"The usual hummable radio hip-hop and bold ballads are here, in pristine form."

"E=MC2 is Carey's most-fun album, and her best."

"For an artist whose career was all but dead four years ago, Carey is wise to play it safe by building on the finest elements of her last CD."

"Brilliantly, the music more than matches Carey's flights of fancy. E=MC2 finds Carey continuing down the hip-hop-inflected path she has pursued for the past decade - but in that time, hip-hop has come back to meet her."

"Each track is precision-tooled to sound as if it were born to be banging out of a Hummer in Miami on a sunny Saturday."

"Love her or hate her, her ability to absorb the current trends to produce hit after hit is remarkable."

"It becomes a wash of sound — sound that is designed to be fashionable, but like so much fashion, it's tied to the time and dates quickly."

"Nearly every song confines Carey to four-note verses, offering little room for her glorious range."

"There is some insubstantial filler here."

"The equivalence that E=MC2 proposes between Carey and her competition is a bit disappointing."

"The songwriting is more consistent, the feel a bit more natural -- but it too lacks a ruling temperament or artistic vision."

"She has tamped down her voice even further, so that she sounds more in line with newer R&B singers; the overuse of her huge vocal range may be part of the past she’s escaping, but as a consequence you only hear a fraction of her sound."

"E=MC2 is nothing more than a shallow imitation of its predecessor, the unexciting kid cousin of an arena-sized R&B watermark."