One Song - Mariah Carey’s “Fantasy” with guest Durand Bernarr

Episode Date: November 16, 2023

This time on One Song, Diallo Riddle and LUXXURY are joined by singer, Durand Bernarr. The trio explore Mariah Carey’s Fantasy (Bad Boy Remix ft. ODB), and talk through every single one of Mariah’s five octaves — not to mention her whistle registers. But, because we’re talking the Bad Boy Remix version of Fantasy, there’s also a lot of ODB high jinx. Including Diallo’s story about the time he had a brush with the ol’ dirty doggy himself.  Artist: Mariah Carey Album: Daydream Released: 1995 Genres: Dance Pop, Adult Contemporary Featured songs: Daydream Interlude by Mariah Carey, Genius of Love by Tom Tom Club, Big Energy by Latto, It's Nasty by Grandmaster Flash and The Furious Five, Genius Rap by Dr. Jeckyll & Mr. Hyde, Return of the Mack by Mark Morrison, High Speed by 2Pac with Outlawz, One by Busta Rhymes with Erykah Badu, Only In California by Mack 10 with Ice Cube and Snoop Dogg, Lovin' You by Minnie Ripertn, Emotions by Mariah Carey, Freefall by KAYTRANADA with Durand Bernarr, Best of My Love by The Emotions, Got to Be Real by Cheryl Lynn Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

One song in the house. Los Angeles in the house. Baby, baby, come on. Start one song. Start one song. We got luxury in the house. We got Duran in the house. And we got Mariah Carey and the old dirty doggy in the house.

And we'll see how this goes. This is one song. Hello. Yeah. I'm a little bit country. I'm a little bit rock and roll. I'm soul to soul. Yes.

Listen, he started immediately on the one. I was like, no, we're going to start on the two. He couldn't help himself. It was innate. Bless us hot. We're going to work on it. You know, we practiced on this for weeks, and I think it shows. Weeks.

Now that we've established that everyone is in the house, It's time on one song to talk about a pop masterpiece, a collision of two worlds. You have the pop princess of the 90s. We already know who this person is. But then we put her with Staten Island's Grimy SMC, one of the first stars out of the Wu-Tang Clan, and we've got a song powered by, you know, one of the greatest hooks in, you know, history. It's like a song that, like, if you were a certain age, you heard it on the radio.

You've seen it on the TV show. I'm going to stop using hip-hop references. And I'm going to talk about this song. The song is called Fantasy, the Bad Boy Remix, featuring Mariah Carey and Old Dirty Bastard. This is Fantasy, and this is one song. The Shining Star, my Shining Star, girl. You know, New York in the half.

It's Brooklyn. It's room vibe. It's room vibe. Here we go. That's right. Let's go. Let's go. It's go.

Baby, baby, come on. Baby, come on. Baby, come on. When you want. I mean, the way her voice comes in, it always reminds me of being a DJ because as a DJ, when that vocal comes in, like, Old Dirty always got the party hype.

But when her vocal came in, all pristine and perfect, Like, it just sounded different coming out of those speakers. It always got the party hype. But I don't want to get ahead of ourselves. Luxury. Tell us what we're talking about. Well, first of all, Zeran, welcome to the show, my friend. And it's nice to see you.

I'm glad to have you, in particular as a guest, for this episode. I think it's a perfect match. I actually got a quick question. You were just humming the intro right there. How many voices? Have you ever counted how many different voices and characters and registers and ranges? Mariah is going a lot of places on this song. Like what, from the singer's perspective, since you are yourself an incredible singer, when you hear it, do you, does it sound complicated?

What does it sound like to you? What are your feelings as a fellow singer when you hear this song? That's a big question, I know. Yes. First of all, it's good to be seen and not viewed right now. It might be a little bit of both. There might be some stuff on Instagram. Listening now as an adult, Mariah is the female Luther with a whistle, right? register. Wow.

When you really listen to their choices and how they approach things, it feels, but it's, but it's a lighter texture. You know, his was Velvety Herses is lighter. And so that gives a different contrast to it. And I've always appreciated her voice. And you're talking about Luther Vandross, obviously. Right. There's really only one, Luther.

We're not only one Luther. We're not talking about the Netflix series. L-O-O-T-H-A, Luther. I like what you're saying because there are few people Some people have gratuitous runs We won't need to name Come on gratuitous! Gratitis! Grititous runs

But name of a great album by the way But she doesn't like she really feels like She's like feeling everything and I can see I never thought of it before I can see the connection to Luther That's that she has also said that she sings her songs The way that she does because she didn't She didn't want anyone else to sing them. Oh yeah, it's impossible

Yeah I've worked with some. I will say as a comedy run, I've worked with some singers, and it's amazing to me how the degree to which, whether they say it or not, they are trying to make every song their own. They're like, I don't want anybody else to be able to say this. I feel like it goes back to Stevie.

I feel like no, but it's hard to cover Stevie. Duran, as our guest, what is it about this song that means so much to you? And do you have any sort of stories, like the first time you heard it? Like, is there a connection you feel to fantasy? Because, okay, growing up, my mother didn't play. play a lot of, you know, secular music, you know, so it was a lot of jazz and gospel and whatnot. And a little bit of New Age in there, you know, that in you, that you play in yoga class, you know, we can listen to that.

But there were some artists that I was able to sneak into the house, you know, like Janet Jackson was contraband, waiting to exhale, that was contraband, you know, but Mariah would get played on the jazz station, so Mariah was actually cool. So I could listen to Mariah and Whitney and Michael Jackson. You know, so. I feel like Vision's of Love was like a big song for Mariah like early on. See, my was Can't Let Go. I can't speak for Vision's Love.

I mean, that's a great song, but no, can't let go. Oh, baby. And when you, oh, just, I need AI to do a Luther, which I'm going to call it, you know, swap on that song. So we can hear what it would sound like. Oh, Luther we're singing. Him singing, don't let, him singing, can't let go. You'll be like, ah, that's where it is. I mean, right now that's the sound of everybody who's listening to this, doing exactly that.

