Missy Elliott - The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly)

1997

Missy Elliott - The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly) (1997) Director: Hype Williams Era: Golden Era Hip-Hop / Late-90s R&B Crossover (1997) - Missy Elliott's debut single and video marks the emergence of Afrofuturist aesthetics in mainstream rap, coinciding with the commercial peak of East Coast hip-hop and the rise of Timbaland's production dominance. Exceptional. This is among the most historically significant music videos in the hip-hop canon, confirmed by scholarly, critical, and popular consensus. It captures a precise cultural inflection point, the birth of a major artist's visual identity, the apex of a director's stylistic influence, and a watershed moment in Afrofuturist popular culture. Essential for any archive focused on 1990s hip-hop, Black visual culture, or the history of the music video form. Context: Released in mid-1997, 'The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly)' arrived at a pivotal juncture in hip-hop history, just months after the death of The Notorious B.I.G. and amid a commercial and artistic expansion of the genre into pop radio. Missy Elliott's debut single and its accompanying video introduced a radically new visual language for Black female artists: body-positive, technologically playful, and aesthetically avant-garde. The blow-up suit was a deliberate subversion of industry pressures Elliott faced regarding her size. Timbaland's syncopated, sample-flipping production, built on Ann Peebles' 1973 'I Can't Stand the Rain', coupled with Williams' fisheye maximalism, created a template for Afrofuturist hip-hop visuals that would define Elliott's entire visual career. The song peaked at #6 on the Billboard Hot R&B Airplay chart and earned a Grammy nomination for Best Rap Solo Performance. Director notes: This video, released to video programming on June 3, 1997, was the first music video in Missy Elliott's solo career directed by Hype Williams, marking the beginning of a long creative partnership. The video was filmed in Brooklyn, New York. Its most iconic element, a patent leather inflated suit resembling a trash bag, was worn by Elliott during a fisheye lens wide shot. Elliott has publicly recounted that the suit had to be inflated at a nearby Brooklyn gas station and became so large she could not fit back into her car, requiring her to walk back to set. The video was designed by Ron Norsworthy. It was nominated for Best Rap Video at the 1997 MTV Video Music Awards. In 2023, Rolling Stone ranked it #1 on their list of 150 Best Rap Music Videos of All Time. Williams' hallmark fisheye lens technique is prominently deployed throughout, consistent with his broader 1990s visual language applied to artists including Busta Rhymes, Tupac, and Puffy & Mase.