Chart-topping rapper, producer, singer, songwriter and ALL-AROUND trailblazer Missy Elliott is a GOLDEN GLAMAZON on the cover of the LATEST edition of ‘Essence’!
In the glossy, Elliott talks about her 25 years in the BUSINESS, managing her Graves’ Disease diagnosis, and why she is still so HUMBLE after all these years ON TOP of her game!
“Missy is an innovator, a true pioneer and visionary,” R&B singer Monica says. “Yet her most beautiful attributes are her genuineness, love and loyalty. The world is a better place because of this incredible soul.”
In 1997, Elliott wasn’t trying to change the world. Extravagance for its own sake wasn’t on her mind, either. In those days, Missy “Misdemeanor” Elliott, then in her mid-20s, was just hanging out: Blunt blowin’ and trying to maintain, you know?
“I was having fun when doing the videos,” she tells me during our conversation via Zoom. “I never even thought, Let me try to do the most outlandish thing. That never crossed my mind, ever. It just spoke to who I was in school.” In other words, the Missy we saw on our screens wasn’t a character, it was her authentic self—which is perhaps why she and her sound resonated so deeply.
“I was always just different,” she continues. “So by the time I started doing videos, the music just really spoke to who I was as a person. And so I never thought, Hey, I’m going to do this, and this is going to change the world. It’s going to change the way videos look. Or I want to do the craziest thing ever. Nothing seemed crazy to me.”
Six platinum albums, four Grammys, and now making history as the first woman in rap to be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. She says she most definitely didn’t see that achievement in the cards.
As a girl, Melissa Arnette Elliott prayed for acclaim, telling her classmates she’d be famous one day. Elliott also pretended to have conversations with Janet Jackson and Madonna; later, not only would she join them as emblems of feminist freedom, but she would also work on songs with them both. [More MISSY here!]
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