her family after becoming romantically involved with a black man, and finds the singer in the present walking through a heavy rainstorm in New York. Background In 2000, Carey parted from Columbia Records and signed a record-breaking $100 million five-album recording contract with Virgin Records America (EMI Records). She often stated that Columbia had regarded her as a commodity, with her separation from Tommy Mottola exacerbating her relations with label executives. However, in July 2001, Carey had suffered a physical and emotional breakdown. Due to this situation, Virgin and 20th Century Fox delayed the release of Carey's film Glitter, as well as its soundtrack of the same name. Both the releases received negative feedback and were commercially unsuccessful. This also resulted in her deal with Virgin being bought out for $50 million. Soon after, Carey flew to Capri, Italy for a period of five months, in which she began writing material for her new album, stemming from all the personal experiences she had endured throughout the past year. Carey later said that her time at Virgin was "a complete and total stress-fest [...] I made a total snap decision which was based on money and I never make decisions based on money. I learned a big lesson from that." Later that year, she signed a contract with Island Records, valued at more than $24 million, and launched the record label MonarC. To add further to Carey's emotional burdens, her father, with whom she had little contact since childhood, died of cancer that year. Release Throughout the first years of her career, Carey's musical styles mainly involved pop influenced R&B. Additionally, her image was of a reserved and modestly dressed female, or as Carey's later described it "the 90s version of Mary Poppins". As the 1990s wore on, Carey began featuring rappers on remixes, and began infusing hip-hop into her musical palette. As her music changed, so too did her image, which became more sexual, and aimed at younger audiences than the more contemporary appeal of her earlier works. According to Michael Paoletta from Billboard, "Through the Rain" was used not only as a vehicle for listeners to become more in-tune with Carey's personal struggles, but also as a means to "re-capture" her audience throughout the earlier stages of her career. A contemporary and pop ballad, he felt the song would find "much embrace" from her older fans, while her audience