Overview
- A NASA cabin video shows Artemis II astronauts waking to Glass Animals’ Tokyo Drifting featuring Denzel Curry as they prepared to head back from lunar orbit.
- Denzel Curry proclaimed himself the first rapper played in space in a celebratory post on X after the clip circulated.
- Music outlets note this is the first verifiably documented rap played on a crewed flight, though earlier Artemis II wakeup picks with rap verses lack public footage of the relevant sections.
- Questions persist because wakeup tracks can be cut short and astronauts have long carried personal music into space without full logs, so earlier in-cabin rap play may never have been recorded.
- Prior space-music moments differ in kind, including will.i.am’s 2012 Mars premiere and NASA’s 2024 transmission of Missy Elliott’s The Rain to Venus, which were broadcasts rather than crew-selected playback.