Luther-Moriah connection is so interesting to me because I heard her somewhere talking about how, like, Luther actually, I think she got some singing tips either directly or indirectly from his idea that, like, you should always only ever be in humid environments for your voice. Like literally voice-saving tips. But is there more to that connection? Like, tell us more from a singing standpoint. I'm so interested in the connection that you're making a few times now between Luther Vandross and Mariah Carey. Yeah, they actually have a song together as well. but it just clicked. Like, it's interesting how

these vocal titans can also influence each other and get tips from how to care for your voice, how to placement, you know. Like note placement?

Oh, yes, that's so key. I feel like note placement is more effective than the run. That's like where to place the note in time, like where to syncopate, how long to elongate it. There's so many details about singing that like I want to learn from you because it's like I'm a musician producer but it is my weakness is like I just I can do my thing and that's it but you I've heard from from your amazing music

and Mariah as we were talking about earlier with her men with her multiple vocal range and the whistle all this will get into it but did you kind of over time have you kind of you like gradually conquered maybe each area of singing separately or did it come naturally to you Did you have a teacher? Like, how did you learn to sing, is my question. So I feel like singing learned me. You know, I didn't get a chance to take music serious first. It kind of, it was there, you know, because both of my parents are musicians,

and they both sing as well. And also my cousins, you know, they're musically inclined, you know, to, you know, to, you know, they're singing in choir or, you know, chorus or, you know, taking some kind of drama class, you know. So there's all these ways in which we express ourselves through music. So it wasn't until I went on the road with my dad with Earth, Win and Fire when I was 16. And I was able to see, like, how. And you were young, right, when this happened.

You were 16? Yeah. And you're out there with Verdine. Verdeen. And then the guy. Yeah, yes, yes, yes. I look good. Yeah, I smell good.

How you doing? You're all right. You're right. Uh-huh. Yeah. But only you don't know that is an amazing impression. And I never got a chance. He used to work with Cabron White.

Yeah. So, you know, I used to see those guys sometimes. Yeah, that's an amazing impression. Mm-hmm. Yes, no, I love him. Love, love him. Diallo, please set the scene for us, if you will. This song is released.

It's 1995. Where are you? Where is Diallo Riddle in 1995? I am. And what do you think of Mariah at the time? I'm glad you bring it up. I was in, I was in college. And, you know, that's like a time when you're in college,

like, nobody can tell you. tell you anything about music. If you like music, you feel like you know just enough of what happened in the past, but you're like right in the Zygdice, you know exactly what's going on in the culture. And you got your identity, too. And you got your identity. And I was firmly implanted in hip hop

by this point. You know, growing up, I would like, you know, Michael Jackson and the Pet Shop Boys. But like, at this time, like, I was 100% in hip hop. And 1995, like, Mariah is cool. You know what I mean? Like, nowadays my wife is like, you know, she's of the perfect age where, like,

Mariah is like her, Michael Jackson, Madonna, just given the age. And so, like, she likes, you know, some of those Mariah Carey songs that I'm like, ugh. Because to me, that's not what I was trying to hear. Like, I was about Mary. I was about faith. I was about, like, you know, there were R&B, you know, queens at that time that, like, you know, you just were impeachable. And I think the most interesting thing about this song that we're talking about today is that when it came out, it was like, wait a second, she's got a song with Old Dirty Bastard?

Like, it was, you know, I always say Mariah, I'm sorry, Mary and Meth with You're All I Need was like, that was like one of the first ones. It won a Grammy. Like it was like, oh, when SWV did the remix of anything with Wu-Tang, like, we were like, yo, anything is possible now. This is the crossover moment. This is like, what it was like, wait, even Mariah is. And apparently her, you know, her husband at the time, Tom and Betola runs the record label. and he's not happy about this. He's like, you're throwing away all of the pop princess, you know, branding, if you will.

He's scared. Yeah, he's like, there's no way this could work. But it was Mariah's idea. She was like, I want to do us all with Old Drey Bastert. In her words, he reminds me of the uncle who's drunk at the barbecue. A drunk uncle returns to the show. We always bring up these drunk uncles. Oh, yes.

And so she was like, I really wanted to be him. So it's interesting also from a, let's get really granular. on this. This is a time when, according to Naz, Wu-Tang and Bad Boy have beef because Wu-Tang feel like they represent where East Coast hip-hop and New York hip-hop is

and they feel like Puffy is ruining it with, you know, all the Versacee shades and talking about the clothes and all this stuff. I was curious about that. I hope you'd explain that to me. Wu-Tang, Staten Island, Grimy, and here comes, you know, Puffy like, I mean, by, you know, 1995 that is a seminal

year. We talked about this on the show before. It's a very important year in terms of hip-hop. It's the year that the One More Chance remix by Biggie samples debarge and suddenly black radio stations that never played hip-hop before. They were always R&B in the day and they might play hip-hop at night. All of a sudden during the daytime, they're playing, baby, one more chance. You know, like it changes overnight. That's a sound that wouldn't normally have been on there.

That junior mafia album came out. Like, everything is changing like really rapidly, you know, during this time. And so 1995, Mariah doesn't solve an old dirty bastard. And we're going to get into the shenanigans that take place in both the recording and the music video. But this was big. This was big because it showed how much not just R&B, but now pop is now going to basically be singing over hip hop. Yeah. In ways that it hadn't been before.

Now, Mariah herself picked this sample, Genius of Love by Tom Tom, Club. And let's hear a little bit of it. Love this song. Here's what Mariah said about her use of that sample. I was listening to the radio and heard Genius of Love, and I hadn't heard it in a long time. It reminded me of growing up and listening to the radio, and that feeling the song gave me seemed to go with the melody

and basic idea that I had for fantasy. I initially told Dave about the idea, and we did it. We called up the Tom Tom Club, because, you know, they were like listed, and they were really into it. By the way, the Dave that she's referring to is her producer, Dave Hall, who worked on records with a lot of artists, including Mary J. Blige and Madonna. And here is how that Tom Tom Tom, Tom Club sample sounds in the song.

