been his version of the bouyant kiss-off anthem "Up Out My Face," which devolves into a string of jokey R. Kelly-ish adlibs at the end. "When I break I break," he asserts. How broken up is this couple? "If we were two lego blocks even the Harvard University class of 2010 couldn't put us back together again," The-Dream moans, as someone cackles in the background.
The-Dream, by the way, has a history of recording many of the songs he writes for others. Here's the bargain-bin demo of his best-known track:
