Mariah Carey's Biracial Childhood Inspired Her 'mixed-ish' Theme Song

Mariah Carey graced a packed Los Angeles screening room with her presence at ABC and PopSugar's Embrace Your Ish event where she premiered her new single "In The Mix," the theme song for the upcoming black-ish spinoff, mixed-ish. 

The show follows Tracey Ellis Ross' character Rainbow Johnson into her childhood, where her family was forced to move from a peaceful commune and shoved into the real world. Bow and her family struggle to assimilate into a world that doesn't quite know how to treat mixed-race people. Carey strongly related to the premise and spoke candidly about her biracial identity in a conversation with show creator Kenya Barris. 

"I've written a lot of things about being mixed in my life," Carey began. "It feels like a personal, kind of like a full-circle kind of thing even though it's just a little song. It means a lot to be a part of [mixed-ish]."

The superstar then opened up about her upbringing and her troubles navigating the music industry. 

"I'm in the middle of working on my memoirs with a mutual friend," she said. "A lot of the book is really about my childhood. That's why I connected so much with [mixed-ish] because these are things I went through to get to the point where people could even...Because it wasn't just being mixed, we had no money, we were like, you know, lived in a shack, as the kids so kindly called it. I didn't have a family unit like the show."

She continued:

"I don't think anybody understood it in the beginning. I think some people did. I think there was a lot of corporate manipulative stuff that happened as a teenage girl when I got my deal. I didn't understand if they don't overly explain this this this, people are going to be confused. White people are going to think one thing, black people are going to think something else. People of all different races and cultures. What I found when I traveled the world, it was less of an issue in other countries than it was in America.

I just kind of feel like I've grown up dealing with this. We're still in it even though we now have people we can look to. I didn't know who my role models as an interracial, biracial, multiracial, mixed-ish person were supposed to be. I didn't know. I was just dealing with it. It's also different when you have divorced parents, your father's black and you're mother's white, there's a different reality when you're with one parent than when you're with the other parent. The whole thing affected me and my self-esteem on just kind of every level. I think that's why I connected so strongly, one of the reasons, when I watched the pilot."

Carey emotionally concluded, "Music was always my escapism so writing about its been very healthy. But it was almost like I needed to validate my existence because I didn't feel like I was good enough to exist."

She's proud to be a part of the groundbreaking show.

"I'm just so thankful that this show exists, to everyone that's a fan of the show, to the topic, and that we're in a place where we can actually enlighten people. Without going on a whole, long drawn out thing, it's just like representation is so important. I actually cried when I watched the pilot. Obviously, the humor is all there, but just how displaced they are. That's exactly how I felt. I didn't grow up in a commune, but might as well have." 

Barris asks Carey if there's any chance for a guest role from the elusive chanteuse. 

She teases the possibility before chuckling, "We can't have the look like we had in Precious," to the crowd's uproarious laughter. "You know you didn't like that look."

mixed-ish premieres September 24 on ABC at 9pm. Watch the video for "In The Mix" below!