Sorry. I just laugh sometimes because there's so much going on there vocally. There's like 50 different ideas, but it works somehow. Like there's, da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. And then there's like maybe literally three different lines happening at once in a different way. It just made me laugh in that sense. It's very charged. when you have like the

la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la the counterpoint it's all the different things the top notes is doing something different from the main note and then they kind of come together at the end to kind of add this lush kind of cascade of different

yes but it reminds me of the stevie wonder what we talked about with the clavinets because like we did an episode about Stevie wonder's superstition and when you isolate the clavinets there's like four different ideas on eight different tracks and they're all doing different things

But they're finding different syncopated pockets and different notes. And that's why it works in the mix. And there's kind of an interesting parallel here, too, because each of those singers is singing a different note with a different rhythm, different lyric. Anyway, and in the mix, it works. I just love the idea of Mara Carey being in a car listening to the radio, hearing a song she likes.

He's like, oh, that's cool. Let's call it the TomTom. Okay, right. That's called Access. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Now, we do have a lawyer in the house, Lesa Guam,

and she was keen to note that Mariah has a songwriting credit on this song. Does Mariah get the props she deserves as a songwriter? I'm asking both of you. I'd like to hear your opinion. So she's been writing for a nice little while now. Some of the lyrics might tickle me. Right. What's a lyric that tickles you?

Those chickens is ash and I'm lotion. Why are you in my George Foreman? That's good. I had to think about that one. I had to think about that. It's good. She mentioned something where she was saying Cheetos. I was just like.

So the answer is no. She's not getting the props she deserves as a songwriter. Well, it depends on what she's writing. It depends on what she's writing. Because like I said, I'm just mentioning the things that tickle me. She's written like, she's had great songs. No, I mean, yeah, and I think one thing that's very clear is that fantasy by Mariah Carey, like, there are two popular versions of this song.

And until we just played that other one, I had totally forgotten that there was one other than the old dirty because I only really messed around with. Well, we got to talk about the backstory of how we even came to this episode because we were talking about Mariah and trying to choose what Mariah song should we do. And fantasy came up pretty quickly for me because I, I love this song. I love the backstory, which I'm about to go into

with all the samples and interpolations. Like, that's my jam. Like, I can live for that. We're about to go down a really fun rabbit hole about that. But when we were talking about it, like, I did not, I mean, I'm raising my hand. Like, I, first to admit, I did not know of the existence of the remix.

That's crazy to me. I had never heard it. And Diallo, it's not that he had never heard the original, but it's like we absolutely had two different worlds we were coming from. But maybe I had roundly avoided it. Wow. But no, that's one thing I love about 90s hip-hop

is that there was always a remix. And a lot of times, the remix was a completely different song. A completely different record. New vocals. New vocals. Oh, by the way, I want to talk about my favorite old dirty bastard song of all time. It is the radio edit of Brooklyn Zoo. Because as opposed to nowadays when, like, you just drop out the curse words

and even my kids are like, man, they're cursing a lot. Because this is essentially like, you know, whole verses go away and stuff like that. In the early to probably mid-90s, there was a lot of just re-recording clean lyrics. So, you know, one of the first where I really noticed that, you know, sometimes the clean version is better is a deep cover. Because Snoop on the dirty version,

he's like, I got a gay Asian oozy and my mother fucking 22. But on the edit it, he's like, I got a gay Asian oozy and my nickel-plated 22. and as a writer, I was like, ooh, nickel played at 22. Like it was more, there was more imagery that was forming in my brain. But old dirty bastard takes the cake. He takes the cake when it comes to coming up with completely different lyrics. I'm going to play you a snippet.

And really, if you get a second, just go on YouTube or wherever you can find Brooklyn Zoo, Clean Edit. The whole song is like this. If you play the dirty version first and then the Clean version, it's a completely different song. Some of the best adlips in history. He's going to play a snippet. Here he goes. Who couldn't figure? Yo, by a new.

Who couldn't figure? Yo, but a nuclear? Who couldn't figure? How to pull a gun trigger. Get out of there. That is a sampling. There are so many sound effects. There are so many places where he just changes the leg.

Like that one part, I think he says, like, without a fucking gun trigger, you crazy. Instead of that, he goes, without pulling a gun trigger. get out of here! Like he screams, get out of here. And I just feel like that's some stuff that you would never come up with. A better choice, frankly.

It's a better song. It was Wiley Coyote building in the song. Like, he brought Looney Tunes. He brought the Acme. He brought the Acme box. Yes. Now, Lexury, you're going to take us

on how we go from TomTom Club to fantasy to Lodney to Lod. You're going to take us through the whole. You just know I'm going to have a great time with this. And everyone, you're all going to have a great time with this. Interpolation. Interpolation.

Sampling Rabbit Hole. It all begins. It's 1981. And one of my favorite parts about this journey is, especially at the top half of it, there's a lot of, we're going to talk in a later episode about the history of remixes and about Jamaica, which I'm so excited for because I'm a big Jamaica and dub buff. But there's a lot of Jamaica in the original song, in the original sample. So really quickly, the Tom Tom Tom Club, for those who don't know,

half of the band talking heads. It's the husband and wife team of Tina Weymouth on bass and Chris Franz on drums. And they're on a break. They go down to Bahamas, Compass Studios. And the first Jamaican connection here is that Compass Point is owned by Chris Blackwell of Island Records. In other words, the guy who made Bob Marley famous. So right out the gate, we've got Sly and Robbie are in the next room, speaking of reggae. They are in the middle of 1981 of a new era of reggae that they kind of pioneer and Stephen Stanley is their producer, a Jamaican man, who's also a co-writer of the song. So they're steeped in what is at the time kind of a new sound of dub and sort of extended remixes. So on day one, they're thinking Jamaica, they're thinking sampling their thinking

