The Roof (Back in Time)

"The Roof"
Song

"The Roof (Back in Time)" is a song written and produced by American singer Mariah Carey for her seventh album, Butterfly. It was co-written by Cory Rooney and the Trackmasters (Samuel Barnes and Jean Claude Oliver) and co-produced by the Trackmasters, and it is built around a sample of the Mobb Deep song "Shook Ones". The protagonist of this piano-driven, hip hop-influenced track recalls an intimate encounter on a rooftop. In the album liner notes for Butterfly, it is titled "The Roof". An alternate version of the song features a rap by Mobb Deep.

It was released as the album's fourth single in 1998 (see 1998 in music). Because of conflict between Carey and her record label, Sony, it was not released commercially in the U.S., though its music video received rotation on MTV and VH1. It was released in South Africa and some European countries such as Austria and Spain, where it performed poorly.

The single's main video, co-directed by Carey and Diane Martel, is based on the Mobb Deep version of the song. It shows Carey in a limousine on a dark and rainy night, recalling an intimate encounter on a rooftop. Eventually, Carey gets out of her limo and into the rain to relive her memories. The video was re-edited slightly for the version of the song without the rap by Mobb Deep, and the re-edited video was also released to MTV and VH1.

In 2003 Slant magazine named it the eighteenth greatest music video of all time, writing that it "finds the singer at her least artificial ... Carey displays a stark innocence and authentic vulnerability that had been missing from much of her previous work. Shot in a seedy hotel room and a dark limousine, the gritty images did plenty to redeem the singer of her bubblegum pop past."

David Morales and The Full Crew also created remixes of the song.