RC@5: Supa Dupa Fly by Missy Elliott

Record Club covered this album five years ago. I gave it another listen this week. Here are some thoughts.

Supa Dupa Fly

Missy Elliott

Week 80: August 9-15, 2020

Five years is definitely a long enough time to reconstruct how you view art, or a specific genre of art. I feel like I've come to understand hip hop on a different level in the past five years. Hip hop hasn't become my life or anything, but there was definitely a time in my life—the majority of it, let's be honest—in which I would shy away from hip hop, simply due to a lack of understanding, which was in turn due to a lack of exposure. But I've done my due diligence, and I'm at the point where any opinion I had about an artist or album or song in this genre five years ago or more should probably be reevaluated.

Listening to Supa Dupa Fly today, I will admit that a lot of what I said in my review was accurate. Especially the charges of it being "slow," which is the truth. This is a chill album, and Missy is largely content to sit back and let her bars gently float over the beat. But I think what changes over time is the interpretation of that truth. Yes, it's slow, but could that be framed as a good thing? I think it can. I hear Supa Dupa Fly and I hear confidence and coolness. Missy Elliott does not stretch herself or challenge herself. Instead, she relaxes with her feet up. This makes her cool. I prefer rap to be chaotic, but it certainly doesn't have to be.

This is definitely an album that would've ended up in A Year of Blind Spots if Pam hadn't chosen it for Record Club. I think it's healthy for RC to touch on some classics every once in a while, even if those classics are usually underrated within our space, and thesis statements usually gravitate toward "wait, why is this known as a classic?" I'm writing this before the majority of our Doors reviews come in, so I don't know how it's gonna fall, but I'm assuming that most reviews will be grappling with the idea that this album is generally known as one of the Best of All Time.

And that's cool. Sometimes, you need someone to guide you a little bit. That's why we keep these "100 Best Albums of Such and Such" lists from magazines and websites around. This is how Pam found inspiration for Week 80's pick. She saw Supa Dupa Fly on a list, and wanted to see if it held up. I think that's a great way to do it. Off the top of my head, I can think of at least two other times when someone chose their RC album based on a similar type of list. In choosing an album, you should seek inspiration from as many sources as possible (whereas the review itself should come from within).

Then there's always the temptation to complete such a list, after it's touched upon once. So let's see, how does that Best Albums of the '90s list that Pam used look these days? I'm familiar with most of them. Some are going to show up in aYoBS eventually. Some I'm avoiding because I don't like the artist. But isn't it cool to just peruse such a list? It's been a constant source of joy for me, to discover, and to compare, and to learn. I love it.

So I'm really glad that this is how I ended up with Supa Dupa Fly in my rotation, and I can see now why it was a classic (even if I still don't quite agree).

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I'm going to make more of an effort to touch on other reviews for the album each week in this space. I'm too self-centered in these RC@5 posts, and RC is a group effort. I'm either going to list my favorite line from each review, or pick out a good point from each review that I feel might warrant additional discussion.

This week, the former. I liked Sunny's Felonies/Misdemeanors pun. I liked Pam's casual description of "cool girls with boobs." I liked when Nate, from his 2024 retrospective review, talk about Busta Rhymes saying the word "yo." Good reviews all around.