remixes. Interestingly, baked into this song already when it's made is this idea of like reusing and repurposing other songs and other material. That's the core of Jamaica. Again, deep dive, big time deep dive in another episode. If I could just jump in real quick, there's one other part that I think is worth mentioning, which is that, you know, if you think about the first bebop song, you know, like, or one of the first by Charlie Parker,

is a song called Coco, where he admits, like, you know, that is my interpolation, if you will, of Cherokee by Ray Noble, which had come out like 20 years earlier. So I think that in a lot of these American and African American and Jamaican-American music forms, there is this tradition of like taking something from about 20 or 30 years back and then just, you know, revving it up and making it more modern. And I think that's one of the coolest things about this particular song is that it just keeps coming back, you know, every other generation. Yeah, we're about to hear that same snippet, which you've already heard a lot on the show, a lot more times. It is one of the most sampled licks of all time, that two bars.

of drums and bass that we keep hearing throughout this episode. So getting back to TomTom Club, Genius of Love, in part inspired by a song called More Bounce to the Oounce by Zapp, which I'll play a little snippet for you right now. In particular, the beat and the very slowed down funk beat and the big, delicious clap, one of my favorite claps. I can listen to Troutman.

Black people just be inspiring everything. I know, because all I hear is Dad Punk now when I hear, you know, the talk box the rocker chowman i mean like i just imagine those two fritch guys being like that's the sound you know what i mean like that stuff is wonderful it is deep it is wonderful and they love that beat so they tried to do something with a similar beat 103 bpm slowed down and to get that clap talking about jamaica i mentioned before when they recorded it sly and robbie were in the next room and they actually get a shout out on the song this is that song where they mentioned bohanan bohanan james brown

as another thing i wanted to talk to you about with this song is this is an example they have like 50 different voice ideas in the song Genius of Love, which is why another connection to me with Mariah is like all of these different ways of presenting vocal material, like all the different ways to do it. It's so interesting. So I want to get your opinion about that before we move on. Like, is this a song that means as much to you as it did to Mariah maybe? Are you a fan of Genius of Love? Let me ask it that way. I do like the song. I love it. And it wasn't until I started DJing. I was just like, no, I need to add this in there because I I might be more prone to play the original

than just to remind people where these songs came from. Yeah, yeah, so. But then you can always go into one of the other songs. Absolutely, absolutely. I love it. One of my favorite parts is, what you're going to do when you get out of jail? I'm going to have some fun.

Everybody goes to the line. I just love just the different conversations. Where does that conversation take you place, by the way? I mean, just like in meeting in the ladies' room by climax, you know, at the beginning of the song, she's talking about, I need to get myself together. Where's my jury? Can we talk?

I need to powder my nose. You know, right. And I know what that means. I don't seen the Studio 54 documentary. So Sly and Robbie are in the next studio. Tom, Tom, Club, Chris and Tina are like, come on in here, contribute to the song. We just gave you a shout out.

We love your music. So they come in there and they record three layers of claps. So the claps you hear on this song are, they went through the whole seven minutes. minute-long version and just 21 minutes of clapping. There's no clap looping? It's 21 minutes of Sly and Robbie on claps in this in the mix in there. Wow. Yeah, which is really amazing. So as I mentioned, this is one of the most sampled songs of all time. It's in the canon as a song itself and as a reuse use. So it's been sampled. It's been interpolated. One of the more famous ones,

one of the earliest ones is this is Grand Master Flash and the Furious Five. And it's actually not a sample. It's an interpolation. It's nasty. We try to get to some rapping. There you go. 19802. This is how we rap. Okay. And I don't give the crap.

You know, I would have loved to be that guy who's auditioning to be a rapper from like famous rappers back then. You come here like, I got those skills. They're really good. They're like, no, you're doing it wrong. I don't know. There's something wrong about it. It's not just me, right?

Not just you. I want to see those people audition. Oh, God. Because they all have the same voice. Yeah. Well, and I'd be remiss if I didn't include this one sample, out of many, Return of the Mac. And it's just the beat.

Oh, that's about to say. Okay. Really? That's sly and Robbie on those claps, right? Now we know. That's a distinctive clap. Come on. Yes, you did.

Oh, my God. It's like, he's like a more. Mark Morrison. He's more of a more a vocally interesting version of Keith Sweat. Because, you know, because Keith Sweat being all about it, you got it. But he's like... One of my favorite things about Return of the Mac and long-time listeners the show, know this, is that it is Chuckie Booker's games.

I was going to say, why you want to play games? Why you want to play? Why you want to play? And he hit that one note. Why you want to play? Shout out for Chuckie Booker. Chuckie Booker, man. I got to do a wellness check on him.

I just randomly did a wellness check on Jason James Richter and LaChate. Uh-oh. They're all doing well. Okay. Yeah. We was worried. Is this like a service that you, is it like go funny? It's just randomly.

I'll just randomly think about what happened to that little boy that was on free willy. Let me just see. Okay. He got into his last post was a week ago. All right. And I checked on La Chatt. You know, but you need some gum. Like some thunder.

You know, just how are these people doing? I might do one of those on a big tuck. Like, we're like, yeah, just do a random wellness check and go on Twitter and be like, y'all, I was thinking about such and such, and they all right. All right, so that's genius of love.

That's Tom Tom Club. That's the origin. We have samples. We got interpolations all over the place. But it is also the bedrock of Mariah Carey's fantasy, which is the bedrock itself of the song ostensibly we're talking about today,

which is the remix. So layers are layering in real time right in front of our very eyes. Let's get into Mariah Carey's fantasy. This is from 1995. We talked a little bit about, producer co-writer Dave Jam Hall. As I was doing my research,

I learned the fact that I did not know. Besides having produced Mary J. Blige is what's 401. Do you know who producer Dave Jam Hall was married to at the time this record was made? Nope. Tell us. Ms. Wanda Sykes. What? I did not know this.

