According to MTV, it is producer Jermaine Dupri’s idea. Dupri is also Jackson’s boyfriend and the producer of Carey’s The Emancipation of Mimi.
Dupri told MTV, "That’s been on my mind for a couple weeks now. The hardest part is figuring out a song that fits both of them, because you have two different styles of artists, and the thing when you’re dealing with divas is you don’t want to overshadow either one, so if you were to do a song for them, it would have to work where both of them would feel they were on the same pedestal, or else someone’s gonna have a problem."
Mariah Carey recorded When You Believe in 1998 with Whitney Houston.