60 Songs That Explain the '90s - Missy Elliott—“The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly)”

Episode Date: November 5, 2020

Rob explores Missy Elliott’s breakout single “The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly)” and the Hall of Famer’s singular career, highlighting her lasting influence on hip-hop and R&B as well as her longstanding partnership with legendary producer Timbaland. Host: Rob Harvilla Guest: Clover Hope Producer: Isaac Lee and Justin Sayles Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

You're listening to a music and talk episode where full songs and talk segments play together only on Spotify. Best of all, you can create your own music and talk show for free with Anchor Spotify's podcasting platform. Get started at anchor.fm-fm-f-M-C-H-O-R-F-M-U-S-I-S-I-C-A-N-D-T-A-L-K. A lot of spelling there, but just do it. Real quick, we need to talk about two. other music videos before we talk about the music video. First up is Raven Samoans. That's

what little girls are made of. That's from 1993. Raven Simone was seven years old. She had spent the past three years as a child star on the Cosby show. She would spend the next three years as child star on another hit network sitcom hanging with Mr. Cooper. It was pretty good. From there, Disney Channel fame, That's O Raven, etc. That's what little girls are made of is her rap debut from her debut album, Here's to New Dreams. The video opens with Raven getting out of the cockpit of a helicopter. At first, I thought she was the pilot. She's probably not the pilot. The song is co-written and co-produced by and features a guest verse from Missy Elliott. Listening now, Missy's presence, her guidance is evidence, I think, from the moment young Raven starts rapping.

There's a certain exuberance. You can't fake it. It was clear you couldn't fake it. It was clear you couldn't fake long before anybody knew enough to try. The singular glory of Missy Elliott was apparent even before Missy herself started rapping. Look out. My name is Rob Harvilla. I'm a staff writer and a music critic for The Ringer, and this podcast is called 60 songs that explain the 90s.

No offense to Raven, but this isn't the song. But it's an important part of Missy Elliott's origin story. that the woman and that that's what little girls are made of video, mouthing along to missy elliott's verse is not missy elliott i think back then that was obvious even if you had no idea who she was or what she looked like which you likely didn't as this was one of missy's first big songs behind the scenes or otherwise but this woman on screen was faking it even as music video lip-synkin goes it looked wrong it looked fraudulent about a quarter century and 30 million albums later in a 2017 cover story on missy

for Elle magazine, Rachel Kazi Ganza described this imposter woman as a thin, light-skinned model who has swallowed Missy's voice. There was, unfortunately, an immediate precedent for this. Martha Wash, an incredible vocalist who could do

gospel or disco or pop or house music, sang on a string of huge late 80s and early 90s hits, like C&C Music Factory is going to make you sweat, everybody dance now, and black boxes, everybody, everybody. But for a long time, wasn't even credited on those songs, did make the videos, didn't make the album covers. Other women swallowed her voice and looked just as fraudulent.

Martha would get her due in time, and so too, of course, would Missy. The second video is from 1996. It is the bad boy remix of The Things That You Do from a newish R&B singer named Gina Thompson. Gina is walking down the street. As this is the bad boy remix, she sits down on a park bench between Puff Daddy and the notorious B.I.G. look bored. They fraternize. Gina slaps them both playfully on the knee, gets up and walks away. Puff takes a phone call immediately. Gino walks on. A black Mercedes-Benz convertible pulls up. And riding shotgun, okay, there she is.

This time it's really her. I'm going to use the word woeful to describe my attempts to describe Missy Elliott's fashion choices to you. She's wearing a canary yellow and robin's egg blue track suit. Her sneakers look like little individual robots. I'm doing the best I can. On the he-he-he-he-ha-how part, the camera zooms in on her face and zooms back out just for a second. And you forget suddenly anyone else who's appeared on screen. Missy Elliott is from Portsmouth, Virginia.