I did not know this. True fact. I didn't know that. True fact. Maybe Wanda didn't know that. Okay. Wanda may have been in the studio the day the song was recorded. For all I know.

We do not know. But he did what's the 411 for Mary? He did Mary's 401. What's the 401? He had a hot hand because I'll tell you, man. These are huge records. These are huge, huge record. The bedrock of fantasy is a two-bar loop of Genius of Love.

And on top of it, there's some light synth sprinkled. I'm going to play you a little moment. Here's just from the instrumental backing track. In the mix, you may not even notice this because it's very, very minor, but it does out a little bit of juice. So here is the fantasy instrumental and some of the addition. sauce.

This is really cool. I'd never noticed this before. Right? I'd never noticed that little kind of, it's almost like a rose or something like that, but it's really buried. It almost sounds like a vocoder. Oh, yeah, because she up in there,

you don't hear all that. So, you know, but now that's real pretty. It's really pretty. Yeah, it's really basic. And it kind of mirrors sweet, sweet, sweet fancy. Any conversation about Mariah, and especially this song,

would be, I'd be remiss to not mention something that only Mariah can do, and that's this. That's called the whistle tone. Oh, my God. Can you do the whistle? What is it? Only Mariah could do. We're going to forget about Betty and Minnie. Well, I was going to get into me in a second.

I mean modern day. Let me reset. You're absolutely right. It's not the only one, but she is certainly known for it in the modern era. Oh, yeah, the way she colored her whistle and the approach. Yeah, she started that. As a singer, when you hear that, what is it? it mean to you as it like is it something that you've ever tried to do or used is it achievable

by mortals what's the story with the whistle i look at it as this tiny hole in your throat that you can push air out of and if you can get sound out of it then and also men are because we can get lower right if we can access a whistle we can always have a broader range than than that so Is it true, I'm going to be the dumb layman here. Is it true that women don't have a real falsetto? So men have falsettos. Women have head voices. Okay.

It's just a term. It's just a term. Yeah. But they're both technically the head voice. Is that right? So, yes, it's just that when we're doing our false, it's a false note because that's not our natural, you know what I'm saying? Yeah. Yeah.

I always had a pretty good falsetto. Yeah. That was my sweet spot. Yeah. I've heard your first. I love your false set. Oh, thanks, man. I appreciate it.

I appreciate it. We'll have to ask you later. What's that? I say I want to hear it later. Okay. You got some rest. Yeah, because that whistle tone, from what I understand, it's like, we, humans aren't really sure how it's produced because you can't actually get a camera from what I

understand. Like, in the epiglottis, it's like it's very, from a medical standpoint, it's beyond what I could understand. But, like, there's a little mystery. to how it is actually produced. It's one of those things that you just kind of feel and aim and practice

until you get, I suppose. That's literally how it was for me because I found it out, I found out that I had a whistle by laughing. What? It would just be this screech. Like, oh, there is.

Like, all of that is range. That's range. It's just, and it's a note. You know what I'm saying? But you find by accident. Yeah. Yeah, it just happened. You're like, oh, I got them around.

And then literally a friend was like, you should try that next time. you record a song like try to access that right and so you just spend time with it and then you learn how to access it sometime well because except for i'm sorry no no please except for when layla hathaway trying to teach me the the two-note thing i thought i was going to hurt myself oh is that singing two notes at once a chord any and anytime that i do like the two vol in because the matter of fingers no wait i did hit two notes when i did um during sam's vibe on tiny desk but that wasn't on purpose oh wow that was not on purpose i just knew that i it was there i just

through the whistle was there, but how it was going to come out. You know, this thing pays a mortgage. You know, like, I just, so. You have one of the best voices out there, period. It's amazing what you're able to do. And, by the way, as a comedy writer, I'll say you do it in very funny ways. Like, your sense of humor is still there. I always respect Fonte Coleman is somebody who I have a great deal of respect for it,

because he reached out to us on comedy. And it was, you know, and we already knew Little Brother, but then it was like, oh, man, you know what, now we think about all them little brother albums are hilarious. Yeah. So, yeah, I think that comedy and music often go together. Mm-hmm. And since you mentioned it, I'd be remiss if in the conversation about Mariah Carey and the whistle, if I didn't play a little bit of mini riperton for you.

This is maybe the most famous whistle prior to Mariah, and this is loving you from 1975. Oh. So crazy. Shannis and Shantay Moore covering this song is amazing. Especially when Shantay does it, because then she goes, she goes higher. She was up there chirping, talking to the clouds. It's a magical sound. It's like a Disney movie or something.

Of course, a lot of people know this, but if you didn't, that's Maya Rudolph's mom singing. Yes, that's Maya Rudolph. I only found this out when I was researching, but at the very end of this song, listen to what she sings. Maya, Maya, Maya. How did I miss that? How did I miss that? We all missed that. Maya didn't miss that.

Baby Maya. I've worked with Maya Rudolph on a couple occasions. And they talk about it a lot. He got the cassette type of that. Maya Rudolph was in the room, young baby Maya, and that's what she's singing. I love that. A little sweet moment there. All right, so that's Mariah.

That's fantasy. That's the original version. But we came here today to talk about the remix. And the Bad Boy remix featuring ODB was done by Puff, along with his fellow bad boy hitman member, Nishim Myrick. So, do y'all break it down for me? What did this remix mean to hip-hop? How did it change things?

I mean, again, you know, I was, I feel like I was immersed in the scene, both as like a DJ and an active listener. I was buying all the mixtapes. And I do think that, you know, this was one of the times where we realized hip hop wasn't just taking over R&B, it was taking over pop. And I feel like for the next 10 to 15 years, almost all hip hop. I mean, I'm sorry, almost all pop and definitely R&B, it was, it was so heavily hip hop influenced that it was hard to figure out where hip hop ended

and where R&B began or where pop began. You know what I mean? So I remember especially like when everybody really started singing like, you know, like when Drake started like to really do his thing. Like by 2009 it was like, man, is it hip hop if they don't rap one verse, you know, if it's just all singing. Right. Does it even count as hip-hop?

