Mariah Carey did not work with any record labels.
Mariah Carey . Following a contentious divorce from Sony Music head Tommy Mottola , Carey adopted a new image and traversed towards hip hop with the release of Butterfly ( 1997 ) . Sony Music Entertainment ( known professionally as Sony Music and abbreviated as SME ) is an American music company owned by Sony that is incorporated as a general partnership of Sony Music Holdings Inc. through Sony Entertainment , a subsidiary of Sony Corporation of America . Virgin Records is a British-founded record label founded by English entrepreneurs Richard Branson , Simon Draper , Nik Powell , and musician Tom Newman in 1972 .