Mariah Carey's ex lover Damion Young reveals intimate secrets.

Damion Young is one of the rare few who got to know the ‘real’ Mariah, first as her producer, then as her best friend and finally, as he reveals today, not just as her confidante but her lover.He says:

‘I fear for her. I was one of the few people she truly trusted to tell her the truth. I’m worried she has no one like that now.‘I was her producer, her lover, her best
friend. She would not make a decision without talking to me first. I was very much in love with Mariah, I still am.’

Damion Young, 40, worked with Mariah on hits like I Still Believe, Cry Baby and Irresistible, himself becoming immersed in what he calls the ‘madness’ of her private world.

‘Mariah lives inside a bubble. I lived inside her world for a while but I had to get out for my own sanity.
The thing I remember most about being with her was the quiet and the loneliness. She didn’t have many friends. For a long time I was her best friend.‘Things became intimate but the friendship was always the most important thing.‘I think Mariah is going through a hard time now because she has surrounded herself with people who only tell her what she wants to hear. I think she needs help. She hasn’t had a hit record for ages. I think the Vegas schedule is too much for her. She needs vocal rest. She should go back to making records, doing what she does best.

executive Damizza aka. Damion Young (left) and American musician Randy Jackson (right) 

Damion met the diva in 1997 when he was the musical director of America’s most successful hip-hop radio station. He had branched out into writing and producing records under the stage name Damizza.He was heralded as a genius for discovering white rap star Eminem and had worked with Snoop Dogg, Dr Dre and Jay-Z.

Damion remained friends with Mariah even as she saw other men during their nine-year friendship.

She had just started dating Latin pop star Luis Miguel when she flew with him to Korea in 1999 to perform on stage with Michael Jackson. Mariah Carey asked Damion along as a chaperone.

Damion says:

Mariah Carey on stage doing what she does best.

‘Mariah called me at 6am and said, “Hey, wake up, we’re going to Korea.” I said, “Why do I have to come?” and she said, “Well, I’m not going by myself.”That’s how life is when you are with her. Everything revolves around her. You are expected to drop everything and go.So we get on the jet and we stopped to refuel in Alaska. ‘I remember sitting on this G5 Gulfstream jet in the middle of an empty airfield thinking, “This is surreal. I’m sitting here with the biggest selling female artist of all time and the biggest selling Latin male artist on my way to see the biggest selling male artist of all time”.’

During periods of ‘down time’ Mariah and Damion spent their time mostly at her triplex apartment in New York’s trendy Tribeca area watching her favourite films. ‘She didn’t watch the news. She didn’t watch entertainment shows or read the magazines because she was worried about reading mean things about herself. She’s sensitive.’

If Mariah was in a hotel, the lobby would be made secure and she’d be walked through to the elevator. Then she goes up in an empty elevator to a floor which has been cleared by security. In her suite, room service is waiting for her.

‘She never even sees a bell person, never has any normal interactions. The only time she sees her fans they are screaming and pushing to get at her. It’s frightening. It’s life in a bubble. She’s in a glass case. She went from being this very poor girl, no family background, into this machine. I was the only person she did trust. The biggest by-product of fame is that it makes people almost bipolar. You see Britney, you see Justin Bieber, they go through these extreme things, extreme highs and extreme lows.And I know why. It’s because you never have any reality. Your circle blocks you from everything.

‘You look at these stars and think they are so eccentric but that’s what their world is like. They don’t have normal conversations with normal people. No one ever tells them they are wrong. It’s always, “You’re the greatest, that was awesome” – even when it’s not.’

He says Mariah often had little idea about the rules her entourage took for granted, and was ‘stunned’ to learn that – like Jennifer Lopez – one of her contracts included a clause saying people should not look at her or address her backstage.

Damion Young says Mariah Carey lives in an unreal world.

Damion said: ‘You don’t know that everybody’s been told – don’t look at her and don’t talk to her. So she didn’t even know that. At one point, I just asked her, “Why is this in your contract?” And she’s like, “That’s in my contract? Is that really in there? Why?” ’

 However, there was a sweet side to Mariah. Damion says:

 ‘Our relationship was High School. We joked around. Yes we had a romantic relationship over the years. It’s one of those things where you work together for so long and you spend so much time together you have a crush on each other and it becomes what it is.

‘Everyone knew we were spending 24 hours together. People tried to make it salacious. The tabloids tried to make it sound salacious. I didn’t have control over some of the things they wrote. When you’re dealing with that pressure cooker you exist in a world that isn’t you. It was one of the reasons I eventually just decided I was done with it.’

Culled from Mailonline