Missy Elliott fans are reacting with disbelief after discovering that a seemingly nonsensical line in her 2002 hit Work It is actually one of the song's lyrics played in reverse.
The song features the line: "Is it worth it, let me work it, I put my thing down, flip it, and reverse it." The line that immediately follows, which sounds like a jumble of syllables, is that same lyric recorded backwards.
The revelation went viral after a segment on the I Said I'm Sorry podcast, where host Yaz Haddad broke the news to his co-host Feras Basal. Feras responded by asking whether the line was "just gibberish," to which Yaz confirmed it was not. He then demonstrated by singing the reversed lyric and running it through a recorder to flip it back, revealing the original phrase.
Viewers flooded the comments. Some were hearing it for the first time, writing "I was today years old when I found out" and "That just fried my brain." Others said the trick had been common knowledge since the song's release, with one commenter writing "Welcome to the year 2002, gentlemen. Better late than never I guess."
Fans also praised Haddad for apparently memorising and performing the reversed lyric himself rather than simply recording the original and letting software flip it. "How did he memorise the backwards version tho?!" one commenter wrote.
Work It was released in September 2002.