In this moment, she's in her mid-20s. She's a singer, a rapper, a dancer, a songwriter, a producer, a mogul. Maybe no one knows that last part yet, but she does. For a while after the Raven-Simone debacle, she'd given up on becoming a star herself. She didn't want to go solo, didn't want the spotlight necessarily. But it wasn't up to her. Here's to new dreams. This is the song.

This is the video. This is the rain, super-dupa-fly. The title track, basically, to her 1997. debut album. This podcast is about the past, about nostalgia, 60 songs. I'm not locked in here with you, you're locked in here with me. It's about what you remember, or at least what old people around you seem to remember. But it's also about the future, or at least which people from the fairly recent past felt like and still feel like the impossibly distant future. That's Missy Elliott. She's had a cataclysmic effect on music for the better part of 25 years now, the

style, the physical movement, the sexuality, the audacity. But we still haven't caught up to where she was 25 years ago. For a while, she was in an all-female R&B group, first called Faze, then called Sista. They got a record deal from Jodacy's Devante Swing and put out one album in 94 that pretty much got buried. But behind the scenes, Missy and her childhood friend Timothy Mosley, better known as Timberland, quickly rose to power as writers and producers, primarily as the driving force behind Alia's multi-platinum second album 1 in a million from 1996. And by then,

Elektra Records wanted Missy specifically. As a songwriter, as a producer, as a developer of other artists, as herself a label owner, they gave her her own imprint called the Gold Mind. But also, yes, as a solo artist, as a star in her own right,

Missy could have whatever she wanted so long as she made an album of her own. So she and Timbalin made Super Dupa Fly. They made it in two weeks. In late 2019, somebody tweeted, tweet your most random music fact. That was Missy Elliott's most random music fact. Two weeks.

She remembers. Everyone remembers. By summer 1997, hip hop was not in a state of crisis, but certainly a prolonged period of mourning and unease. Tupac Shakur had been shot and killed in September 96, and the notorious B.I.G. had been shot and killed in March 97. Both murders unsolved then and officially now.

This also created somewhat of a power vacuum, or at least a star vacuum. We needed a few new ones, and the more colorful and flamboyant and relatively peaceful and exuberant those new stars, the better. Virginia is not quite the South, the way we think of outcast or UGK or no-limit records as the South, but it's not quite Puff Daddy's conception of the East Coast either, not quite part of the coming shiny suit era. Missy would probably find shiny suits way too boring. She was her own region. She was her own planet. Beep, beep. Who got the keys to the Jeep?

That vroom is amazing. Automatopoeia is everything to Missy. She's a walking comic book, every part of the comic book, the action, the costumes, the dialogue. And how the word sound means as much as what the words mean.

Plus, Missy likes her jeeps. By the end of 97, she'd be talking to Rolling Stone about her Mercedes Jeep, and her Mercedes SLK and her Lexus. Some of those had TVs. Some of those TVs had VCRs. Anyway, pick your own favorite part of the rain.

The squiggly baseline, sure. The Ann Peebles sample, of course, from 1974 as I Can't Stand the Rain. But my favorite part is the Crickets. The Crickets, incidentally, are also my favorite part of Alia's one in a million, the song.

Earlier on the rain, Missy puts it like this. We so tight that you get our styles tangled. That tangle, that chemistry is what makes the whole Super Dupy Fly album so incredible and so immersive. They're on their own planet together, and that planet feels alive. It feels populated. Don't be coming in my face. There is the growling dog. On Izzy Izzy Ah, there is the meowing cat. There's the meowing cat.

that Jeep again. On they don't want to fuck with me, Timberland does a duet of sorts with a beatboxing chipmunk that is probably just a sped up version of him beatboxing. Or if you're not an animal person, there is my personal favorite, the helicopter on the genuine slow jam friendly skies. You can picture seven-year-old Raven Simone flying the chopper just hovering in the background. What strikes you about the drums on all these tracks is the space, the adventurousness, the lack of rigidity. What strikes you about all these noises is how noisy they are. Samples don't have to just be old beats from old records.

