Pop Culture Retrospective # 33 - Missy Elliott : the most successful female hip-hop artist of all time and the story of how she came to be!

Episode # 33 - Missy Elliott 

If ever there was a famous musician that was deserving of their success, it would be Missy Elliott.  As I’ve mentioned on previous episodes of the Pop Culture Retrospective, Hip-Hop music was a big part of me and my sister’s lives growing up as well as our adulthood and Missy was no exception.  My sister and I talked at length about how much we loved the album “Under Construction'' which features the unique sound and lyrics that Missy is famous for.  To say that Missy is a musical genius would be an understatement.  She’s had a huge impact on the music world and you will soon find out why.  I already loved Missy Elliott prior to this show but learning more about her made me love her even more and I think you will too.

With that being said, on today’s show you will learn all about the life and music of Missy Elliott and why she is one of the most resilient women I have come to know and love.  You will learn about how music was an escape for Missy as a small child, her path to success and the many, many accolades she has been given and truly deserves.  So grab your adidas track suit, your fish eye lens and large, gold hoop earrings, here we go! 

Hello and welcome back and thank you so very much for tuning in to the Pop Culture Retrospective Podcast, a show inspired by, and in memory of, my big sister Rebecca and her love for all things pop-culture, especially the people, places and things of the 80s, 90s and early 00s.  My name is Amy Lewis and I am your captain aboard this pop culture time machine.  It has been almost a month since my last episode as I've been busy with visits with family, traveling and researching and planning for future episodes. You are tuning in to Episode # 33 - Missy Elliott, the highest selling female hip-hop artist of all time and for good reason- spoiler alert: she is incredibly talented.  Let’s find out why.

Melissa Arnette Elliot was born on July 1, 1971 in a rural town named Portsmouth, VA.  Her Mom’s name is Patricia Elliot, when Missy was little she worked as a Power Company dispatcher.  Her father’s name was Ronnie and he was a veteran of the US Marines.  Missy was an only child and had an incredibly painful childhood.  Her small family was incredibly poor - there were times when they didn’t have running water.  Rodents could often be found in Missy’s home as well, she said she would wake up and see one run across her body as she was laying in bed.  Further, sometimes food was very limited for her family.  Her mother said there was a period of time where they would have just buttered toast for breakfast and for dinner.  

If this wasn’t enough of a challenge to endure, Missy and her mother had to deal with Missy’s father being incredibly abusive.  On a daily basis, Missy had to witness her mother being physically beaten at the hands of her father.  Missy would retreat to her room sometimes during these horrendous episodes and would sing and dance in front of her stuffed animals.  She even took to standing on top of trash cans to sing to passersby.  Music became her escape at an early age.  

She soon realized that being a famous performer was her life long goal.  She once said:  “one day I’ll be famous and will rescue my mother.”  Apparently Missy wrote letters to both Michael Jackson and Janet Jackson pleading for help.  Missy was often afraid to go to her friend’s houses because she was terrified of being away from her mother, she worried something bad would happen to her if she wasn’t there.  Missy’s mother wasn’t the only victim of physical violence, sadly Missy was, too.  Beginning at age 8, Missy was sexually assaulted by a cousin of hers who continued to hurt her for over a year.  Missy didn’t tell anyone.  She knew her mother had been dealing with so much trauma with her father’s abuse that she didn’t want to overwhelm her even more.  Thankfully the abuse from her cousin did eventually stop, but understandably, the thoughts about what happened have never left her.  

Finally, in 1985, Missy’s mother, Patricia left her father for good.  Her father had pulled a gun on Patricia and threatened to kill her.  Missy pleaded with her Dad to not kill her mother.  Missy then ran to her Uncle’s house who lived nearby.  The Uncle was then able to allegedly wrestle the gun out of her Dad’s hands and Missy and Patricia managed to get out.  They somehow found the means to move across town and ended up in Hodges Ferry, VA.  At that point, Missy and her mother were finally safe and Missy began to flourish.  They were still very tight on money, but they had each other and that was all that mattered.  

Missy grew up in a spiritual household, she was raised Baptist and her faith has been very important to her for her entire life.  She was very involved with her local church.  Throughout all of her hardships growing up, she found a lot of comfort in her religion, especially when she was dealing with abuse.  She once said:  “I believe in a higher being and that gives me faith to be strong and go on.”  

