Missy Elliott

• Born: July 1, 1971
• Place of Birth: Portsmouth, Virginia

AMERICAN RAP SINGER AND SONGWRITER

The Life

Born Melissa Arnette Elliott to Patricia and Ronnie Elliott in Portsmouth, Virginia, in 1971, Missy “Misdemeanor” Elliott was a church choir member who often sang to an audience of her dolls as a child and repeatedly told her mother that she would someday be a star. At an early age, she began writing songs that she would sing to her family and even to passing cars from atop overturned trash cans. She created her own musical breakthrough in 1991, taking the members of her first group, Fayze (later renamed Sista), to a Portsmouth hotel where DeVante Swing of Jodeci was staying. Swing was impressed by the performance of Elliott’s original songs and signed the group to his label Swing Mob, which was associated with Elektra Entertainment Group. Sista recorded an album for Elektra, titled 4 All the Sistas around da World (1994); though it was well reviewed, it sold poorly and was soon pulled from shelves.

Undaunted, Elliott formed her own production team with then-up-and-coming producer and rapper Timothy Z. “Timbaland” Moseley and began penning tunes for Jodeci and others, perhaps most notably Aaliyah. After some success writing and producing, she broke into performing as a featured vocalist before creating her own imprint for Elektra to release her work as a solo artist. Her debut solo album, Supa Dupa Fly (1997), sold over 1.2 million copies in the United States, earning platinum certification from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and kicking off a string of five platinum studio releases in a row.

Elliott is known for her humility and for her kindness to fans, often signing autographs for those who recognize her on the streets. She is also known for having gone public about her father’s physical abuse of her mother, which led her to donate her time to Break the Cycle, a nonprofit organization that helps educate children and young adults about domestic violence.

The Music

By age twenty-five, Elliott had, along with Timbaland, produced eight tracks from Aaliyah’s One in a Million (1996), including four hit singles, and had established her own record label imprint, The Goldmind, Inc., with Elektra. Thus began the dual careers of one of the most influential female performers in hip-hop and rap music. As producer, Elliott worked with such artists as Mary J. Blige, Whitney Houston, Mariah Carey, and Janet Jackson; as a solo artist, her albums came to be known for their staccato dance rhythms, cartoon sound effects, comic profanity, raw sexuality, blunt treatment of violence, spoken-word interludes, and underlying lyrical sarcasm.

Early Works. Supa Dupa Fly debuted at number three on the Billboard 200 album sales chart; Elliott’s first single from the album, titled “The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly),” was an adaptation of Ann Peebles’s 1973 hit “I Can’t Stand the Rain.” Supa Dupa Fly was praised for forging a new direction in hip-hop and eschewing gangsta imagery for rhythm and blues, and for it Elliott received her first Grammy Award nomination. The more streetwise and angry Da Real World (1999) was musically experimental and futuristic, featuring collaborations with Aaliyah, Beyoncé, Lil’ Kim, and Big Boi. The R & B hits “All n My Grill” and “Hot Boyz,” as well as “She’s a Bitch” and “Beat Biters,” exemplify the beat-rhyme partnership Elliott would perfect with Timbaland. “Hot Boyz” spent eighteen consecutive weeks at the top of the Billboard rap charts and six weeks at number one on the R & B/hip-hop chart. In June 1999, Elliott was named by Ebony magazine as one of the Ten at the Top of Hip-Hop.

Missy E . . . So Addictive (2001). Elliott's third album, and her third to go platinum, garnered Elliott recognition with mainstream listeners. It is noted for its top-ten hits “One Minute Man” (featuring Ludacris) and “Get Ur Freak On” and frenetic club favorites “Scream a.k.a. Itchin” (featuring Timbaland) and “4 My People” (featuring Eve), as well as for collaborations with Jay-Z, Redman, Method Man, and Busta Rhymes, among others. The singles enjoyed heavy rotation on radio stations and MTV. “Get Ur Freak On” was a genre-defying experiment that earned Elliott her first Grammy Award and a Soul Train Award.

Under Construction (2002). With Under Construction, Elliott became the best-selling female hip-hop artist in the US. Collaborating with Ludacris, Jay-Z, Beyoncé, and TLC, she showcased old-school hip-hop tinged with R&B and bookended by spoken-word interludes and sound bites. The Grammy Award–winning single “Work It” features a staccato dance beat juxtaposed with a variable sine wave, comic sound effects, and lines rapped forward and backward. It stayed at the top of the Billboard R&B/hip-hop chart for five weeks and won a Soul Train Award. “Gossip Folks” (with Ludacris) features the sound of real background gossip, and “Back in the Day” (featuring Jay-Z) is a straightforward rhythm-and-blues tribute.

This Is Not a Test! (2003). Showcasing Elliott at the apex of experimentation, This Is Not a Test! spawned the singles “Pass That Dutch” and “I'm Really Hot” and featured collaborations with R. Kelly, Nelly, Jay-Z, and Mary J. Blige. Other tracks include a love ballad for a vibrator (“Toyz”), a send-up of classic 1980s rap (“Let It Bump”), and sound effects such as car alarms, whistles, horses, and heavy breathing.