It's crate digging without the crates. These songs shook things up, loosened things up. Going forward, you'd see and hear and feel their influence immediately, starting with Farrell and the Neptunes, you know, bringing greater glory to Virginia. But Missy and Timberlin didn't pave the way. They encouraged rap and R&B and pop radio as a whole to leave the pay With the rain, all these little production touches without Missy's colossal presence, they'd feel a little too goofy, too whimsical. But Timbaland is just as valuable to her.

On record and even on paper, she is a flagrantly three-dimensional figure and the sound of Supadupefly. Part Quiet Storm, part New Jack Swing, part Pfunk, part electro-rap, is outrageous enough that it's tactile. It has a scent. It's visible. She's an artist in every physical sense, and whether you can see her or not, be a visual artist most of all. Thank you for your patience. It's finally time to talk about the music video.

Begins, I sit on heels like Lauren until the rain stars coming down for the rain. Missy Elliott is not wearing a garbage bag in the video for the rain, which was directed by Hype Williams, the gold standard for the sort of rap video excess that feels absolutely necessary. Buster Rhybees, Biggie, Tupac, JZ, Beyonce, TLC, Wutan Klan. Even now, when you picture your personal favorite rap in R&B stars, you're usually picturing them the way Hype Williams pictured them, extravagantly. This is not a garbage bag guy.

Missy's not wearing a garbage bag. It's a blow-up vinyl suit concocted by her longtime stylist, June Ambrose. It's a space suit. It's a superhero outfit. It's supposed to shock you, maybe even unnerve you. as Missy explained it in 2017 in that L cover story to me the outfit was a way to mask my shyness behind all the chaos of the look although I am shy I was never afraid to be a provocative woman

the outfit was a symbol of power I loved the idea of feeling like a hip-hop Michelin woman I knew I could have on a blow-up suit and still have people talking it was bold and different I've always seen myself as an innovator and a creative unlike any other because how The type Williams is involved, the fish eye lens is key, the way it always felt like Missy was about to bust right through your television or into your hotel room. Periodically, for just a split second, her lips would double in size or her eyes or the front bumper of her Hummer Jeep. At another point, she's sitting on a giant nuclear green hill, wearing a green track suit, her eyes rolling back into her head, sort of swaying erratically and pawing vacantly at the straight hair of her wig. We wanted to make fun of the ways record companies try to make black women look white, is how she explained it.

Fake hair, fake music. My finger weighs these days, they fall like clumsy, I break up with him before he dumped me. I love breakup with him before he dumped me. I don't know why. It's vulnerable and also it's invulnerable. It's true that Missy Elliott didn't look like most of the women on MTV, but what's more important is that she'd speak. the next decade remaking MTV and her own image. Her video for Socket to me is basically a Mighty Morphan Power Rangers episode, or maybe live-action Mega Man. And it features DeBrat and it costs $900,000 and better yet, looks like it cost $900,000. The video for She's a Bitch from her second album,

1999's De Real World, looks like all three Matrix movies superimposed on top of one another. In the video for one-minute man from 2001's Miss E so addictive, she's wearing a deconstructed jean jacket with a bunch of chains on its right sleeve, and also she pulls her own head off and holds it while she's wrapping. For Work It from 2002's under construction, those were real bees, is all I'll say. People shouldn't even talk about Workit. Workit is perfect.

The only thing to do with Workit is just marvel at it. They should put it in the Louvre. Somehow they should put the Louvre into it. Maybe these descriptions aren't woeful exactly. They're fine. Missy put out six albums between 1997 and 2005 and has hovered over us since. My favorite of her later singles is WTF, where they from, from 2015. At one point, she's dressed like a disco ball disguised as a bounty hunter.

