Songfacts®:

• Carey explained to Billboard magazine that O.O.C. is short for "Out Of Control": "Jay-Z said something to me that was really interesting, and I don't even know if he really remembers this. He's known me for a long time, and he's like, 'You need to use some of your phrases in your music.' I have my own little slang that I make up and say stupid stuff just for laughs. (On) the song 'O.O.C.' - that's a Swizz Beatz track - it means, 'Out of control.' So me and my friends will say that to each other, 'OK, you're a little O.O.C. right now, tone it on down.' Da Brat, who's a really good, close friend of mine since we worked on 'Always Be My Baby' - we wrote the lyrics together, and it was so fun. By saying (sings), 'I get so O.O.C./So out of control, baby' we could explain it. When somebody was helping me type up the lyrics, and they wrote 'Out of Control' in parentheses (by the song title), I was like, 'Get rid of that. It's 'O.O.C.'! Let them figure it out! It's not that tough! I say it in the next line!'"
• Carey: "'O.O.C.' is a song that, well, we went in with Swizz Beatz and I actually wrote that song with my friend Da Brat. And it's so amazing to write with someone who is also a rapper because she comes with a different set of, with a different perspective. And then we can put our minds together and come up with something really unique and cool and I think we both kinda understand each other in terms of where we come from as writers and so 'O.O.C.' seems to be like a favorite of a lot of people and that surprised me, because that night when we left the studio, I was like 'I don't know, how Swizz feels about it, I don't know, whatever' but I really like it."
• By the time she released E=MC2, her 11th studio album, collaborating with rappers was nothing new for the pop star. She started the practice when she invited 'Ol Dirty Bastard of Wu Tang Clan to rap on her "Fantasy" remix in 1995, which popularized the fusion of pop and hip-hop.