The Cookbook (2005). The Cookbook was Elliott's first studio album for which Timbaland did not produce most or all of the songs (he only produced two tracks, “Joy” and “Partytime”). It was also her first album not to attain platinum certification from the RIAA (it reached gold status, with approximately 657,000 copies sold in the United States). Nevertheless, the single “Lose Control” peaked at number three on the Billboard Hot 100, with the video garnering six MTV Award nominations and winning two, and the album also earned Elliott three Grammy Award nominations, two for the track “Lose Control” (with one win) and one for best rap album.

Later Work. Elliott's long-rumored seventh album, first announced in 2008 and at one point given the working title Block Party, was never released. In 2011, she revealed that the delay was due in part to health problems, as she had been diagnosed with Graves' disease three years prior, but said her condition had stabilized after treatment. In the meantime, Elliott continued to work as a producer and to appear as a featured artist on other musicians' tracks, among them Janet Jackson's 2015 single “Burnitup!” She released two stand-alone tracks in 2012 on iTunes—“9th Inning” and “Triple Threat,” both produced by Timbaland—with little impact, then returned in 2015 with a much-heralded performance alongside Katy Perry at the Super Bowl XLIX halftime show. Later that year, Elliott released another stand-alone single, “WTF (Where They From),” which attained RIAA gold status with more than 500,000 certified sales. A fourth stand-alone single, 2017's “I'm Better,” peaked at number twenty-eight on the Billboard Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart and number seventy-one on the Billboard Hot 100, and the music video drew more than 22.7 million views on YouTube in the first six months of its release. In 2019, Elliott released a five-song EP, called Iconology, which included the single "Cool Off." It was the first album she had released in fourteen years.

Musical Legacy

Elliott has been successful as a producer, songwriter, rapper, singer, and video presence. Along with Timbaland, she popularized a new hip-hop sound, featuring variable syncopated musical phrasing and accentuated by snare and high hat drums rather than bass, typically juxtaposed with sound effects and comic vocalizations. Her phenomenal achievements include releasing critically acclaimed albums, including five RIAA-certified platinum albums in a row; winning numerous Grammy, BET, Soul Train, MTV, and American Music Awards; and, according to Billboard magazine, becoming the best-selling female rapper since Nielsen SoundScan began tracking music sales in 1991. In 2015, she was the inaugural recipient of the Billboard Women in Music event's Innovator of the Year award. In 2019, she received several prestigious honors, including an induction into the Songwriters Hall of Fame and the Michael Jackson Vanguard Award, which was bestowed to the artist at the MTV Music Awards for her contributions to the music industry. Elliott became the first female rapper to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2023. Fresh off of her Hall of Fame induction, Elliot announced a new tour in 2024, Out of This World. It marked the first time she was the headliner on a tour in her career.

Principal Recordings

ALBUMS (solo): Supa Dupa Fly, 1997; Da Real World, 1999; Miss E…So Addictive, 2001; Under Construction, 2002; This Is Not a Test!, 2003; The Cookbook, 2005; Iconology, 2019.

ALBUMS (with Sista): 4 All the Sistas Around da World, 1994.

Bibliography

Del Rosario, Alexandra. "Missy Elliott Relishes Her Historic Induction into Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Her Mom Will Too." Los Angeles Times, 2 Nov. 2023, www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/music/story/2023-11-02/missy-elliott-rock-roll-hall-of-fame-queen-latifah. Accessed 11 Oct. 2024.

Elliott, Missy. Interview. By Matt Diehl. Interview, Sept. 2005, p. 152. Canadian Reference Centre, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=rch&AN=18014895&site=ehost-live. Accessed 1 May 2018.

Emerson, Rana A. “‘Where My Girls At?’: Negotiating Black Womanhood in Music Videos.” Gender and Society, vol. 16, no. 1, 2002, pp. 115–35.

Good, Karen Renee. “Feeling Bitchy.” Hip-Hop Divas, Three Rivers Press, 2001, pp. 150–55.

Hirshey, Gerri. We Gotta Get Out of This Place: The True, Tough Story of Women in Rock. Atlantic Monthly Press, 2001.

Kellman, Andy. “Missy Elliott." AllMusic, 2024, www.allmusic.com/artist/missy-elliott-mn0000502371. Accessed 11 Oct. 2024.

Kessler, Ted. “Missy in Action.” The Observer, 5 Aug. 2001, www.theguardian.com/theobserver/2001/aug/05/life1.lifemagazine7. Accessed 11 Oct. 2024.

Kimpel, Dan. How They Made It: True Stories of How Music’s Biggest Stars Went from Start to Stardom! Hal Leonard, 2006.

Ringen, Jonathan. “Missy Elliott on Her Comeback: ‘There Is Only One Missy.’” Billboard, 19 Nov. 2015, www.billboard.com/articles/news/cover-story/6769236/missy-elliott-comeback-wtf-new-album-graves-disease-anxiety-super-bowl. Accessed 11 Oct. 2024.

Sun, Rebecca. “Missy Elliott Signs with WME: Exclusive.” Billboard, 9 Aug. 2017, www.billboard.com/articles/business/7896960/missy-elliott-signs-with-wme-exclusive. Accessed 11 Oct. 2024.