Why Mariah Carey hated Biggie Smalls: “Fuck him”
Vocalist Mariah Carey is a renowned, Grammy-winning singer with countless hits to her name who, in the 1990s, collaborated with rappers and singers alike. As such, during the Bad Boy era, Carey was asked to collaborate with the one and only Biggie Smalls.
The two didn’t know each other well. However, in 1994, on the track ‘Just Playing (Dreams),’ which appeared on Biggie Small’s debut project, Ready To Die, the Brooklyn native mentioned the vocalist.
The song was about the emcee’s sexual desires, and in his lyrics, he mentioned a range of singers. With lines such as, Think about the sexy singers that I wanna sex / I’d probably go to jail for fucking Patti LaBelle” and “Ooh, Regina Belle, she’d probably do me swell,” the explicit lyrics shocked some but offended many others including Mariah Carey.
In her 2020 autobiography, The Meaning of Mariah Carey, the singer recalled her initial reaction to the crude track, writing, 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&B Bitch.’” On the song, Biggie called the ‘Without You’ artist “scary”. Recounting her confusion, she continued writing, “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.” Despite her initial anger and hatred of Biggie and his music, she has since revealed the two had an encounter following its release.
According to Carey, Biggie told her that he didn’t mean what he said. She actually forgave him after the apology, and in 1997, three years after the release of ‘Just Playing (Dreams),’ Carey sought to get Biggie on the remix of her hit single ‘Honey.’
Remembering the process of getting the Life After Death lyricist on the phone, Carey 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, ‘Naw, ma, you know, no disrespect,’ assuring me the song was all in fun.”
She added, “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.”
Carey spoke about their telephone conversation in a 2018 interview with DJ SussOne on Power 105.1. Describing Biggie’s aura, she told the DJ, “The swag was just so enormous that everything was all love after that. There was never any problem… it was me being sensitive because I’m just a sensitive girl.” Unfortunately for Carey, despite their make-up, Biggie never hopped on the remix of ‘Honey’ as shortly after their phone call, the rapper was murdered in Los Angeles at just 24 years old.
Expressing her sadness at this, she told SussOne, “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 Mase and The Lox was a smash, but there’s a part of me that still misses Biggie on that song, and certainly in this world.”