Honey (Mariah Carey Song) - Background and Recording

Background and Recording

After the success of her urban crossover album Daydream, Carey began ushering more control over the creative aspects of her career. In doing so, she began pursuing a more hip-hop oriented sound, something much different than anything she had ever recorded. However, she was still writing ballads with Afanasieff, but began looking for more hip-hop/R&B producers to helm part of her new project. The song was recorded in February 1997. After Carey began working on the song with Q-Tip, they brought the lyrics, samples and melody over to Puff Daddy, who as a producer, had just earned his second number one single on the Hot 100 with "Mo Money Mo Problems". Due to rumors of Puffy's overbearing nature, Carey recorded her vocals separately, until she gave him a few demos to choose from. Puffy explained why Carey recorded her vocals separately, and his feelings regarding having worked with her:

A lot of people feel I'm overbearing, so I wasn't allowed in the studio when she did her vocals.I'm trying to work on that, I'm such a perfectionist, sometimes I don't give people the chance to breathe. So I've been banned from a lot of studios. Mariah until she thought it was perfect, like a hundred times. She gave me like a hundred tracks to choose from.

Puffy expressed his respect for Mariah and her craft, mentioning that she re-did her vocals many times until she felt they were perfect. After they had the vocals, Carey and Puffy began working on the song's hook and incorporating the music samples and blending them into the bridge and chorus. After the song was completed, Combs was very confident with the song, calling it "slammin'", but because of its heavy hip-hop influence, he felt only cautiously optimistic about the song's commercial success. On a more personal note, "Honey" served as Carey's first single after her separation from estranged husband, Tommy Mottola, who also lead her current record label, Columbia.