Missy Elliott Recalls Making “The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly)” Music Video

In accordance with the industry-wide celebration of the 50-year anniversary of hip-hop, Rolling Stone put out their list of the 150 “greatest” music videos of all time in the genre. Coming in at No. 1 on the list was Missy Elliott’s “The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly),” released in the summer of 1997 as her debut single for her eventual first studio album Supa Dupa Fly.

Rolling Stone‘s placement of “The Rain” is surely justifiable, as the spontaneity and creativeness of the visuals, coupled with the firepower of the single, helped chart a path to superstardom for Elliott. What made the video particularly memorable was Elliott’s inclusion of the puffy blow-up suit she donned for most of it, staring into a fish-eye lens while rapping the generation-defining hit.

[RELATED: The Origins of Missy Elliott]

When catching wind of the honor Rolling Stone bestowed upon her, Elliott took to Twitter to revisit the day she recorded the video and the mishap involved with it.

“Fun fact I had to go to a gas station in Brooklyn NY to get air in this blow up suit & the suit blew up so big I couldn’t fit in the car so I had to walk back to set down the street in this outfit in BROOKLYN,” she tweeted Thursday (Aug. 10). “dem ppl was riding pass like she must be high.”

Fun fact I had to go to a gas station in Brooklyn NY to get air in this blow up suit & the suit blew up so big I couldn’t fit in the car so I had to walk back to set down the street in this outfit in BROOKLYN😳 dem ppl was riding pass like she must be high😩🤣😂 https://t.co/NnSv9TVR0G

— Missy Elliott (@MissyElliott) August 10, 2023

Hilariously, though, in the reply section of the tweet, Elliott confirmed that she actually had been smoking a bit of marijuana at the time.

“I had smoked tho.” she joked in a subsequent tweet.

Along with landing atop Rolling Stone‘s recent list, Missy Elliott also landed on our Top 50 Rappers of all time list Friday (August 11), as we noted that she “knew how to capture fans through her inventive videos, songs and work, often with equally-inventive producer Timbaland.” Speaking of Timbaland, too, he revealed earlier this year that he and Elliott are hard at work on her next solo album, expected to arrive at some point this year.

Photo by Paras Griffin/Getty Images