05/10/2007: "Mariah's Pacifiah Grows Into A Movement"

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Often times, trend-setters aren't the first ones to enact the trend, but they are the people who do it well enough and have the charisma to make it mainstream. Mariah Carey wasn't the first artist to utilize a rapper on a song, but when she teamed with Ol' Dirty Bastard on the remix to "Fantasy," Mariah helped usher in a new era in music.

Mariah became known as a pop princess during the run of her Music Box album. That album was full of AC/pop music, and combined with her marriage to Tommy, it led to her "Cinderella" image. She became known as the inspirational pop singer of "Hero." The reality was that her marriage didn't have a 'happy ever after' ending, and Mariah was more into Wu Tang Clan than Michael Bolton. Mariah worked with Dave "Jam" Hall and Babyface on Music Box but it was with Daydream that Mariah really started announcing her intentions to combine her pop sensibilities with her love of rap and hip-hop.

In 1995 Mariah shocked the music world when she got rapper Ol' Dirty Bastard to guest on the remix for her single "Fantasy." In fact, Mariah had to call the rapper by his acronym (ODB) when she discussed the idea with Sony executives just so she could get the pairing cleared. The remix made headlines, but the album version was just as fresh. That version of "Fantasy" utilizes a Tom Tom Club sample and fuses it with Mariah's pop melodies and a hip-hop beat. In its review of the single, Billboard called "Fantasy" a "pop/hip-hop love song." In a sense, a new soundscape was created in that fusion, and it foreshadowed Lisa Lopes of the group TLC telling MTV a few years later that it's because of Mariah that we have "hip-pop."

What really made waves, though, was Mariah pairing with Ol' Dirty Bastard for the aforementioned remix. Producer Puff Daddy scaled back the pop production elements of the original and emphasized the beat on the remix. The pairing of a 'pop princess' with a hardcore rapper was a surprise, and the fact that the remix was so successful opened up a new avenue of popularity in music. Labels and artists began to see that songs (especially with the benefit of a remix) can appeal to listeners of all ages and ethnicities. It changed the game of music promotion. In naming the remix one of the greatest duets of all-time, Vibe said in 2007, "'Fantasy' shipped Mariah to the 'hood. It also brought ODB into suburban bedrooms." Sasha Frere-Jones of The New Yorker echoes Vibe in noting that, "Suddenly, people who would cross the street to avoid listening to hip-hop were bringing rappers into their house, under the cover of Carey. It became standard for R. & B. stars, like Missy Elliott and Beyoncé, to combine melodies with rapped verses." Producer Damizza has said the remix gave ODB his "first light of day past Wu Tang Clan, and [Mariah] invented the whole pop-rap collaboration." While that last part may not be entirely true, it says something that people think Mariah invented it. John Norris of MTV has said the remix "was responsible for, I would argue, an entire wave of music that we've seen since, and that is the pop-hip-hop collaboration. You could argue that that 'Fantasy' remix was the single most important recording that she ever made." Soon after it was common for artists to release remixes to radio to try and target multiple audiences, and it was no longer a surprise when a pop artist utilized a rapper on a song.

A 1998 Trace article talks about how, "Back then hardcore devotees would never have thought that it would work. After all hip hop was inviolable." Even current friend and frequent co-producer Jermaine Dupri was skeptical when he first worked with Mariah. He told Essence magazine that he didn't realize she was mixed at first and thought, "This white girl is crazy!" Before "Fantasy" and the album it came from (Daydream), Mariah had been marketed as a ballad queen. The discovery of Mariah the music artist and her subsequent marriage to label head Tommy Mottola was called a 'Cinderella story' (note the usage of a term referring to a white princess) by the press. Puffy Daddy was even reluctant to work with Mariah on the "Fantasy" remix because he didn't "know about messing with that pop stuff." It can't be stressed enough that it was the pairing of a "girl next door" with a truly hardcore rapper that made waves in the music world.

Let's not overlook the impact of the original version of "Fantasy" either. That version of "Fantasy" even peaked at #8 on the Adult Contemporary chart, becoming perhaps the first single to start introducing adult audiences to a harder sound. Both versions of the song made their mark on music as a whole. It also helped that Ol' Dirty Bastard's famous line, "Me and Mariah go back like babies on pacifiahs" would go down in music and pop culture history.

The reality is that the pairing of a singer with a rapper is still a prevalent trend. The past year has brought us the #1 hits "My Love" (on which pop star Justin Timberlake uses a guest verse by T.I.) and "Glamorous" (on which singer Fergie gets a verse from Ludacris). Would these pairings have happened if not for "Fantasy" and its remix? It's hard to know, but fellow singer Toni Braxton says Mariah "really pioneered that."

From there, we move into a new section in Mariah's career. While Daydream and especially its remixes showcased Mariah's love of hip-hop, it was with the 1997 album Butterfly that Mariah started fully fusing her love of urban music with the pop/AC stylings with which she had become identified. Butterfly showcased co-productions with Trackmasters, Puff Daddy, and Timbaland. The track "Breakdown" was a growth from "Fantasy" because it was more of a true collaboration. "Breakdown" features Mariah melding her melodic singing with the staccato-rapping of Bone Thugs N Harmony. It was one of first songs where a singer utilized the speed-singing - a by-product of rap - artists like Beyonce have become famous for (and it should be noted that Mariah has continued this trend herself on each album since Butterfly). It was also one of the first songs where the guest rap fit thematically with the rest of the song. Billboard magazine called the track “a refreshing change of pace” because it was so unlike other songs that paired singers and rappers.

The lead single from Butterfly was the song “Honey,” and it was Mariah’s first single where the original version was true hip-hop. Mariah worked with Puff Daddy and Q-Tip on the track, and they came up with a slinky song that utilizes a hip-hop beat and samples the urban classics “The Body Rock” and “Hey D.J.”

Mariah continued to mix styles with her next release, Rainbow. Danyel Smith wrote in Entertainment Weekly that Rainbow "sets a new standard for unifying hip-hop and R&B." In Rolling Stone, Arion Berger contended the album was “a sterling chronicle of the state of accessible hip-hop balladeering at the close of 1999.” In other words, critics were crediting Mariah with bridging the gap between pop and hip-hop.

For her infamous soundtrack to Glitter, Mariah worked with Ja Rule on a song called “If We.” It featured a back-and-forth between singer and rapper like you would find between two singers doing a duet. Before Glitter was released, Mariah’s former boss and husband, Tommy Mottola, suggested Jennifer Lopez do something similar with Ja Rule on their remix to her song “I’m Real.” When the remix was released, it became a #1 hit and ushered in a new level of rap/sung collaborations. So, Mariah was again a trendsetter, but her idea was placed in the background because of her ex-husband’s move.

In other words, Mariah has been combining pop sensibilities with hip-hop beats and elements for over a decade. Mainstream music moved along with her, too. Brad Cawn of CD Now comments that Mariah (along with Jodeci) “moved R&B slowly towards a more urban sound.” Sasha Frere-Jones of the New Yorker notes that “young white pop stars—including Britney Spears, ’N Sync, and Christina Aguilera—have spent much of the past ten years making pop music that is unmistakably R&B,” and that Mariah, “ more than any other musician, established R&B and hip-hop as the sound of pop.” And as noted music critic Amy Linden said about Mariah’s Greatest Hits collection, it “offers up evidence why, for better or worse, Mariah's five-octave, pop/R&B stylings set the diva standard.”