According to The FADER, a FaceTime meeting between the two stars was set up by Lyor Cohen, the CEO of Thug’s label 300 Entertainment. From there, John sent Thug an instrumental version of his 1972 classic “Rocket Man” and a remix was born.

“It’s all the instrumental, the guitar, piano; and Thug is not rapping, he’s singing,” an insider said. “It’s really ambient and amazing.”

John had previously admitted to being a fan of Thugger’s music and praised Thug’s flamboyant nature.

“I love all of that,” he said. “It’s unexpected. I remember when Blind Faith came out, with a nude girl and John & Yoko, you had to buy it in a black plastic bag. And you should be able to do things like that but we don’t live in that kind of world anymore.”

John also played the song during his Beats 1 radio show on September 24, 2018 where he said:

Young Thug, who I love and have met. He dropped a track. It’s a remix of ‘Rocket Man.‘ And I don’t usually play my own stuff on this show but this is so cool and so good. These things are the great surprises in what I do. Sometimes you hear something that you never knew was going to happen or never thought was going to happen in a million years.

Producer Stelios Phili told Complex: “I remember reading an article in 2016 where Elton John said he was a fan of Young Thug and I was like, ‘Wow, this makes so much sense.‘ They’re both icons of individuality. So I reached out to Thug’s A&R Geoff Ogunlesi, hoping there would be some way we could bring them together. He was down. I built a new beat around the ‘Rocket Man’ a cappella, sent it in, and Thug cut it that night. A couple months later, Thug was photographed with Elton looking like lifelong best friends. Apparently Elton loved it.

“I’m hoping it gets officially released and mixed,” he added.

According to Alex Tumay in an interview with Noisey,

Any time a song leaks, it’s pretty heartbreaking. People don’t understand that the financial interest goes away. That’s not what decides how the song gets released or if it gets released, but it definitely has a lot of weight. The social and general impact of the song is lessened by a leak. It might help in some ways but it hurts overall pretty severely, in that there’s no surprise to that songs existence when it comes out after a leak. This song is so important to everybody on the team that there was no way that was going to stop it from getting an official release… It’s one of those situations where you hope it doesn’t ruin a great song and this time we didn’t let that happen. When it comes to songs leaking, it’s such a sore spot especially for us considering how many songs leaked in the past. I’m just happy this one made the cut. It’s such a big moment for him, that I’m glad he didn’t let people outside of the camp ruin it for him.