Mariah Carey's 'Triumphant' Single Is 'Close To Her Heart'

Mariah Carey's new single "Triumphant" featuring Rick Ross and Meek Mill hits radio Thursday (August 2), and fans are counting down the seconds until they get their first taste of what the legendary diva has in store for her 14th studio album.

MTV News talked to the song's co-writer and co-producer, Grammy winner Bryan-Michael Cox, about what to expect from the hotly anticipated track and why Ross and Mill were the perfect fit for the inspiring single.

"This song is kind of inspirational. It's close to her heart, and I think her fans are going to really, really be emotionally attached to this song," Cox tells MTV News. "I expect that this record's going to be a huge record. I expect that this is going to be one of her bigger albums."

Cox is a longtime Carey collaborator who first worked with the superstar on her 1999 Rainbow album and has produced such hits as "Shake It Off" and "Don't Forget About Us." His long-lasting relationships with the hottest artists in R&B have resulted in some of the genre's biggest albums of the last decade, including Usher's Confessions and Raymond v. Raymond, Mary J. Blige's The Breakthrough and Chris Brown's self-titled debut.

He says the diva has been working on the album since before she became pregnant with 1-year-old twins Moroccan and Monroe and that things "picked up right where we left off" when she resumed work after the birth of her babies.

"She was committed to making it before she got pregnant. Then she got pregnant and she took the time off," he says. "Then after she came back, we started really vibing again and we picked up right where we left off. I just feel like between Jermaine [Dupri], myself and her, we came up with a few things that [are] really, really a solid bod! y of wor k."

Rick Ross and Meek Mill appear on the track, and Cox says the two were perfect additions to "Triumphant" because of both their enormous talent and their personal closeness to the themes of the song.

"I think that Rick Ross is resilient, and Meek Mill [is] a new hot rapper, who's really hot, one of my favorite new hip hop artists," Cox explained. "Rick Ross, who's always been one of my favorites, he's resilient. I think that, through the years, people try to count him out, and he always comes back, comes back harder, comes back with bigger and better records. So I think that the theme of 'Triumphant,' I think that he fits the theme of that whole concept the best, really, because through it all, Rick Ross always comes out on top."


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