Yeah. I mean like the first time I noticed like people were calling, you know, like some of the greats. I'm talking about Lauren Hill. miseducation. You know, like, there's some songs on there where she doesn't really, you know, rhyme a verse. Like, she sings, you know, the entire song. So I feel like we'd already been heading in that direction, but definitely for the next 10 or 15 years, like that's all that we were, until pop sort of became kind of where it currently lives, which I always say, like, right now, most pop singers, like the Dool-A-Liep is, they're singing over what is essentially EDM music.

They're singing over, like, you know, if you, if you took their vocal, off and you put a few more techno flares in there, it would be a straight up dance track. But, you know, for quite some time, at least from 95 until 2010, you could make the argument that hip hop was, for lack of a better term pop. You know, hip hop had all the biggest artists, you know, from ludicrous, the Tia, I, Missy Elliott. We were definitely driving that culture for a long time. And I do feel like, as many people have noticed, that has changed, you know, like now, you know, a lot of what is hip-hop, with the exception of ironically of the women.

You know, I think that, you know, if you were to ask who are the big male hip-hop stars, like they're not the household names the way that they were. You know, now it's mainly about, you know, the Cardi's, the Magans, you know, Sawidi, Ice Spice, but there was a time when, you know, hip-hop was just, was running things. And I feel like this was a point where hip-hop and pop really merged in a way that it did, you know, now it almost seemed passe. Like, you know, no heads would turn if, you know, I mean, do it leave, but literally do the song with the baby.

So, I mean, like, and nobody cared. You know, they judged it on the merits of the song. But, like, the time when, like, you could take a pop princess and put it with a hip-hop person, that seems very passe. I've got to ask you real quick. What's your favorite remix of all time? Oh, it's between me and Sianca's new phone who this. Uh-oh.

Or me and our Relentix's. remix to FaceTime. You know, I always got to plug myself for you. No, I love it. I love it. This is something I know about you. But if we're talking about a remix that like, ain't it funny is a good one.

That they say, Funnay. With everybody's favorite rapper. Also, the Bootylicious remix. Oh, and the Rex, the Teddy Riley remix to Bumps. No, that's MC Hammer. That's MC Hammer.

All I want to do is zoom a zoom, yeah. The remix to Rumpshed? The remix of Rumpshed? Oh, wow, wait. Yes. I think we had to play a little bit of that. Oh, oh, oh.

But you know what? Hold that. Hold that. That man, Scoop, love like this by faith. Hello, hello. Okay, that song. You got a $100 bill, put your hands up. Okay.

We got to, you know what, we should talk about that song. I will say, let me just pull it up, because that's not the name of it. It's not called that. It's called, God, it's Fat Man Scoop. Is it love like this? Yeah, love like this.

Never has someone to show me a love like this before. What's your Zodiac side? Be Faithful is the name of the song. I'm going to pull the DJ card and say, I knew it. It's called Be Faithful. Oh, yes it is. Yes, it is. And that song.

Yes, it is. Okay. I did not know that. When that song came out, this is a DJ story real quick. When that song came out, let me tell you, it drove me nuts because I would say for the time it came out probably like 2002 somewhere in there until

like honestly like 2010. I had to hear that song five times. It was unavoidable. When I was writing an early script, I actually had my character to go to five different clubs on one night and every single club he went into was playing that song. It was like, what shows Zodiac son? You notice from Save to Last Dance. That's why it really popped off. Is that what really did it? Yes. It's just like it's just like how the Joe Button song was in one movie.

Pump, pump it up. I think it's the first step up to the streets. Oh, I know that, but his song, Fire, was in Mean Girls. Fires and Mean Girls, you're right. You're right. There were certain movie usages that made these songs ubiquitous. But I will say, you're right. It's an absolutely fantastic use of faith and about two other songs.

It's got the engine, engine number nine. I'm in New York. If my train falls off like that. Pick it up, pick it up. Pick it up. Pistro! Who's fucking tonight? You know, like you had all that stuff.

We have gotten off topic, but we're talking about big club hits. And one big club hit was, of course, the fantasy remix, featuring ODB, after the break. We'll be back with more on this song. And we will talk about her collaborator on this song. I'm talking about Aeson Unique, Dirtiest Man Alive, Dirt McGirt, DJ Cooley Hot, Joe Bananas, The specialist, Dirt Dog, Osiris.

Osiris, Dirty McDurster, big baby Jesus, himself. The old dirty doggy. I had to say it like that because that's how he says on this song. Presumably for radio. He's just, to his friends, old dirty bastard. And we're going to talk about that. Russell. After the break.

Well, he's Russell Jones to his mom. But he's ODB and we'll be right back. Welcome back to one song. Now, I want to change things up a little bit. I want to tell a story, the story of how old dirty bastard got on this track and how he worked on this track. Now, the recording of fantasy, like we said, record label wasn't happy with it. Tommy Motola, her husband at the time, not happy about it.

But Mariah was like, I want to do this song specifically with my drunk uncle, Oh, Dirty Bastard. And true to form, they set up some record time. and old Dirty Baster showed up three hours late and apparently had been drinking all day. Oh gosh, I was going to ask if he was inebriated for real.

He was not sober. Your instincts were right on this. He showed up and one of the first things he said was he needed Mouet and Newport's and it was apparently because he was three hours late it's around midnight. You know, this is, I feel like in New York now

you can find Mouette and Newport at midnight, but maybe in 1995 that wasn't a thing. So they tell the interns, who I guess are all white to go get him Moetton Newports. They're like, we probably can't find that. He tells them that they are, he said, y'all's the white devils.

Y'all don't want black people to have. So the white devils went to go get Moetton Newports. They searched for an hour. They came back with Heineken's. He was irate. I got to say, if I'm old dirty bastard, I'm kind of, I'm kind of team old dirty master of that.

