Mariah Carey: Queen of the Hip-Hop Collaboration

Named the United States’ most successful artists of the 1990’s by Billboard and the world’s best recording artist by the World Music Awards, Mariah “Mimi” Carey obtained fame early in her career that no one could’ve imagined. Her uncharted success came from her choice to break the mold while taking a risk on an up and coming genre of music; this decision helped shape music history.

Feeling restricted in her personal life and with her music, in late 90s Carey changed her image. Instead of sticking exclusively to the pop charts, Carey chose to venture into the world of hip-hop. She pulled together a new creative team and revamped herself into a sexier, more mature Mariah Carey. With the help of some of the 90’s biggest producers and hip-hop artists, Carey changed her style and her sound flawlessly.

Since making her transition in 1996 Carey has over 60 hip-hop collaborations under her belt; impressive for someone who started out exclusively as a pop artist. Her transition also helped solidify hip-hop/rap as a genre that could not only stand on its own merit but as a music that blended flawlessly with other genres. Hip-hop’s soaring popularity in the late 90s owes some credit to Mimi.

With two songs, Carey found the formula for a solid collaboration and solidified her position as the queen of the hip-hop collaboration.

HONEY

“Honey” was the first single from Carey’s sixth studio album Butterfly. It was also the re-defining song of Carey’s career. Honey was written and produced with the producer powerhouse of Puff Daddy, Q-Tip, and Stevie J. After the song was completed, Combs was very confident with the song, calling it "slammin'," but because of its heavy hip-hop influence, he felt only cautiously optimistic about the song's commercial success. Boy, he was wrong.

Music critics described her musical transition as “genuine” as they sang the praises of the song. "Honey" was successful in the United States, becoming Carey's third single to debut atop the U.S. Billboard Hot 100, a feat that has yet to be duplicated. The song stayed at number one for three weeks.

“Honey” is one of Carey’s most remixed song. The most notable was the “Bad Boy remix” and the “Classic mix.” The Bad Boy remix feature rapping verses from The Lox and Ma$e. Both versions sampled “The Body Rock” by The Treacherous Three.

Jermaine Dupri and Da Brat tried their hands at the song and created the So So Def remix. It features rap verses from both. Dupri used a new sample from The Jackson 5’s “It’s Great to be Here.”

David Morales created several dance remixes to the song as well – The Class mix, Def Club mix, Rascal Dub, and Boss Anthem mix. It’s ironic that the song that shaped her persona was insanely popular and laid the groundwork for more to come.

FANTASY

Carey and Puff Daddy teamed up to create “Fantasy,” both the original version and the remix. Although Columbia Records allowed creative liberty with Carey’s music, they became hesitant when she chose to feature Ol’ Dirty Bastard on the remix. They feared the sudden change was completely left field for her music and worried it would jeopardize the album's success.

Carey has stated that the “Bad Boy remix” contributed to over half of the sales of "Fantasy".

There is also a version omitting Ol' Dirty Bastard's verses – the “Bad Boy Fantasy remix.” “The Bad Boy remix” garnered positive reviews from music critics. Ken Tucker from Entertainment Weekly praised the song, claiming it’s one of the few tracks where Carey "defines herself."

The song and its remix arguably remain one of Carey's most important singles to date. Due to the success and influence of the song, Carey is credited with introducing R&B and hip-hop collaboration into the mainstream pop culture, and for popularizing rap as a featuring act.

The formula is tried and true and has been used by many R&B, hip-hop, and pop stars alike. “It became standard for R&B/hip-hop stars like Missy Elliott and Beyoncé, to combine melodies with rapped verses. And 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,” explained Sasha Frere-Jones – editor of The New Yorker. “Her idea of pairing a female songbird with the leading male MCs of hip-hop changed R&B and, eventually, all of pop.”

Late Registration: When the Sequel Becomes the Prototype

Maximalism is an aesthetic of excess and redundancy. The philosophy can be summarized as "more is more." Kanye West, in his recent years, has been given the title of a maximalist when it comes to his music. The beats and the production of his albums and other works have evolved drastically from the soulful beats of College Dropout and The Blueprint. The Young Musicians Foundation has even arranged and orchestrated a symphony based off merging the works of Beethoven with West’s Yeezus and The Life of Pablo. The juxtaposition is jarring. Two musicians in different times who both “… wrought havoc on existing musical forms, alienated many, and forever changed the course of musical history.”

Not many know that West dabbled with the “more is more” philosophy long before My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy and Yeezus. It’s evident from his sophomore release, Late Registration.

After seeing Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, an American film directed by Michel Gondry, West was captivated by the lushly orchestrated score of the movie and sought after its composer. Jon Brion, the film's composer, didn’t have a hip-hop background but he agreed to work with West anyway. 

The recording sessions between West and Brion were exploratory, using a broad spectrum of sounds. West brought his soulful samples, drum beat programming, and unfinished rap verses to the sessions and would construct his songs from there. He worked alongside Brion to choose a variety of unique instruments and attempted to incorporate their distinctive sound into the song's texture; Brion played each of them for West.

The album is largely orchestral in nature with a harmonious combination of string arrangements, piano chords, brass flecks, and horn riffs among other symphonic instrumentation. A myriad of foreign and vintage instruments were also used, such as a celesta, harpsichord, Chamberlin, CS-80 analog synthesizer, Chinese bells and berimbau, vibraphones, and marimba.

The production carried West in an unforeseen new direction, a raised tempo and a driving, pulsating bassline colliding with tasteful live baroque instrumentation to present an extravagant vision of the Kanye sound. On songs like “Celebration,” Brion conducted a 20-piece orchestra. “Bring Me Down” holds more orchestration than any other than any other track on the album.

But Brion makes his mark on tracks like "Gone.” It contains some of the most elaborate orchestral arrangement of the entire album. The composition begins with a vocal sample of "It's Too Late" by Otis Redding and a two-chord piano ostinato, followed by a simplistic funk beat. As the song progresses, its structure gradually morphs and develops more and more musicality.

The composition assumes ten violins, four violas, and four cellos amid the verses. all of which initially come in brief staccato bursts that simply punctuate the rhythm but eventually expand and consolidate into a fully formed string section by the arrival of the harmonic choruses.

Late Registration is the foundation for latter-day maximalist Kanye works like Cruel Summer and My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy in its kitchen sink sonics but also its tone. The album dives fearlessly into the dark of the black American experience.

On Yeezus, West screams of the monopoly of wealth that the rich and powerful have and how they use it to ensure the powerlessness of others, making the poor and the weak like the new slaves. It wasn’t received as easily as when he spoke of communities beset by crime-gripping restless youth with a lack of opportunities on “Heard Em Say”. Or when he told the story of his family coming together to his grandma’s hospital bedside due to income-based lack of access to proper medical care in “Roses”.

“Crack Music” is Late Registration’s purest collision of Kanye’s black radical consciousness and Jon Brion’s orchestral flair. Kanye rhythmically walks through the collapse of the civil rights movement, the rise of the crack epidemic, and hip-hop’s role as a coping mechanism and gainful employment amid it all.

Rob Sheffield of Rolling Stone deemed the record "an undeniable triumph, packed front to back, so expansive it makes the debut sound like a rough draft”; that’s exactly how it Late Registration stands against the rest of Kanye West’s works – if not the very best, it remains the prototype.