There's usually always a pretty good story behind the creation of most songs, but the recent revelation of the crazy measures it took for Ol’ Dirty Bastard to jump on Mariah Carey's "Fantasy" remix is something for the books. FakeShoreDrive's Andrew Baber sent out a tweet that reminded people of the 2016 Billboard article that detailed the hilarious, but very annoying tribulations, that Mariah's former A&R, Cory Rooney, had to endure to score ODB for the track.
I reached out to ODB and he wanted $15,000 to rap on the record. 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 ass...and then whispering, “I love you.” Then screaming again. This went on for an hour.
ODB then requested Moet and cigarettes and made the team hit the city for the items, but they only came back with Heineken. ODB was so pissed that he threw a bottle on the floor, but it doesn't end there...
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. 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. He woke up and was like, “Yo, let me hear what I did so far.” We played his one line back, he sang another line or two, and then slept for another hour. 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. 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 shit set and record it right, cause I'm not doing it twice.”
The team decided to bring him back for a few more lines, where he got another $15,000. Once the studio debacle was over ODB got tapped for the music video (as seen below) which brought on a whole new set of troubles.
A week later, it was time to shoot a video. We reached out to him, and he wanted another $15,000 dollars. No problem. So I sent a car to his house and he drank every friggin’ thing in the limo, showed up at Rye Playland [in New York], and went to his trailer. I had asked him, “Do you need the stylist to buy clothes for you?” He said, “Nah, this is hip-hop -- I'm just rocking some jeans and Timbs.” [That day], he was in the trailer, in and out of consciousness, when I said, “We're getting ready to do a scene.” He said, “I don't got no clothes, how am I going to do a video if I ain’t got nothing to wear?” I started screaming at him.
ODB apparently purchased Louis Vuitton luggage and clothes for the video, but once he returned he declared that he didn't want to wear clothes anymore. According to Cory, the video was a pure miracle.