Missy Elliot Keeps it Real
Producer/songwriter/record-company mogul/Gap peddler/Lilith Fair folk-crasher--Missy Elliott has more slashes than a Guns n' Roses convention.
But lest you forget she's a singer, too, Ms. Supa Dupa Fly returns to give you a dose of Da Real World.Now if she could just meet Michael....
text by Tim Reynolds
photos by Safia Fatimi
The eyelashes are fierce. As are the nails and the very large rhinestone ankh dangling from a gold chain around her neck. These are the first things you notice. Otherwise, what you have is a young woman curled up on a couch in sweatpants and a loose Michael Jordan jersey. There are no handlers hovering, no Perrier and chocolate-dipped strawberries, none of the silly trappings of stardom. The immediate thing you notice about Missy Elliott is how relaxed she is.
Although she's one of the hottest artists, producers and writers in R&B today, the 27-year-old has time to just chill, without answering the cell phone, multi-tasking on the treadmill, checking her stock portfolio or any of the other uptight quirks of an ambitious entertainment-industry mogul. Even when you ask about her new album, Da Real World, she's not particularly eager to plug, choosing a more blase, coy approach. "It's a secret-type thing," she drawls, with a trace of her trademark giggle and a lack of urgency that belies the fact she's discussing one of the most eagerly anticipated follow-up albums of the decade, an album that features an impressive roster of talent, including Busta Rhymes, Aaliyah, Da Brat, Big Boi from OutKast and raunchy Jamaican reggae star Lady Saw.
Despite the confrontational title of the first single, "She's a Bitch," the song has the effortless, good-humored groove and feeling that have become Elliott trademarks. On her debut two years ago, she claimed, "Everything I do seem to bloom like flowers," and she's been proving just that ever since. By now, her fans, her record company and no doubt the singer herself have full faith in her abilities.
She's a Mogul
After several years behind the scenes, writing and producing hits for the likes of Aaliyah, SWV and Ginuwine, and eventually guest-rapping with MC Lyte and Gina Thompson, Elliott managed to generate the same kind of anticipation for her first album, Supa Dupa Fly. The album, written and produced almost singlehandedly by Elliott and her musical soul mate Timbaland, dropped to universal acclaim, and eventually platinum sales, in 1997. Before recording it, Elliott brokered an unprecedented deal with EastWest/EEG Records for a first-time recording artist that included total creative control of her music and the formation of her own label, The Gold Mind Inc., to release it. She made groundbreaking videos with director Hype Williams that announced the arrival of an original, cartoonish personality. Like her music, that persona was grounded in references to her black-American culture, but bizarre enough to attract the attention of white suburban alternateens and the ecstacy-addled drum-and-bass demimonde. Within months, she'd ended up on the cover of Vibe between Foxy and Kim and landed under the Spin logo between Ani and Radiohead. The entire world was and still is at her Nike-clad feet.
Multilateral appeal comes naturally to Elliott, but at the same time, she's up front about her motives for using it. When asked about the seemingly odd move of appearing as part of the gauzy, folk-gal Lilith caravan, matter-of-fact career sense kicks in: "I thought, on a business level, it would be good for me to contact another audience." At the same time, she insists it wasn't all business. "It was cool to get out there and see people knowin' the lyrics and just gettin' involved and just havin' fun.... The Indigo Girls asked me to come onstage with them."
That kind of fearless, creative gambling has paid off repeatedly for Elliott, to the point where she can say or do almost anything and it's accepted, even when it comes to her label and relations with her parent company. "Elektra, they got so much faith in me, like if I come in there, and even if they might say, 'we don't know...well, we got enough faith in Missy, if she believes that strong, we gonna back her a hundred percent.' So, it's been pretty easy."
She's a Fan
Ease hasn't made her appreciate her achievements any less. Her greatest thrills of the past few years have come from working with her lifelong idols. "It's been so many highlights. I always tell people, gettin' phone calls from Janet Jackson was like wow! When she called my cell phone I thought it was a joke. I was about to curse her out. I was like, 'Stop playin'! This is not Janet!' When Whitney called my cell phone, we talked like we'd known each other for years. Gettin' a phone call from Mariah--that was like a blessing to me." There's no mention of the money, the awards, the platinum sales. Elliott is first and foremost a fan. "[Music] makes me feel a certain way," she says. "I just get that happy feelin'."
That happy feelin' first manifested itself in the halls of her Portsmouth, Va., high school, where she walked around impersonating Michael Jackson. "I used to attract a lot of attention. There were times I went to school with, like, an Easter glove on, just the one white glove. You know, literally rolling up my Levi jeans so you could see my socks with some penny loafers. I used to try to sing like him. I had a jheri curl. You couldn't tell me I wasn't Michael Jackson!"
Other memories of Portsmouth, where Elliott still lives with her mother today (when she's not on tour or working in New York City), are equally innocent. This, despite her parents' divorce when she was 14 years old. "I grew up in, like, the city part of the country. Everybody pretty much knows each other. I remember times when we could leave our doors open and just be chillin'. And summertime comes, and you just have the screen open and it be fine. We was all cool with each other."
A similar optimism runs through her work and attitude toward hip-hop as an art form. "I can't be mad at somebody who has grown up in the 'hood and that's what they see all day. You know? Fine. But sometimes we gotta cater to other things if we wanna be successful. It's like everybody hasn't grown up in the projects. I haven't seen the drive-bys and all of that stuff, so somebody might not want to hear about it all day long. When it becomes the object of your album or every song you put out, it becomes kind of negative." Here again her natural tendencies buck the prevailing trend, yet Elliott manages to further herself with it.
She's an Artist
Elliott and Tim Mosely, a.k.a. Timbaland, have been compared to a range of songwriters from Ashford and Simpson to Prince to Babyface, but their working relationship most resembles that of a modern-day Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. Timbaland engineers the beats and creates the backbone of each song in the studio, then Missy fills in the vocals, concept and attitude. "Me and Timbaland, we so tight that you get our styles tangled," she pronounced on "The Rain." Timbaland assumes executive-producing duties on Da Real World, which, Missy maintains, has no samples. "Actually, the only thing is the Eminem song. I did a song with [Detroit white-boy phenom] Eminem, and it breaks down into the TV show, The Price Is Right."
On the horizon is more work for Elliott. "My main focus right now is being in the studio, writing and producing for other artists. That's really my love. And besides, I got more bills than when I started out so, you know, now it's bill time. I just did a 702 record. Just did a song with Destiny's Child. I'm about to go in the studio with [Wyclef Jean protege] Mya. I'm about to start working on Aaliyah. So I'm pretty much busy up until Christmas time." Despite her obvious success and full schedule, there's still one goal Missy has yet to attain--access to the gloved one himself. "I feel like [I've met] all the major people except Michael Jackson. I'm still tryin' to see him!"
She grins her wide Missy grin, picturing it. "Maybe we could have on our little masks." Timbaland could bring the beats. Who knows?
The end-product would be a comeback Priscilla Presley could never engineer.
©1999 Link, The College Magazine