Practically the first thing you hear on ­Mariah Carey’s 11th studio album is the sci-fi chirrup of auto-tune—the warble made ubiquitous by a certain dreadlocked R&B cyborg—a sound that, on first listen, is a bit of a shock. For much of her nearly two-decade career, Carey has been pop's biggest showoff, a vocal athlete on a mission to awe and overwhelm and, around the three-minute mark in most of her songs, to shatter your finest stemware. But Carey’s T-Pain impersonation heralds a new ease and irreverence and, yes, modesty: The old ­Carey would never have dreamed of burying her Hall of Fame voice beneath a robot drone. In 2008, Mimi has definitively been emancipated—from her need to decorate every damn song with more octaves than Maria Callas.E=MC2 is Carey's most-fun album, and her best. Not coincidentally, it’s also her most propulsive, with strong contributions from A-list producers including Jermaine Dupri, SwizzBeatz, Stargate and Tricky Stewart. The hardest beat comes ­courtesy of Timbaland protégé Danjahandz—on her starkly funky "Migrate," Carey trades lines with T-Pain himself. It sounds like a surefire hit, but Carey is in an eclectic mood, veering from buoyant neo-disco to mid-tempo ballads to "Last Kiss"—as catchy a piece of pure pop as she’s ever recorded. In "Cruise Control," she even goes ragamuffin, crooning over Dupri's skittering reggae track in a Caribbean-tinged patois.The '90s model Mariah was sickly sentimental—the queen of inspirational MOR—but in recent years she’s been indulging her inner thug. Here, she name-checks Biggie and Tupac, threatens to kick ass if her lover posts their homemade porn on YouTube, confesses a preference for tough guys ("If you’re inked-up thuggin,' that’s what I like") and in general spends much of her time dissing, dismissing and demanding.This is partly a nod to the zeitgeist: The charts today are packed with hard-edged divas. But the fact is, Carey sounds better and more comfortable spitting out her songs in a state of high dudgeon than she ever did cooing about heroes and butterflies and rainbows. Here’s hoping she never gets over her attitude problem.

Download: "Touch My Body," "Migrate," "Last Kiss"