Like, Heineken is not Newport, you guys. He apparently took the Newport. I mean, he took the Heineken. We'll never find out they found out they found the Newport. He took the Heineken. He smashed it on the ground. He was like, all right, let's work. He records the famous line, me and Mariah,

go back like babies and pacifiers, which is just an amazing thing. song. It's just an amazing lyric for any song, but he accomplished that line. Should we hear that line from the song? Go for it. All right. Here we go. Me and Mariah, go back like babies pass a fire. And that was it. He recorded that line and he's like, I need to sleep. He lays down and goes to sleep, apparently for a whole hour. Everybody's just sitting around waiting him for, you know, to wake up and do some more. Old dirty gets up.

He records the next line. Old Dirty Dog, don't liar. Keep your fantasy hot like fire. And then went back to sleep for another 45 minutes. At some point in the evening, he tells the engineer, he's like, hey, I hope you got your shit right because I ain't doing it twice. I have a theory about that. I have a theory.

He wasn't actually talking to the engineer. I think that was his next verse. Make sure you got your shit set right because I ain't doing it twice. It almost rhymes too much. I think he was... Should have kept that. I think he was still right. They should have put it in.

Some bars. He goes to sleep again. This time, apparently, he kicked off one shoe and the whole studio smelled terrible. There was some other stuff that he might have done. I'm not going to go into it. You can find the story online. I don't want y'all to tune out. But like, it's a mess.

And by the way, the whole time Tommy Motola and Mariah are calling every hour in the hour asking, how's it going? Like, is it going well? like what are you recording so it took them all night to record that one verse and if you listen to it you hear that his voice feels very punched in like it's not like one continuous take like there's a reason why like even some lines like I'm a little bit country I'm a little bit rock and roll I'm soul to soul like if you listen to that part in particular like the lyrics are like lapped over each other not for effect but just because they just didn't line up.

Just one idea at a time. Yeah, it was just one idea at a time. But you know, when you write me and Mariah go back like baby to fastball. You take a nap. You take a nap. Listen. Long nap. He might have known in his brain, you know what?

This is good enough to be a part of hip hop history. Yeah. So he leaves the studio. They finally play the track from Mariah and Tommy Motala. And this story doesn't go the way you think it's going to go. They loved it. From the first time they heard it, they knew they had a hit. So they said, hey, that was really good.

Can you get Old Derry Bastard to come back and add more cities? We like when he said New York is in the house. The engineers are like, no, I don't know if you know this, but he's going to charge us the same amount all over, like $15,000, which is a lot of money back in 1995, but maybe not that much for a Mariah Carey song. But they're like, no, no, no, we need more cities. We need more towns.

Like, we love that part. So he gets another $15,000 to come back. Shout to Corey Summers, by the way, the guy who told this story because he was there that night. He came back and he added more cities. That's when he adds Japan. Because if it sounds like he's just throwing out places, well, there's a reason for that because, you know, he's just in the studio. And by the way, when he came back to record those other places, he was apparently like hungover and tired. So he didn't fall to sleep a bunch of times, but you're working with an even more grumpy old dirty bath.

So that to me is part of the genius of old dirty. Like, you know, you hear about Hank Williams, you know, when you hear about country. You hear about, oh, they had to give Keith Richards a whole new set of blood because his blood was so tainted. Like they had to get, like these are stories told about other. But I feel like we don't know all the stories about our friends in hip hop in the same way. And to me, this story is like, I don't know if I want to be there that night, but I'm happy that it has. I'm happy that a man could be so free as to insult the interns, smash a bottle of beer on the... Make people wait while he sleeps, subject them to smells, and then take all night to record one of the shortest verses, I think, on a feature that you're ever going to come across.

But you know what? It worked for him. It worked for old dirty. I mean, like, I don't know. Is there a part of you as an artist who I'm not... You seem like a very good individual. But is there a part of you that secretly likes to, like, Like, would love to be just unhinged, just unhinged for once. I am, I am unhinged, but I'm not unhinged in a way, at least to my experience from myself, because I have to live with myself, but also the people around me, you know, that are not, yes, man. I can be unhinged with my transparency and my honesty, but it's never to, like, truly hurt somebody's feelings.

Like, I'm a joke. Like, I'm a jokester. You know, if I can find some areas where we can, we can joke and, and throw a little read in there, like, that's, that's cute. But you're not hurting anybody. No, no, no, no. No, and I think that, listen, the people here

at one song, we do not promote bullies, so to see. But every now and then, it's just something fun. I think I enjoy it. I think because, honestly, this is getting really real. I think because I am just generally such a polite person that the same way like British humor is always based on people being loud and saying things obnoxious that they would never say because they're also wittish.

But I feel like sort of the same way, like it's fun for me to hear these stories about old dirty bastard and Rick James just being unhinged, like not caring at all. You know what I mean? Rick James was a whole other level of unhinged and James Brown was another one, especially with how they fire people. I mean, to me, I just, I love Old Derry Bastard. I think he was one of the most.

innovative rappers of all time. We're talking today about fantasy with Mariah Carey, but like we're talking about the same guy who did, got your money, you know what I'm saying? Shimmy, shimmy, yaw. Shimmy, yeah. I mean, you know, nowadays we look at Old Dirty and we think, man, maybe maybe we needed to be better friends.

Maybe we needed to help this man. But what do you think about that? I mean, like, what do you think about Old Dirty's, you know, what made him great and, you know, what's his legacy in hip-hop? I think in my mind, his legacy, just being a human being is how many different dynamics there are, these different nuances to how our brains process things, the psychology behind things that we've experienced and how we cope with it. I think that's right I think that's right Yeah and also just not having

Maybe not having access to You know therapy Exactly During that time This is this is not at a time where Black people are unpacking Things let's unpack that You know we didn't

You know so It's the role of like You know where was hip hop on mental illness Why I think that We were definitely weren't talking about it back then You know what I mean Like the idea of a thing therapist, you know.