While in High School, Missy was voted class clown and she also was often caught creating beats on her locker and rapping along with it.  While she was sort of joking around in the hallways at school, she did start to take her music a bit more seriously now that her home life was more settled.  She would go on to graduate from Portsmouth’s Manor High School.  In 1991, she started a group called Fayze which was an all-female R & B group. The producer was Timothy “Timbaland” Mosley.  The group caught the attention of a Jodeci member named DeVante Swing as they were successful in the local community and sort of pushed their way backstage one day at a Jodeci concert.  The group was signed to Elektra records’ Swing Mob Imprint and moved to New York City, hoping to make it big.  The group also changed names to Sista at this time.  Unfortunately, an album by the group was never released due to financial issues with the label and Swing Mob Imprint went under in 1995.  Although things fizzled out with the group, Missy continued to write music with the help of her friend and producer, Timbaland.  It was around this time that Missy was given the nickname Missy Misdemeanor Elliott, the reason being that she writes and raps so well that it's a crime.

In 1996, Missy Elliott started working with SWV (Sisters With Voices), Destiny’s Child and Aaliyah. 

Elliott and Timbaland co-wrote “One in a Million,” If You’re Girl Only Knew” both for Aaliyah among others but those two songs were huge hits, I remember listening to them all of the time.  That same year, she became a featured vocalist on some of Sean Puff Daddy Comb’s Bad Boy Records Remixes. He saw something in her and knew she was a star.  Missy had lost some confidence in performing music as she was often criticized for her size and how she dressed.  She wasn’t dancing around in bedazzled underwear like Lil ‘Kim.  She was even replaced by a thin model in a music video for a song she rapped in at one time. Needless to say, she was feeling a little discouraged and despite the fact that she is a genius writer and producer, she also needed to be on stage and be a performer.  The people who knew her and her talent, like Mary J. Blige and Puff Daddy encouraged her to do so and thank god they did.

1997 saw the release of Missy’s first solo album, Supa Dupa Fly.  Timbaland was the sole producer on this album and it took the duo less than 2 weeks to record the album.  Most of it was recorded in Virginia Beach in a tiny studio the size of a bedroom.  Some of the most memorable songs on this album include:  The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly), Beep Me 911 and Sock it to Me - one of my all time favorite Missy Elliott songs.  This album was listed as #93 on Rollingstone’s 500 greatest albums of all time.  The album also has one of the most incredible music videos of all time which really set the tone for Missy Elliott who consistently has some of the most unique and artist music videos.  In The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly) a fish eye lens was used for many of the shots and we see Missy clad in a garbage bag like material dancing around showing her charismatic personality.  She said she wanted to be in that large costume to sort of be larger than life.  She was so often criticized for being quote on quote “big” so she wanted to be “bigger than life.”  The album has sold over a million copies in the United States alone and was nominated for a Grammy for best rap album. Rollingstone dubbed Missy Elliott rap artist of the year.  When Missy started making it big and earning a lot of money, she purchased her mother a huge, beautiful house.  Her mom said she felt like she was on the Jefferson’s as she too had moved on up! 

Da Real World dropped in 1999 and was dedicated to the students of Columbine High School, several of whom lost their lives during the massacre which had occurred that year.  Missy was nervous about this album’s release because she was afraid it wouldn’t be as successful as her first.  This album features another string of Missy classics including:  All in my Grill, Hot Boyz (Remix) and She’s a Bitch. I LOVE all of these songs and I’ve had them in my musical rotation for years.  Missy decided to use some strong language with the word Bitch of course, but she wanted to show herself as a strong woman and sort of “take back the word” if you will with the word Bitch.  

Check out the music videos for She’s A Bitch and Sock it to Me if you get a chance, you won’t be disappointed and they will make you love Missy even more than you did already.  One of my favorite lines from the song All in My Grill, Elliott raps:  “Where you go, remember me, I’m the best thing in history.”    

Miss E. So Addictive was released in 2001 and features some of the biggest hits of her career including “Get Ur Freak On” and “One Minute Man” both of which I distinctly remember dancing to at nightclubs in Orlando, Florida back in the day!  I think there is a VHS tape floating around somewhere of me dancing to “One Minute Man” somewhere, let’s hope no one finds it.   This was Missy’s 3rd studio album  and it won 2 grammys.  

Under Construction was released in 2002 and is one of her most successful albums to date, selling over 2 million copies in the United States alone, a record for a female hip-hop artist.  Gossip Folks and Work It are featured on this album and both songs are absolutely incredible and so are the music videos.  Not only are the videos visually stimulating and creative, but the choreography is timeless.  In the music video for Work It, the faces of Aaliayah and Lisa Left Eye Lopes are painted on the hood of a car with words “In Loving Memory” spray painted below.  Aaliayah and Left Eye both passed away tragically in the early 2000s, I believe Aaliyah was in a helicopter or plane crash and Left Eye I believe died in a car accident.  And just like her previous albums, Elliott and Timbaland wrote and produced most of the tracks. I think this was my sister’s favorite Missy Elliott album.

