A slimmed-down Missy Elliot has had it with puffed-up hip-hop stars. It’s time to stop the violence and get back to old-school basics, she tells Hattie Collins.
It’s become de rigueur these days for rappers to have “beefs”, squabbles, arguments. They pick out a person not to like, usually another rapper, and then they slag them off on record. Call them gay, or even worse, wack. Sometimes these beefs extend beyond words. There was the headline grabbing murders of hip-hop heroes Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls locked in “beef”, both slain in bitter retaliation. Who’s to say the latest on-wax scraps between Jay-Z and Nas, Nas and Cam’Ron, Xzibit and Suge, Suge and Snoop - you get the point - won’t end the same way? “Hip hop is so tense,” sighs Missy “Misdemeanour” Elliott. “There’s different rap artists going back and forth to each other and having real beef. It really is just a waste of time. Someone has to be the bigger person to say, ‘You know, we done lost Tupac, we done lost Biggie and I don’t want they dying to be in vain’. You gotta think back to when the Sugerhill Gang was doing they thing, way back then in 1979 in New York. Now in 2002 hip-hop is worldwide. Kids from everywhere listen to it and whether we wanna be role models or not, we become that.”
A rapper accepting responsibility for their actions? Whatever is the world coming to? The release of a fourth Missy Elliott album, that’s what. It’s an event within the hip hop community, who approach each Missy release with a ‘What’s She Done This Time’ air of anticipation. In 1997 Elliott released her debut offering Supa Dupa Fly written by herself and produced by school friend Tim ‘Timbaland’ Mosley. It did something quite phenomenal that album - it changed hip-hop. Threw away the idea that you had to have a cheesy 1970s sample sung by the hippest R&B diva, with any old thug wannabe boring everyone about “Benzes, bitches, bankrolls.” And Missy was no glossy superho either. She was a big girl but who cared? Tim and Missy made hip-hop interesting again. Spurning samples, they shot into space, experimenting with off-tempo handclaps and skittered skew-whiff beats that echoed endlessly around their intergalactic Supa Dupa planet. Then in 1999 they presented Da Real World but people weren’t as keen - it was too dark, too angry, they said. In retrospect Missy herself wasn’t overly happy with it, even though it still sold well. They’d been too concerned about people ‘biting’ their Supa Dupa style and vented their resentment through songs like She’s A Bitch. But then they chilled out a bit and returned with the 2001 multi-platinum seller Miss E … So Addictive. This time she and Tim got a bit sexy, writing songs like Get Ya Freak On and One Minute Man. It was freaky-deaky hip-hop. Mercurial, mysterious, magical. They played around with an Indian vibe and a year later the likes of Dr Dre cottoned on and scrambled to copy it. But it was too late by then Missy and Tim had bought the t-shirt, written the book.
So to their fourth offering Under Construction, and its inspiration this time isn’t eastern lands, the final frontier or the dark terrain of frustration. It’s hip-hop. It seems the deaths and beefs have given Miss E serious pause for thought. “Coming up, hip-hop was all about dope rhymes and dope beats. Now it’s like, ‘I’m a run up in ya mom’s house and I’m a shoot up everybody’. We’re at the point that we done built this big Lego block and now we’re gonna go all the way to the top and knock it all down. Its scary for me ‘cos this all we got,” says Missy. So Missy and Tim have decided it’s time to face the music and dance. “It should be about sneakers, fat laces, people dancing, having a good time. We tried to find a balance on Under Construction where the record would unite people. Its old-school so our generation are gonna love it but new and fresh for the next generation.” They gathered scratches, samples, beats, breaks, rewinds, a pinch of Public Enemy, a splash of LL Cool J, threw it all in a mixer and baked a booty-shaker of a record. Under Construction flips the script and sends hip-hop askew. And it’s brilliant.
Physically she’s undergone change too. No more Elvis-inspired rhinestone jumpsuits. She now sports vintage hockey shirts, trainers and plain jeans. The old-old-school look. And they’re placed on a thinner frame than the Missy of old. “ I lost like 57 pounds,” she says with a proud nod. The Oprahs of this world, though, may not be as happy with her new measurements as she clearly is. “I know I had a lot of heavier woman looking up to me. So, yeah, they might be upset but at the same token we have health issues and if I could stay big and please everybody I would.” But? “But I got high blood pressure and the doctors was like, ‘If you keep carrying around a certain amount of weight the pressure will keep going up and that’s like a silent killer.’ My life is very important to me.” She didn’t want to upset her mum Patricia either. She’s seen the state the death of her close friend Aaliyah has left the singer’s mother in. “She was such a strong lady and now she’s like an infant. Every minute she cries, every day she cries and she feel like life is over for her.” Missy too was devastated when Aaliyah was killed in a plane crash last year. She’s recorded a new song on her album, Can You Hear Me and dedicated it to Aaliyah and Lisa ‘Left Eye’ Lopez the TLC rapper/ singer killed in a car crash earlier this year. “Their deaths were so sudden, it wasn’t like they got murdered or they was sick,” she shakes her head, still shocked.
So it’s been a tough year but life is looking good for 30-year old Missy Elliott. A new album, (“my favourite so far”), a new figure, (“I still got more to lose but…”) and a whole heap of cash, (“ha ha!”), means life is on an upward curve. Whitney Houston and Destiny’s Child queue up to pay $100,000- plus per track for that Missy magic. If she “misplaces” a million dollars worth of jewellery as she has before this interview because her security guard checked it into the hold on the flight from Miami, “oh well,” she just throws her replacements on. The thick gold jewellery around her neck, fingers, wrists scream New York homegirl yet she hails from Virginia, more Southern belle than Brooklyn B-Girl. She’s a long way from her childhood home, where an abusive father would hold a gun to Missy’s head and beat her mother when the fancy took him. To escape she would daydream. And write. Penning letters to her heroes – Janet and Michael Jackson, she would plead for them to rescue her. Imagine them pulling up to her school in a stretch limo and beckoning her over, whisking her off to Neverland. That never happened of course but life sure has improved since. Now Missy receives letters from others desperate to escape and - guess what - she and Janet are buddies. They hang out at clubs and gossip on the phone giggling over the various rumours like their supposed affair. “Apparently I punched Trina in the face ‘cos she said something to Janet,” laughs Missy of the one where she’s supposed to be involved in a tabloid torrid triangle with Miami rapper Trina and Janet.
Creatively, she’s nearing her peak. Whatever happens in the future, the present is assured. Under Construction will have the Dres and Puffys reaching for their old hip-hop records. But that’s not the point. “Copywritten so don’t copy me/ Y’all do it sloppily, and y’all can’t come close to me.” In the words of Missy herself; get ya own freak on and maybe, just maybe you’ll work it.
A version of this article appeared in the Guardian Guide November 2002
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