Image via Young Thug
Young Thug’s new EP On the Rvn has features from 6LACK and Jaden Smith, but the standout guest is pop legend Elton John. He appears on the project’s final song “High,” a reimagining of his 1972 hit “Rocket Man (I Think It’s Going to Be a Long, Long Time)” using an a capella version of his vocals. While the song was recorded in 2016, it took about two years for it to finally get an official release. According to a FADER interview with producer Stelios Phili, the main reason that it finally surfaced was the warm reception that greeted an unmastered leak, which found its way online back in August.
“They had always planned to put it out when the timing was right and the leak kind of expedited the timing of that… I know that Elton had heard the song and liked it, but in terms of the paperwork, that all happened around the time of the leak,” he said. “Sometimes when a leak happens it can jeopardize the song and make it never come out, but in this case, it was beneficial because the reception was so positive.”
As Phili explained, he came up with the idea for the song after reading a Noisey interview where Elton praised Thugger. “I was like, ‘Holy shit, I need to do everything possible to bring these two people together,’” he told The FADER. “I went through Elton’s entire discography and then eventually there was an a capella of ‘Rocket Man’ floating around online. There were actually a lot of Elton a capellas, but that seemed to be the only one that worked just because of the lyric. So I built the beat around the a capella and added new drums, piano, and all that. I sent it to Geoff [Ogunlesi, Thug’s A&R], sent it to Thug, and it happened.”
Originally, Phili thought that it would come out on Thugger’s perpetually-elusive Hy!£UN35, but eventually he just started hoping the song would be released at all. He’s ultimately satisfied with the track, after taking what he views as a big risk in sampling such a notable hit. “I felt good that people liked it, because sometimes when you sample a holy grail type of song and you don’t do it right, it can look lazy or some people can get upset,” he said. “But Thug obviously did [it right]. He sounds at home next to Elton’s voice. It’s a different take on the original, which has such a melancholy quality to it.”
Elton John’s “Rocket Man (I Think It’s Going To Be A Long Long Time)” was released in 1974 on his fifth album Honky Chateau. The song peaked at No. 6 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and was eventually certified triple-Platinum.
“It’s so cool and so good,” Elton John said about the song on his recent Beats 1 Radio show. “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.”
Check out Stelios Phili’s interview with The FADER here and read all the lyrics to Young Thug and Elton John’s “High” on Genius now.
