Missy Elliott‘s debut solo single “The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly)” has been set into outer space.
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California used their Deep Space Network to transmit the song 158 million miles from Earth to Venus at the speed of light, taking just 14 minutes to land.
“YOOO this is crazy! We just went #OutOfThisWorld with NASA and sent the FIRST hip-hop song into space through the Deep Space Network,” the “Get Ur Freak On” rapper posted to X.
“My song ‘The Rain’ has officially been transmitted all the way to Venus, the planet that symbolizes strength, beauty, and empowerment. The sky is not the limit, it’s just the beginning,” Elliott wrote.
“Both space exploration and Missy Elliott’s art have been about pushing boundaries,” Brittany Brown, Digital and Technology Division Director at NASA’s Office of Communications, told Pitchfork. “Missy has a track record of infusing space-centric storytelling and futuristic visuals in her music videos, so the opportunity to collaborate on something out of this world is truly fitting.”
It’s been a period of firsts for the hip-hop legend. Before having a song transmitted into space, Elliott became the first female rapper inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, something she always felt “seemed so far out of reach.”
“Words cannot describe. It just hasn’t clicked,” she said in an appearance on “Good Morning America” ahead of the ceremony last year.
The superstar admitted she owes everything to the women who came before her, including Queen Latifah.
“She’s somebody that, like I said, ‘come before me, open that door, left it open.’ And I owe so many flowers, bouquets. It’s not enough bouquets for those women that came before me. And she’s one of those women,” Elliott said about Latifah.
The “Lose Control” hitmaker said rock ‘n’ roll is like hip-hop, in that it incorporates many other genres.
“Rock ‘n’ roll to me is a gumbo of different styles of music,” Elliott explained.
“I think we get this thing where [in] rock ‘n’ roll, you gotta have a guitar,” she said. “It’s like saying hip-hop is just rap when we have incorporated jazz … [and] blues.”