Ugh, that's a terrible description. I'm sorry. There's a certain exuberance. In 2019, two things. happened to Missy Elliott. She was inducted into the songwriters' Hall of Fame, only the third rapper ever inducted in the first female rapper. And later that year, she got the Video Vanguard Award at the MTV VMAs. The triumph of Missy Elliott is that those two honors are equally important. The Video Vanguard award is MTV's lifetime achievement deal, basically, and you get the sense of time that they give it to a very

famous person just to get that famous person to appear live on MTV. But in this instance, it reflected genuinely, Missy Elliott's lifetime of achievement in the field of music videos. Nobody has earned a victory lap more than she earned that one. You can hear her and see her and feel her everywhere in rap and R&B and pop music now, even if the younger artist doesn't look like her necessarily. Tierra Wack, Janelle Monet, Tyler, the creator, the Wop video, Cardi B and Megan the Stalion. That's a video after Missy Elliott's own heart.

The mop budget was nine hundred. hundred thousand dollars. Remember Missy's description of herself, an innovator and a creative unlike any other. That's the goal still for her, for anybody, unlike any other, including her. If you really want to be like her, be defiantly, uncontrollably, uncomfortably, uncomfortably yourself. Whatever I see a Missy video now, I think back to that Raven Simone clip, to that poor imposter woman on screen, reeling from the effort of swallowing Missy Elliott's voice. It is the first time And also the last time anybody even tried. Let's talk now with our producer, Isaac Lee, professional musician and studio expert.

As far as Timbalin goes as a production style, to your mind, what did he do first and what is he still do better than anybody else? Well, I don't think it's accurate to say that he did this first, per se, but his production is generally recognizable by the way that he weaponizes the human voice and makes it practically a very complex instrument. There's so many little ad libs and beatboxing and obviously sampling and they all become part of the instrumentation. It's part of the beat.

And beyond just, you know, the samples, beatboxing, all that, it feels like for him, like the music in general comes straight out of his mouth. Like, you can almost hear his beats breathe in the sense that there's like frequent pauses and percussion is spaced out is very sparse. even if there's a lot going on, the hits and the emphasis are very much far away from each other. It like hits you and then it rests, if that makes sense. Sure.

Which I think it's pleasing from a very biological visceral sense. It breathes in and breathes out the way that people breathe in and breathe out. Yeah, it's physical. It's a presence. It's physical. Yeah, you can like feel it in your throat. Yeah. People talk about minimalism.

Like, where is the line? What is the difference between minimalism and just like late? Like, how exactly do you turn less into more? I mean, I think in the case of this song, The Rain, it's perceived minimalism. There's actually quite a lot going on, but none of that is actually forward. None of that is noticeable. There's subtle moves here and there. There's, like, a lot of effects on the lead vocals, intermittent turntable scratches,

little whooshes here and there. And, of course, Timbalin's voice through filters and panning. But you really need to, like, pay close attention. to recognize every one of those things. When you're just enjoying the song, you mostly hear the wah-wah bass and the crisp drums, as well as, of course, Missy. And there's some like pluck strings that can establish the harmony,

but you can barely hear it. And what that effectively does is carve out room for the vocals to really shine. It takes hold of your attention. You can hear every complexity in Missy's voice, every part of every syllable. And that is what I think is a difference between minimalism and laziness. Because laziness is I'm just going to put drums, bass, and the voice.

That's laziness. Minimalism is recognizing that that is going to drive the sound. That is going to drive the mix. That's going to drive the song. But there's going to be subtle things here and there to really introduce more complexity so that it's not road, so that it's not redundant. So it doesn't sound like it's repetitive. Right. I think that's how you turn less into more is you do more.

But it sounds like less. Right, right, right. Do you hear this sound? Do you hear Missy and Timberland in a lot of new rap still? Like, does the rain sound dated to you, or does it sound timeless? I think it sounds of its era. I don't think that makes it dated. No.

But it's not necessarily timeless, right? It sounds like the 90s, which isn't a bad thing. It's just what it was back then. And this kind of production, though, is still very popular. Like the kind of bass, kick, snare forward mix, the vocals being very emphasized, the deharmonification of music, where the harmonies are there and you can recognize it and you can hear it, but they're very subtle. It's not, the point of it isn't so that you hear whatever an F-sharp 13.

