Mariah Carey is a renowned and revered Grammy Award-winning singer with a slew of hits to her name. The ‘Boy (I Need You)’ singer collaborated with performers and rappers throughout her career. However, one rapper she most definitely didn’t care for when she first met him was the legendary Biggie Smalls.
The origin of her sentiments dates back to the release of Biggie’s 1994 hit single, ‘Just Playing (Dreams)’, which featured on his debut album Ready To Die. In the song, Biggie cited different female singers, actors, and entertainment figures with whom he insinuated he wanted to have sex. On the track, the rapper (real name Christopher Wallace) references Carey in a rhyme where he bluntly states, “Mariah Carey’s kinda scary.”
In her 2020 autobiography, The Meaning of Mariah Carey, The R’n’B singer recalled how she felt when she caught wind of the lyric. “I had never met Biggie, but there was a running story that I had beef with him because of his song ‘Dreams of F*cking an R’n’B B*tch.” Carey admitted that she was pretty shocked when she first heard the line about her and inferred that perhaps it meant she was ugly. “I was kinda scary? What does that mean?! F*ck him. If he only knew some of the scary sh*t I’d actually been through.”
However, when Carey eventually spoke to Wallace in 1997, the rapper clarified he did not mean she was ugly. In the autobiography, Carey recalled how, in 1997, she wanted Biggie on the remix of her song ‘Honey’. Reaching out to Bad Boy entertainment, who was managing the rapper at the time, Carey got on the phone with Diddy to book a studio session in which the music mogul called the rapper. Detailing the moment, the singer wrote, “Puffy called him one day when we were working in the studio and put me on the phone. In true Biggie form, half pimp, half preacher, he said, ‘Nah, ma, you know, no disrespect,’ assuring me the song was all in fun.”
Carey explained that from that moment things between them were cordial, writing, “So things were cool between us. On the call, we talked about the music and flow, and even clowned a little bit. It was a chill and creative conversation. He was confident about what he wanted to bring to ‘Honey,’ and I had no doubt he would come in the studio and crush it; that’s what Biggie did.”
The ‘All I Want For Christmas’ singer was excited after her call. However Biggie was killed shortly after their conversation in early 1997 and he never officially laid a verse down for her ‘Honey (remix)’. The singer instead recruited Mase and The Lox for what would be entitled the “Bad Boy Remix” but Carey was still dissatisfied.
Expressing her frustration Carey wrote, “As much as I loved ‘Honey,’ my only major disappointment was that Biggie (The Notorious B.I.G.) never made it onto the remix. Tragically, he didn’t live long enough to make our studio date. The ‘Honey (Bad Boy Remix)’ featuring was a smash, but there’s a part of me that still misses Biggie on that song, and certainly in this world.”
You can hear the song that initially made Mariah Carey despise Biggie Smalls in the video below.
