*Mariah Carey’s remix to her 1995 hit song “Fantasy” will forever be a classic among music lovers.
Although the song was an instant hit, the steps taken to make it as such is just as interesting as the notion of Carey teaming with Ol’ Dirty Bastard in the first place to create the tune.
Vibe cites a list of Carey hit musical collaborations compiled by Billboard as its source for getting the scoop on the making of “Fantasy (Remix)” via A&R guy Cory Rooney.
According to Rooney, ODB fell asleep three different times, and came in belligerently screaming on the phone when he arrived to record his verse for “Fantasy.
“I reached out to ODB and he wanted $15,000 to rap on the record,” Rooney said. “At the time, that was a lot of money, but it really wasn’t for Mariah Carey’s budget — so, no problem. He finally showed up, three hours late, and when he got there, it was about 10:30 at night. He had been drinking, and was on the phone when he walked in. Irate, screaming at some girl how he’s gonna come kill her, he’s going to kick her a**…and then whispering, ‘I love you.’ Then screaming again. This went on for an hour. “
As the session continued, Rooney detailed other requests ODB made.
“He finally came out and was like, ‘Yo, pardon me, this bi**h is driving me crazy. I need some Moet and Newports before we get into this record,’” Rooney recalled. “I said, ‘It’s 12:30 at night now bro, I don’t know where we’re going to get Moet from.’ He started yelling at the assistants, calling them white devils, saying, ‘You white devils, y’all don’t want black people to have sh*t.’ They went out for like an hour, and the only thing they could find were some Heinekens. He was so disgusted, he threw a bottle on the floor.”
All this and ODB hadn’t even laid his verse down. When he finally got around to doing it, Rooney stated the Wu-Tang Clan member fell in and out of sleep as he pieced his verse together.
“At this point Mariah had been calling every hour on the hour, wanting to hear something over the phone. Tommy was pissed because Mariah was keeping him up, so he finally got on the phone with ODB — and after that, finally we started to record,” Rooney revealed. “He said one line — ‘me and Mariah, go back like babies with pacifiers’ — then paused, said, ‘Yo, I need to take a break,’ and went to sleep for 45 minutes.” Once ODB woke up, he would continue the same routine.
“He would come up with a line, punch that in, go to sleep. He went to sleep 3 different times in the middle of trying to get that one verse done,” he said. “If you listen to the record now, on his verse, you can hear that it’s punched in in pieces. He actually told the engineer, ‘Y’all better have your sh*t set and record it right, cause I’m not doing it twice.’”
And there it is, the making of a hit. ODB style, as only he could.
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