The Roof (song)

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"The Roof (Back in Time)"

Single by Mariah Carey
from the album Butterfly
Released	1998
Format	CD single, 5" single, 12" single (Europe, South Africa)
Genre	R&B
Length	5:14
Label	Sony
Writer(s)	Mariah Carey, Cory Rooney, Jean Claude Oliver, Samuel Barnes, Albert Johnson, Kejuan Waliek Muchita
Producer(s)	Mariah Carey, The Trackmasters
Mariah Carey singles chronology
"Breakdown" (1998)	"The Roof (Back in Time)" (1998)	"My All" (1998)

"The Roof", also known as "The Roof (Back in Time)", is a song co-written by American singer Mariah Carey, Cory Rooney and the Trackmasters (Samuel Barnes and Jean Claude Oliver) for Carey's seventh album Butterfly (1997). Co-produced by Carey and the Trackmasters, it is built around a sample of the Mobb Deep song "Shook Ones Pt. II". The protagonist of this piano-driven, hip hop-influenced track recalls an intimate encounter on a rooftop. 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). It was released in South Africa and some European countries such as Austria and Spain.^{[citation needed]} It was not released commercially in the U.S., though its music video received rotation on MTV and VH1.

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. Eventually, Carey gets out of her limo and into the rain to relieve 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."^[1]

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