When discussing the impact of Mariah Carey having rappers featured on remixes of her own songs, Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes of the girl group TLC stated that Carey birthed the subgenre of Hip Pop Soul. For her fifth studio album, Daydream, Mariah Carey decided her music needed a bit more edge. She enlisted the help of Sean “Diddy” Combs, who was seeing an abundance of Billboard charting success with his coined genre “Hip Hop Soul”. Keeping the boom bap bassline of “Fantasy” as well as its sample of Tom Tom Club’s 1981 song “Genius of Love,” the producer and singer duo decided to add Wu-Tang Clan rapper Ol’ Dirty Bastard.

“Fantasy” became credited for popularizing rap artists on pop songs, and introduced to the pop market the power of R&B/Hip Hop collabs. Mariah Carey made it comfortable for pop artists to work with rappers, if their career needed a bit of a revival. Eventually, Mariah Carey would authenticate herself in the worlds of hip hop and R&B with the release of her 1997 album, Butterfly— which saw her have more creative freedom. The lead single for that project, “Honey,” would receive a sleeker Puffy treatment— instantly debuting atop the Billboard charts. Because of the easing in of “Fantasy,” critics viewed the transition into “Honey” as genuine.

While Mariah Carey remained true to her collaborations and remixes in the years following, other pop-oriented artists made this their priority. The late 90s into the 2000s would see artists like Jennifer Lopez, Beyoncé Knowles, and Justin Timberlake would benefit from rapper-singer chemistry. Hip Pop Soul should more so be seen as a crossover appeal mechanism that can be felt in parts of 2010 genres such as trap-pop.