Yeah. We were still a little bit of ways from that. Yeah. Totally. I mean, and, you know, again, I think to a certain extent, you know, I just love a good story. I mean, the idea that this guy was a fugitive, but he was still showing up at concerts. You know, when they dropped the W in 2000, he was already on the run from, he had, like, literally run out of rehab.

Like, he was out of rehab in Pasadena, California, and they said, we got to. to take it down to the to the court and dude just said i'm not doing that and ran away and like they said well we don't have you know this is not a rehab where we you know restrain anybody like you just literally ran away and so for the next couple months he was showing up at concerts showing up at record release albums he doesn't get caught until he's in philadelphia signing autographs at a mcdonald's drive-thru and they said that the crowd got so big with people coming up to get signatures from ODB that the cops didn't know who was over there

causing a commotion. They just went over there because they were like who are all these people hanging out McDonald's drive-through when they figured out that he had bench warrants. That was when they took him back in. But I mean, like, to me, this is who old dirty bastard was. And his cousin, the Riza said, my cousin was a genius.

He was like, old dirty bastard was a genius. And to a certain extent, I feel that way. I feel like he was untethered by social norms. And I'm not, obviously, he did some things that, you know, are not excusable or funny. But, you know, just from an artistic point of view, there's a part of me that respects that sort of wild man that he was. You know what I mean? So where do we land after all this, Amariah Carey? Like, do we, you know, what do you as a performer, you know, take away from this artist and this time?

I think she's an artist to definitely study from the ways in which she has honed her skills and not only the singing in the writing as well so yeah and also take a listen to Luther to see where those worlds meet because there are also other ways in which artists

like I said, influence and inspire each other. I love how you are not afraid to champion yourself. I actually truly appreciate that because I think sometimes, you know, we want credit for being like, you know, humble and not sort of putting our names to the conversation on stuff. But quite frankly, there is so much music. There's so much TV. There's so much culture out there that sometimes if you're not actively out pushing yourself,

like it's really easy to get lost in the mix. Absolutely. That being said, who are, you know, they don't have to be, they could be current, they could be in the past. Who are like the three artists that, you know, you feel, I'm not even going to say inspire you, but, you know, make you like, oh, yeah, you know, like, this is, this is why I'm an artist. I want to make something that makes someone feel the way I feel when I listen to, Blank. Okay, I can actually just give you my Mount Rushmore. Yeah, I'm Rushmore.

And it's of ladies, gentlemen. And then we have the personality and the foundation of which that those things sit on. So on the lady's side, we have Badu, Phyllis Hyman, Lisa Fisher, and Sarah Avon. Of course, I got to give an honorable mention to Jill Scott and Layla Hathaway. Then over here on the gentleman side, we have B-slave, formerly known as the Gospel singer Tone. We have Rick James. We have Nate Daw. And we have Luther. And then, of course, as an honorable mention over there, we have Philip Bailey of Earth, Wind and Fire. And we have Crash Cut. Levon Bennett. If you don't know who that is, just go ahead and look him up.

All right. That's nice. It'll make sense. And then the personality side down here that those two things set on. We have Little Richard Bugs Bunny Babs Bunny. Babs Bunny. We have Jim Carrey. Specifically from

Liar, Liar, Ace Ventura, and The Mask. My parents took me to go see the mask at the movie theater. Who's Babs Bunny? Babs Bunny. Okay, so that's from Tiny Tunes. Yeah. And so you got Buster and Babs Bunny. Those are the like the grandchildren of

just the new bunnies that are coming up. And Babs is me, and I am Babs. Okay. And then, of course, we step into this world. Ricky Smiley, Dave Chappelle, Arnest J, Monique. Of course. Stephen Wright, Bo Burnham, Jamie Fox. There you go.

Like, these are, I'm also inspired by comedians. I was going to say you have almost as many, if not more, a comedy. Yeah, yeah, so it's, I grew up on that, you know, so it's... You know, it's funny, there's actually some overlap in your list because when I was talking to Neil Brennan, he said I knew Dave Chappelle was great because he seemed like Malcolm X and Bugs Bunny had a child. And I was like, yeah, I absolutely see that. And I think, look, we talked about Mariah doing sort of pop R&B and then becoming, you know,

one of the people who was merging it with hip-hop. where R&B goes next. None of us can say for sure, but I can say that this group of people here feel like you absolutely are part of that future. And we want to thank you for coming through today. So thank you so much, Duran. Where can we find you on the internet?

Yes. Oh, I'm so glad you asked. So you can find me on the TikToks and the Instagrams and the Twitters. Listen, your mama named your Twitter, and that's what I'm going to call you. So, yeah, if you say X, nobody doesn't handle them. Yep, DeRan Bernard, D-U-R-A-N-D, B-E-R-N-A-A-R-A-R-A-R-A.

And that's also my website as well. You can find merch. We also got socks. Make sure you get your little bits. Hey, we got, come on, socks. My face on it. I always wear, I'm wearing socks with a face right now. I love two socks.

Michelle Obama. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, indeed. I will buy some face socks. Face socks brothers. You must too. They're called the little bits.

And we got mango butter too for all the dry face to have. I want to make sure that, you know, you stay moisturized. We don't want you out here in these streets looking crazy. I feel personally attacked. Listen, listen, listen, but I'm also going to provide a solution. Okay. I'm going to state the problem, but in that same breath, we're going to provide the solution. You know, that's what you're going to learn about me.

I'll tell a joke, but I'll never tell you a lie. I got off a plane. Luxury, help me in this thing. All right. Well, I'm producer, DJ, and songwriter luxury. That's L-U-X-X-U-Y on the internet. And I'm actor, writer, director, and sometimes old dirty DJ, Diallo Riddle. You can find me at Diallo, Dioa, LLO on Instagram, or Diallo on TikTok.

And this is one song. We will see you next time. Yay. Baby, baby, baby, come on. Baby, come on. Baby, come on.