The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly)

Elliott's debut solo single is built on Ann Peebles' 1973 I Can't Stand the Rain, whose lyrics serve as the chorus. Don Bryant and Bernard Miller are credited as writers alongside Elliott and Timbaland. It went to US radio on 20 May 1997, and the Hype Williams video reached video shows from 3 June. It peaked at number six on the Hot R&B Airplay chart and reached the top 20 in Britain and New Zealand. Elliott recalled recording it in the booth at Master Sound in Virginia Beach when Pharrell Williams knocked and played her a Kelis record, and said she and Timbaland wished they had made it.

In the video she wears a patent leather inflated suit, shot through a fisheye lens, with cameos from Timbaland, Lil' Kim, Total, 702, Da Brat and Sean Combs. It was nominated for Best Rap Video at the 1997 MTV Video Music Awards, and Rolling Stone later placed it first on its list of the 150 best rap videos. Of the straight wig she wears in the video, she said the aim was to make fun of the ways record companies try to make black women look white. She wore an outfit reused from the video at Lilith Fair in 1998.

Afterlife

Rolling Stone ranked the song number 453 on its 2021 list of the 500 greatest songs, and Pitchfork put it at number 33 among the top 200 tracks of the 1990s. The Guardian placed it fourth in its 2019 ranking of her solo singles, noting that a bin-liner-clad female rapper releasing a weird, sparse debut was not what 1997 expected. In 2024 NASA's Deep Space Network beamed the song to Venus.