Despite her record-breaking success in the early '90s as the queen of pop - 55 million records sold worldwide, eight No. 1 hits - Mariah Carey wanted to do something different on her 1995 album, Daydream. Specifically, she wanted to sound more hip-hop.
Enter: Jermaine Dupri. After dominating the pop charts with teen hip-hop duo Kris Kross in 1992, the Atlanta-based producer brought his own label, So So Def, to Columbia Records, which was also the home of Mariah Carey. So So Def quickly scored top 10 pop hits with rapper Da Brat and R&B quartet Xscape, and Dupri became an in-demand producer.
After doing a remix for Carey's 1994 single "Never Forget You", Dupri crossed paths with her at a Grammy after-party. "She wanted to talk about working on her new album," Dupri says. "I didn't know what that was going to entail, but it was her idea to work with the new hip-hop guy - to merge the pop sound with hip-hop as much as possible."
Up until that point, Carey was best known for songs like "Vision Of Love" and "Emotions", pop music with an R&B bounce that put her five-octave vocal range on display. But according to Dupri, Carey was a hip-hop fan and determined to incorporate that sound into her new album. "I remember the first track we tried to do, she wanted to sing over Wu-Tang's 'C.R.E.A.M.', and I was like, 'What?'"
Dupri says that he and Carey recorded four or five records in the studio, but only two made it onto Daydream - "Long Ago" and "Always Be My Baby". "Long Ago" is a song about a past relationship accompanied by more of a sparse hip-hop beat. "Always Be My Baby" is an upbeat torch song that opens with tinny keyboard sounds and those iconic Mariah Carey do-do-dos - making it sound more pop or R&B but definitely not hip-hop.
Dupri admits that he was apprehensive about changing Carey's sound entirely. "There's a bunch of stuff from the initial approach of it that was just so crazy - her ideas and the things she wanted me to do. I was kind of like, 'Nah', because I was thinking, 'This is my opportunity to work with Mariah Carey. You going to fuck up my opportunity by being experimental on your project.' I didn't want to do that."
Once "Always Be My Baby" was complete, Dupri was still unconvinced of its appeal. "I thought the song wasn't really that good. I didn't think people really cared about the song. So I was kind of shying away from it, like 'I fucked up'."
But Dupri didn't fuck up at all. "Always Be My Baby" hit No. 1 on May 4, 1996, 20 years ago. It was Mariah's 11th chart-topping hit, tying her with Madonna and Whitney Houston for the most No. 1 singles by a female pop act. Carey still managed to explore a new hip-hop sound - her first true foray into the genre was another Daydream single, "Fantasy", featuring O.D.B. She went on to remix "Always Be My Baby" with Da Brat and Xscape, and on later albums like Butterfly and Rainbow, Carey enlisted artists like Bone Thugs-n-Harmony, Jay Z, and Snoop Dogg for features.
While "Always Be My Baby" may not have been Carey's breakthrough hip-hop song, it was the track that solidified her place alongside other pop divas. As Dupri points out, it's also the song that made him rich. And while he was hesitant at the time, Dupri praises Carey's instincts in retrospect: "Mariah always wanted to push the hip-hop element way harder than the pop side of her records," he says. "She's the genius behind every one of these artists that are out now - Ariana Grande, all these artists - they wouldn't be able to do that if it wasn't for Mariah. These were all her ideas."
(Genius)
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