Butterfly (Mariah Carey Album) - Writing and Composition

Writing and Composition

With a variety of writers and producers and its new musical direction for Carey, the album was always likely to be a commercial success. Carey and Combs wrote the lead single, "Honey". Combs believed this to be a good song but was uncertain how successful it would be as a release owing to its heavy hip-hop influence. The remix for "Honey" featured rapping lead vocals from Da Brat, The LOX and Mase, and some verses were rapped by Combs himself. The track was very different from Carey's previous recordings, and was described by author Chris Nickson as "street Hip-Hop music, with a booming bass." The song's melody was driven by Q-Tip's drum programming and Stevie J's keyboard notes. Combs's production gave the song a "light and airy" effect, further distancing it from Carey's contemporary sound. "Honey" featured musical samples from Treacherous Three's "The Body Rock", and "Hey DJ" from the World's Famous Supreme Team. The track used both hip-hop and R&B with traces of pop music and was described as a " catchy chorus, combining hip-hop and pop into something that simply wasn't going to be denied by anyone, and offering a powerful start to a record."

The album's second single, "Butterfly", was one of the ballads Carey wrote with Afanasieff. Carey described the song as the "favorite ballad she had ever written", one that was more personal than her previous work. Afanasieff, who composed the music with Dan Shea, handled the song's instrumentals, and added a few personal R&B touches. Another ballad Carey wrote with Afanasieff was "My All", written as a contrast to the album's general hip-hop flavor. Carey described the song as having "a lush sound and intense styling". It featured guitar arpeggios, which were synthetically created using sampling and keyboard notes. "The Roof", Butterfly's European single, incorporated fragments from Mobb Deep's "Shook Ones (Part II)", and was produced by Carey, Poke & Tone and Cory Rooney.

"I had the hook already, as well as a melody and lyric for the chorus. Then she and I collaborated on a new melody for the verses, and we did the first verse, and the second half of the second verse together."

—Carey, on working with Elliott on "Babydoll."

"Fourth of July", one of the album's slower ballads, was also written solely by Carey and Afanasieff but was not released as a single. The song was perceived to have jazz influences and was compared to some of Carey's older work such as "Vanishing" and "The Wind". The next two tracks on the record, "Breakdown" and "Babydoll", were described as "the album's backbone, its real declaration of independence" by Nickson. "Breakdown" was written by Carey and Puffy and included rap verses from Wish and Krayzie Bone from Bone Thugs-n-Harmony. Author Chris Nickson wrote that "'Breakdown' showed Mariah treading forcefully into territory that was new for her and making it her own." For "Babydoll", Carey teamed up with Elliott. The track was recorded in Atlanta, where Elliott resided, and included background vocals from Carey's long-time friend, Trey Lorenz. "Babydoll" was described as "a vocally driven piece", with strong jazz harmony provided by Cory Rooney. Other songs which incorporated R&B influence into ballads were "Whenever You Call" and "Close My Eyes", which were personally important to Carey due to their lyrical content. While both were similar ballads to Carey's previous work, Nickson said:

"While up to to the standard of anything Mariah had ever done before, suffered in comparison. But even here you could hear the new Mariah in the spareness of the arrangements and the way it was her voice, rather than any instrument, that controlled the song. She'd grown to the point where having less behind her really proved to be more, for the song and for her. It was notable, too, that like the other ballads on the record, these two leaned very much towards R&B."

Carey wrote the song "Fly Away (Butterfly reprise)" with famed house music producer David Morales. When imagining the concept for "Butterfly", Carey intended the song to be a house music record, but after writing it, made it into a ballad. Carey expressed a desire to feature her concept both on the house record, in addition to the ballad that would become "Butterfly". Morales took Carey's lyrics, concept and melody and added a house beat to it. For the album, Carey recorded a version of Prince's "The Beautiful Ones", featuring Dru Hill's lead singer Sisqó. The song was one of the last recorded tracks and was the only non-original song on Butterfly. The final song on the album was "Outside", a ballad that was written by Carey, Afanasieff and Rooney, about Carey's experience being biracial . Richard Harrington from The Washington Post described the album's subtle inclusion of both adult contemporary and R&B genres:

"There are two Mariah Careys on "Butterfly." One is the pop-oriented, ballad-leaning traditionalist who works very effectively with her longtime professional partner, composer-producer Walter Afanasieff. The other is a self-styled hip-hop fanatic who worked with Ol' Dirty Bastard on her last album and teams up here with several of that genre's movers and shakers, most notably Sean "Puffy" Combs, the godfather of hip-hop soul and the hottest producer in pop music today"