In 2003, Elliott released This is Not a Test and features collaborations with many well-known names including Nelly, Monica, Jay-Z and Mary J. Blige.  Some popular singles include:  “Pass that Dutch” and “I’m Really Hot.”  The music video for pass that dutch features Missy dressed as a scarecrow and as bizarre as that sounds, it kind of works. 

The Cookbook was released in 2005 and features some memorable lyrics on one of the songs, We Run This.  Elliott raps:  “My style can’t be duplicated or recycled, this chick is a sick individual.”  In addition the We Run This being a big hit, there are also some other popular tracks like Lose Control and Teary Eyed. The following year, Missy released a Greatest Hits album called Respect ME and proceeded to take a lengthy break from the music industry.  

In 2008, Missy Elliott was diagnosed with Grave’s disease, which is an autoimmune disorder which affects the thyroid.  She had lost a lot of weight unexpectedly and was feeling a bit out of sorts.  Her eyes would swell, her bloodpresurre would fluctuate and her hair was falling out.  She felt very sick for a long time and sometimes was too sick to write music.  There were moments when she wanted to give up, but thankfully she didn’t.  Thankfully, she was diagnosed and got put on medication which helped her to manage her illness.  

After taking some time to relax and recuperate (after all, Missy had been working non-stop for a long time up until this point), Missy re-emerged into the music scene.  First, in 2014 she recorded a song called WTF with Pharell Williams and then she performed in the Super Bowl alongside Katy Perry who had invited and encouraged her to perform.  It was an amazing performance, one that Elliott was very nervous to do.  However, you would never know she was incredibly nervous as she blew the performance out of the water. 

Elliott sold almost 400,000 downloads on iTunes after that performance and it’s one of the most watched halftime performances of all time! I hope that Missy is the headliner for the SuperBowl halftime show first and foremost because she is an incredible artist but also because Football is stupid.  

In 2017, Billboard announced that Missy Elliott is the highest selling female hip-hop artist of all time.  

More recently, in 2019, Missy had an incredible year where she was recognized for all of her significant contributions to the world of music.  She was given an honorary Doctorate of Music from the prestigious Berklee College of Music (Justin Timberlake, my dearly devoted husband also received the award). Also, she was given the Michael Jackson Video Vanguard award.  And if that wasn’t enough, she was also inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame.  She is the first female artist to receive the Video Vanguard and Hall of Fame induction at the same time.  I can’t think of someone being more deserving of the awards she has been given than Missy Elliott.

I hope you have enjoyed this look back on the life and career of Missy Elliott, one of the most influential hip hop artists of all time, whose career spans about 3 decades.  Missy Elliott turns 50 this year and I think she will continue to tell us stories and inspire us through her music.

Michelle Obama spoke at the songwriter’s hall of fame induction ceremony for Missy Elliott and said:  “I am thrilled to speak on behalf of Missy Elliott, the first female hip-hop artist to be inducted into the Songwriter’s Hall of Fame.  I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised.  For her entire career, Missy has been popping into places people didn’t expect her.  Everyone told her that she wasn’t going to make it.  That she didn’t fit the right mold.  That she didn’t have the right look.  That she wasn’t what people expected. But Missy knew better.  She knew that she had something unexpected to say.  And she had a feeling that people may want to hear it.  Missy’s example shows us that your voice is more than the words we say.  It’s about where those words come from.  It’s about owning our truth and sharing it with the world.  So Missy, I want to thank you for all of your trailblazing ways, thank you for not just sharing your gift with the world, but for being an advocate for so many people out there.  Especially young girls who are still trying to figure out how to make their voices heard.”  I couldn’t agree more.

If you are enjoying the Pop Culture Retrospective, please rate the show on Apple Podcasts as it brings more listeners to the show and also because we have really plateaued on the ratings!  Ha!  Please tell your family and friends about the show and subscribe on your favorite podcast platform.

I hope you will join me for my next show where we will be discussing __________________  Until then, be kind, be safe and hold on to your memories. 

I’ll leave you with some of my favorite Missy Elliott lines from a song she was featured on called 1, 2, Step by Ciara.  

I shake it like Jello, make the boys say hello

'Cause they know I'm rockin' the beat (uh)

I know you heard about a lot of great MC's

But they ain't got nothin' on me

Because I'm five foot two, I wanna dance with you

And I'm sophisticated fun

I eat filet mignon and I'm nice and young

Best believe I'm number one (woo)