Hey, maybe Mariah wasn't paranoid after all
Mariah Carey may not have been so far off base last year when she complained that forces in the music business were out to ruin the diva. Fox News reports that an upcoming story in the hip-hop magazine XXL suggests Tommy Mottola - Carey's ex-husband and head of her former label, Sony Music - deliberately set out to cut a song for Jennifer Lopez that was similar to one Carey recorded for her album and film "Glitter".
According to Fox, record exec Irv Gotti told XXL that shortly after his company, Murder Inc., recorded a duet between Carey and rapper Ja Rule entitled "Loverboy" for the "Glitter" project, Mottola contacted Gotti and asked him to helm a remix of Lopez's "I'm Real", with Ja Rule. "I get a call from Tommy Mottola, who I have a great relationship with, and he's like, 'I need you to do me a favor. I want you to do this remix for Jennifer Lopez. I want you to put Ja on the record.' Immediately I knew what he was doing because we just finished the Mariah record," Gotti is quoted in the interview.
Carey's "Loverboy" featured a sample from Yellow Magic Orchestra's song "Firecracker". "Glitter" was a Sony production, and Fox said sources claim Mottola had access to the film-in-progress. With Carey's song recorded for the film, but months away from release due to the "Glitter" production schedule, the story suggests the Lopez remix was rushed out to steal Carey's sample and duet idea.
Carey was forced to change the sample on her song to Cameo's "Candy" at the last minute. The song ultimately failed, the movie tanked, and "Glitter" was a box-office bomb. Carey moved from Sony to EMI's Virgin imprint prior to the film's release, and the failure of "Glitter" resulted in her being bought out of her multi-million dollar contract for $49 million after only one album.
"When Jennifer Lopez's record came out, and had the exact same song, we knew she had a right to be paranoid. We couldn't believe it," a source told Fox. Reporter Keith Murphy, who interviewed Gotti for XXL, told Fox that Gotti claimed he was told to remix Lopez's song "in the same style".
"It was exactly the same style - with Mariah and Ja talking back and forth, just the way he does with Jennifer on I'm Real". Fox further reported that the company handling song publishing on "Firecracker" confirmed that Carey's camp called to clear the sample a month before Lopez's team called for permission to sample the tune. The song had never previously been sampled, the report said. Officials with Sony denied that the connection between the two songs was anything more than a coincidence, Fox News said. (Jam!) Many thanks to Mariah Crybaby.
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