Missy Elliott is a self-made icon whose monumental rise from a traumatic home puts Drake’s ‘Started from the bottom’ claims to shame. Missy Elliott’s work has effortlessly contributed to dozens of stars success stories whilst her tunes invite automatic smiles and gravitational pulls to the dancefloor. Missy’s albums and discography contain a formidable featuring list including Method Man, Lil Kim and Jay Z yet she holds her own on every account.
Missy began to gather musical influence in her early work writing for Raven Symone and Gina Thompson. This caused the CEO of Elektra Entertainment Group to pay attention to Missy’s talents and provide her with the opportunity to curate her own label called Goldmind. On Goldmind, Missy released her debut Supa Dupa Fly, which went platinum and earned Missy, Rolling Stone’s rap artist of the year award. Missy continued to write and produce with consistency and originality throughout the late 90’s and into the new millennium. However, it was ‘Get Ur Freak On’ that instilled tremors in the hip-hop of 2002. This bhangra inspired, tabla-curated beat infected the charts and dancefloors of the day, delivering to Missy her first well-deserved Grammy award.
In an interview with ‘Hip Hop Honors’ Missy says, ‘this is not even a conceited thing… when you think of Missy you can’t say Missy reminded me of someone else, there was no Missy comparison before’. Immediately upon hearing this I picture the string of successful female stars that have dominated pop music for the two decades since Missy’s debut album ‘Supa Dupa Fly’. Missy carved the way for unapologetic female figures to confidently take their own place in the male dominated music industry. Missy made the career transitions of female musicians such as Miley and Beyoncé far more digestible to contemporary audiences and inevitably, more profitable. Missy pioneered the respect and allure of the ‘single lady’ in millennial pop music narratives. What with Missy’s raps on the ironies of double standards and slut shaming on Christina Aguilera’s stunning ‘Stripped’ album. Listening to Missy Elliott as a young girl no doubt influenced my idea of unapologetic feminism, consciously or not. The more I reminisce on Missy Elliot’s legacy, the more I realise how present Missy is, in the attitudes of today.
Missy Elliott’s music videos were also some of the most visually innovative videos released at the time. Missy directs several of her own videos whilst simultaneously serving some of the waviest looks from strange, stilted, fish-eye camera angles. In fact, her unique fashion sense consists of asymmetrical-legged baby blue tracksuits and all-yellow outfits that any Parisian fashion house would struggle to make work. The baggy silhouettes she dons don’t conform to the omnipresent male gaze of the 90’s MTV music video era. What also grants Missy the industry respect she enjoys, is that she hasn’t compromised her creative integrity. In this respect, enough cannot be said for the lengths Missy went to for her art (she literally went to a petrol station to blow up her black-inflatable-latex-bin bag and walked through the streets in it as she couldn’t fit in her car, for ‘The Rain’ music video).
Missy Elliott has passed the true test of a musician, in my regard: she has received admiration and praise from the greats of utterly different genres to that which her music belongs. Admirers of Missy Elliott include Trent Reznor from Nine Inch Nails, Radiohead and Sonic Youth. (If you need any more convincing of Missy’s universal respect across the music community there is a 4-hour compilation video on YouTube of all the musicians who have praised Missy Elliott).
Unfortunately, in 2008 Missy contracted Graves disease (a rare thyroid disease) and has been battling with it ever since, yet she still released the immensely catchy ‘Where They From’ with Pharrell in 2015, and co-directed the music video for the single that many critics hailed as her ‘comeback’. Yet to me the word ‘comeback’ doesn’t apply to Missy because whether she is working under the radar or in the public eye, Missy’s influence over the last two decades has rarely fluctuated or faltered. Missy is continually present in production rooms, writing and producing for film soundtracks and artists like Katy Perry, Beyoncé and Janet Jackson. It seems to me that for the sake of stunning progress in music, culture, and fashion; we need more artists like Missy.