An A&R rep has discussed Ol’ Dirty Bastard’s bizarre recording session for his verse on Mariah Carey’s track Fantasy (Remix).
According to Cory Rooney who was speaking to Billboard, the late rapper had a penchant for being late and drinking plenty of liquor while in the studio.
“He finally showed up, three hours late, and when he got there, it was about 10:30 at night. He had been drinking, and was on the phone when he walked in. He was irate, screaming at some girl how he was going to go kill her, he’s going to kick her ass…and then whispering, ‘I love you.’ Then screaming again. This went on for an hour,” Rooney said.
“He finally came out and was like, ‘Yo, pardon me, this bitch is driving me crazy. I need some Moet and Newport’s before we get into this record’… He started yelling at the assistants, calling them white devils and saying, ‘You white devils, y’all don’t want black people to have shit.'”
The rapper, who received $15,000 for his verse, then recorded in between frequent stages where he’d go to sleep and get back up again.
“He said one line, ‘me and Mariah, go back like babies with pacifiers,’ then paused. He said, ‘Yo, I need to take a break,’ and went to sleep for 45 minutes. He woke up and was like, ‘Yo, let me hear what I did so far.’ We played his one line back, he sang another line or two, and then slept for another hour. He would come up with a line, punch that in, and go back to sleep. He went to sleep three different times in the middle of trying to get that one verse done,” Rooney recalled.
However, the story didn’t end there as the rapper also featured on the video which brought about a whole load of other complications. The Wu-Tang Clan rapper was amazingly given the company credit card and promptly went about splashing the cash.
“ODB disappeared in a mall for a minute and we found him in a store trying to buy Louis Vuitton luggage. He said, ‘I’m going to use it for a scene.’ He came back to the set with all these bags of Tommy Hilfiger clothes and Timberlands. It was finally time for him to do his scene, and I promise you, he put on a pair of jeans and Timberlands, and said, ‘I’m not going to wear a shirt, I don’t need no clothes.’”
The “disastrous” shoot was hilariously made even worse when Carey had turned him on to peach schnapps a few days before. “He drank like two bottles of that. So between the hot sun and him drinking two bottles, what a disastrous day that was. The video was a miracle, a real miracle.”
Image: Consequence of Sound