The Roof

Album: Butterfly (1997)
Charted: 96
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Songfacts®:

  • This song finds Mariah Carey reminiscing about a sexy rooftop encounter during a rainy night. Released as a single in Europe, it fared poorly, peaking at #96 in the UK and #63 in The Netherlands.
  • Mariah Carey co-produced the song with Poke & Tone and Cory Rooney. The track is built around a sample from Mobb Deep's "Shook Ones (Part II)." Carey's use of the 1995 hip-hop track was inspired by her hearing it played on the radio during an upstate New York drive.
  • Mariah Carey started an affair with New York Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter while still married to music mogul Tommy Mottola. This song was inspired by their first kiss on a rain-drenched rooftop.

    Carey recounted in her 2020 memoir, The Meaning of Mariah Carey, they didn't get fully physical until after she divorced her husband. "Neither of us had wanted to cheapen our romance by cheating on my marriage," she wrote. "It would've been justified - they were such seductive situations, and my miserable marriage was in ruins at best - but it wouldn't have been right."
  • The singer also disclosed in The Meaning of Mariah Carey that another Butterfly song, "My All," is about "risking her life to have a night with Jeter in Puerto Rico."

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