Like, that's not the point. And it's kind of the most recognizable trend in the modern era. The emphasis on drums and bass similarly so. This is kind of how modern music sounds is drums, bass, voice. Missy, of course, was a producer herself for a ton of artists, many of whom she developed herself. Separate from Timberland or from anybody else, how would you characterize her individual sound or her style? Yeah. I mean, first of all, I do feel like in doing research for this podcast and preparing for this,

I am now fully convinced that Missy Elliott is a genius and is a bona fide superstar and belongs in high places in music history. What distinguishes her, I think, is her distinct swagger. It's like kind of dripping off of her. And it's not the swagger in the sense of traditional rap, hip-hop of like, I'm the shit. I'm all this. You know, I got money. I got all this stuff.

It's more about, like, she's not only confident. Like, lots of rappers are confident, maybe overconfident. Missy Elliott is comfortable. She's not in a rush. She doesn't expect everyone to be at her speed. She assumes everyone's going to be at her speed. Like, the thought that anyone would ever question who she is doesn't even cross her mind, it feels like. And that kind of swagger, it conveys in the music.

There's a lot of mid-tempo songs that she's produced in the 90s. And if you listen to all of her songs, like as a producer myself, like I hear it and I think, hmm, maybe another producer would have sped this up by one or two BPMs. Right. But at least it feels like she's going a little slower than what conventionally the kind of music would call for.

And she's really sitting on top of the beat. And I don't know. Something about that is so attractive from a song. standpoint of, wow, there's so much swag in this beat. There's so much swag in this sound. And that's unique and that's not something that can be easily imitated or quantified. Yeah. Well, thank you, Isaac. I'm glad we've convinced you that she's a genius. Our work here is done. Thank you. My guest today is Clover Hope, a writer and editor for Jezebel, Pitchfork, Vibe, Billboard, and many others.

She also co-wrote the Beyonce film, Black is King. And in February, 2021. She'll publish a book called The Mother Load, a comprehensive history of female rappers. Clover, thanks so much for being here. Thank you for having me. I love the image in your book of Missy shooting the video for the rain and getting her blow-up suit inflated at a gas station in Queens, like a block from the studio. The thought of her just moving through regular space, like being a regular person at a gas station in Queens, is it helpful to think of her as a regular person, or is it better if

we mostly think of her as just like beaming in from another planet entirely. Well, I do think the idea of her kind of coming from another planet, like that is the thing that separated her from other rappers at the time. But I think at least in my mind, it's more so that she had a way of being extraordinary and otherworldly. I think in a still a relatable way, like a human who had just spent some time on another planet and was kind of like back to relay some messages. Because, you know, her music was talking about love and sex and, you know, she had a song about pagers.

But obviously she paired those with, you know, those kind of very everyday topics with images that were very much not. And I think it was that specific alchemy, I guess, that created something special, you know, along with obviously like her production ability and this kind of gift to create, create the sounds that she was rapping along to at the same time, basically. Do you remember your first encounter with a Missy Elliott video? Like, were you intrigued? Were you enthralled? Were you confused? Were you scared? All of those things, I think.

I first heard Missy on the remix of Gina Thompson's, the things you do. And Gina Thompson was a singer on Bad Boy, and I was kind of at that point in the 90s, with maybe like every teenager then. Bad Boy Records, they were really happy and glossy, and it had just this kind of a sheen to it, I think. And I think at that point, like rap and R&B were fusing in this really interesting way that really appealed to me as like a fan, a deep, like, a fan of both. So I first saw her in that video, it was probably like on the

box, which for the kids was the station where you had to call into like a 900 number to request music videos. And I used to watch the box all day basically. And I never called in, but I would just watch videos all day on the box. And so I saw her in that video. I think it was, you know, a mixture of like you said, confusion, interests, also happiness, I think, that there was just this new like voice in rap that was switching things up and I guess also like some joy that some joy that she was kind of bringing something fresh. I think like people remember their the feeling or they might not remember the exact feeling but you remember you felt something when you first heard her I think and it was whatever kind of that prickly sensation is like when you hear something fresh is just

at least for me it's like you just like perk up and I remember feeling that because you know besides how new she sounded. She was doing the sound effects with her voice and the flicky, and obviously everyone latched onto the Nih-I-I-Y-Y-Y-out from that song. It was just such a classic 90s song, basically, that song. So that was the first time I heard her, and then The Rain came. Yeah, because that video, she just sort of drops in like a bomb. You know, like Puff Daddy is in that video.

