Mariah the Scientist

A unique presence in contemporary R&B, Mariah the Scientist offers highly personal narratives in a cinematic if relatable fashion with her gracefully burning vocals. Emerging in 2018 with an EP uploaded to SoundCloud, the Atlanta native quickly attracted major-label attention, and within a few years was behind a handful of RCA projects, namely Master (2019), Ry Ry World (2021), and the four-track Buckles Laboratories Presents: The Intermission (2022). Mariah then moved to Epic with To Be Eaten Alive (2023) and immediately scored her first Billboard 200 entry, cracking the chart’s upper half with help from the measured slow jam “From a Woman.” Born Mariah Amani Buckles, Mariah the Scientist started singing privately and opted to make headway with music once she began writing material of her own. She graduated from her suburban Atlanta high school a year early and left for New York to study biology at St. John’s University. A studio session in Queens yielded a couple songs received positively by friends, inspiring her to complete To Die For, a six-track EP made available on SoundCloud in January 2018. Early the next year, Buckles inked a deal with RCA, after which she completed her major-label debut with Play Picasso and WondaGurl among her production support. That August, she released Master, a concise ten-track effort featuring the confrontational “Beetlejuice” and vengeful fantasy “Reminders.” In July 2021, she returned with Ry Ry World, an equally brief second album featuring the relationship requiem “2 You” and mutual codependency ballad “Always n Forever” (with Lil Baby). Mariah departed from RCA after the March 2022 release of Buckles Laboratories Presents: The Intermission. No afterthought, the four-track EP yielded one of the singer’s most popular songs to that point, “Spread Thin.” Before the end of the year, she had performed at Coachella, opened for Coldplay (whose music she first heard as a youngster, introduced by her father), and released the independent single “Bout Mine,” another WondaGurl collaboration. Mariah’s Epic signing was announced the following October with “From a Woman,” issued a couple weeks ahead of To Be Eaten Alive. Mariah’s third album also contained appearances from labelmate 21 Savage, Vory, and Young Thug. ~ Andy Kellman