“Fantasy” and “Honey,” each wholly reimagining the original single from the ground up. “It’s become one of my trademarks to revisit my songs when we do remixes,” Mariah told Billboard in 1999. “To me, it’s not good enough to just let someone go into the studio and add some beats or samples to my songs. Inevitably, I wind up rewriting a lot of the song, or rearranging the vocals and melodies. It’s a fun exercise in that it allows me to rethink the song and add some new ideas.” Today, Mariah is known to different people for many different things. For some, it’s the “schmaltzy ballads” (her words) that still define her; for others, it’s showing up at Christmas every year. Yet, pulling R&B, house, gospel, and hip-hop together through remixes to create new paradigms in music is one of her great legacies. Certainly, it’s a dimension that connects her back to the genre-fluid, agnostic artist who first emerged in those eclectic demos from the woodshop. “She turned out to be such a great producer,” says Cindy Mizelle, who, years after welcoming Mariah into the sisterhood of New York studio singers, would go on to provide backgrounds for some of Mariah’s own hits, including “All I Want for Christmas Is You.” “She knew what she wanted. She knew what to say, and how to say it. She knew how to direct each section and how to direct me. It was always respected.” Chris Toland and Ben Margulies never worked with Mariah again following their contributions to her 1990 debut. Their legacy is the 1988 demo, still largely unheard by the world. Toland has watched her growth since her debut album only from afar. But he can vouch that the talent she would go on to demonstrate as a producer and songwriter was there even in those earliest phases, a mix of both natural vocal gifts, and exceptional dedication to her craft. “Mariah has the real artist’s ability to make it real, so that you believe what she’s singing,” Toland says. “That’s the real craft of singing and production.”
II)” playing on Hot 97 on her way home, and encouraged Poke and Tone of production team the Trackmasters to make a new track sampling the Queensbridge classic. For Mobb Deep’s Havoc, who appeared on the remix alongside late partner Prodigy, as well as in the throwback-themed video, the experience surpassed his expectations. “It’s almost like we were guiding each other,” he remembers. “She was introducing us to the R&B world, and we were introducing her to hip-hop.” Hip-hop wasn’t the only subculture Mariah slid into and left her stamp on. In 1993, she entered Quad Recording Studios in Times Square to record a remix for the Music Box hit “Dreamlover” with house music DJ/producer David Morales. The Brooklyn native was among the first wave of New York-area house DJs, spinning at formative venues like Zanzibar (in Newark) and Paradise Garage before entering the remix field. As a DJ at underground clubs, Mariah’s music hadn’t been on his radar. So when he was approached about the remix, his first impulse was to turn it down. “Dreamlover” was in a major key. What was a house producer supposed to do with that? Figuring there was no way the label would take him up on it, he told her rep at Sony the only way he would work on the track was if Mariah returned to the studio with him, and re-sang the entire song in a minor key. “Yo, I was bullshitting!” an animated Morales recalls during a Zoom call from his home in Bologna, Italy. “I was like, ‘I’m not doing the record: It’s bubblegum, man, I can’t do nothing with it.’ And they got back and said, ‘Okay, she’ll re-sing it.’” Mariah had some feel for dancefloor fillers already, having worked with Robert Clivillés and David Cole, of C + C Music Factory fame, on a variety of house-inflected tracks that brought her gospel influence to the fore, including “Emotions,” “Make It Happen,” “To Be Around You,” and “Now That I Know.” And Shep Pettibone had remixed “Someday,” resulting in Mariah’s first #1 dance single in 1991. (“Emotions” was her second, a few months later). So, she was prepared. She showed to Quad Studios that day with her background vocal crew, at that time consisting of Melonie Daniels, Marian Tate, Kelly Price, and Cherise Price, their rich melodies bringing a soulful, gospel edge that brilliantly buoyed Morales’s production. “We did everything in the studio in one evening, and she killed it,” Morales recalls. “She’s the real deal…she was part of the backgrounds as well, because if anybody can sing any note there is to sing, it’s Mariah. The woman knows how to produce backgrounds.” Morales credits the “Dreamlover (Def Club Mix)” remix with opening the door for more artists to work collaboratively with remixers. “People got to hear Mariah, as they’ve never heard before,” he says. “Now they heard the diva . Now they heard the sister with some soul . And people that weren’t Mariah Carey fans, such as myself, went ‘Uh-oh.’ She expanded her wings. I guess she wanted to come down a few notches, and get into the street.” Mariah worked with David Morales to create remixes for ten tracks between 1993 and 2003’s The Remixes compilation, including
After years of uncertainty regarding its whereabouts and existence, the original copy of Mariah Carey’s 1988 demo tape given to Arthur Baker was sold at auction in December 2025 via Wax Poetics Collections. For more lost demos and 7-inches from the Arthur Baker Colllection, visit Waxpoetics.com.
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( opposite ) Mariah Carey, circa early ’90s. Photo by Deborah Feingold. Feingold shot Mariah for Rolling Stone and Glamour magazines in 1990, and again for a Columbia Records publicity shoot in 1991. “She was very comfortable being shot and we worked quickly,” Feingold recalls. “In all honesty, what I remember most was the focus on her hair. It was beautiful, and there was lots of it.”
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