Biggie is in that video. But it's just suddenly she's the only person on screen. It's a really amazing introduction to her. That's the best possible introduction to her, I think. Right. It's that universal kind of pull. The gravity that an artist like that has where they just come in and everything is centered around them. Yeah, you mentioned Timbaland talking about his relationship with Missy. He described the two of them as an old married couple. To me, it's always been refreshing that there wasn't ever much of a power struggle between them. Like, Do they seem pretty well balanced to you in terms of respect and attention?

Yeah. Like you bringing that up actually makes me think about that more just because it is really remarkable. Just like the way that they work together and outwardly never seemed to have that dynamic. Like whenever we kind of saw Timlin speak about her, it was with a lot of respects. And part of that was probably that she just, like, she's a quiet person. Like she presents as someone who is really focused and, you know, that in itself kind of draws people to her and like she just kind of commands respect in a way. But I also think like they were, I mean, musically they were just like clearly perfect. But it did mean something for like a man in the business to like not overpower the woman.

Right. Right. And it was like a partnership. And so some of that credit is owed to Timbaland for, you know, not overshadowing her, which sounds like, okay, good. Like, you know, it was just like promoting teamwork is just such a simple thing. Right. But a lot of other male producers, like, especially in hip hop, it was like, they're introducing

this woman or they're the one who's seen as a mastermind who, like, is ghostwriting for the woman. And, but I think it's cool that he kind of recognized her as having her own superpowers and really encourage that and promoted it and made sure that people knew that she was. was that it was like a co-production. Right. You write that Missy was the key architect of it's all about the Benjamin's, like she moved all the pieces around and where everybody's verses would go.

Do you think she's always wanted to be a star herself, or was there a moment, at least, where she would have been more content behind the scenes? Like, in everything I've ever read about her, they describe her as shy. There's a question of like, is there a universe where she may never have become a star herself, and she would have been okay with that? Yeah. I wonder if it's like a combination of like she may have like fallen into Sardham a bit, but she clearly wanted to like create things for herself and people who are that creative like stardom was inevitable because so many people probably saw and wanted to push her talent and like get her in the forefront. And I mean, I guess I can't relate as a shy person who you want to speak through your. creativity or like speak through your work because maybe that's her way of having her voice in the world like everyone wants to have a voice and that's her way of like having it through the songwriting

and production ultimately I think that's what she did is anyone making videos even 10% as good as missy elliott's videos at this point you see a lot of her influence but do you see anyone who can possibly pick up that torch um no I just think she was just so singular in the way that she collaborated with, you know, like the Hyde Williams and Dave Myers and like the video directors who are still making videos. But she had just such a presence. It was just such a moment that can't be replicated, I think, also because that was the kind of dawn of high budget music videos. And I just think it's hard to, it's really hard to like replicate, not the look or aesthetic even, but just the sensation and what it does to people.

Like, you know, people can make videos now and they can be like, you know, different or whatever. But the feeling of like a first is hard to like recreate that. And like I think that's what she gave. It was like on top of being weird and everything else. She was also kind of like a pioneer visually. So people can come close, but I don't think, I just don't think anyone can be like her. It's hard for her to even top herself, I think. She keeps trying, though, and that's what's important. Thanks so much, Clover. We really appreciate it.

Thank you. This is great. Thanks very much to our guest, Clover Hope, to Isaac Lee, our producer and studio expert, to Justin Sales, our intrepid editor, and to you, of course, for listening. We'll be back next week. And now, without further ado, here is Missy Elliott's The Rain.