Welcome to the Archive Pull, a new series delving into the 30-year history of our print magazine. To celebrate her birthday, we share Missy Elliott’s cover profile, originally published in the July 2005 issue of Dazed & Confused, for the first time online.
It‘s a typically hot morning in Montego Bay. Along the pothole-ridden road that stretches between Sangster International Airport and the prestigious Ritz Carlton hotel, locals go about their daily business; hunting for crabs in ditches, stoking up jerk barbecue ovens and hawking mangoes to passing motorists. As you’d expect from a nation whose laid-back approach to life is world-renowned, everything’s rolling along at its own easy pace.
However, inside the east wing of the Ritz, the day is unfolding with more urgency for Missy Elliott, the hip-hop superstar who has come to Jamaica‘s “friendly city“ for a week of self-indulgence and spiritual healing. After spending the last few days jet skiing, banana boating and quad bike racing, the 33-year-old has given up a day on the white sand to talk about her sixth album, The Cookbook, and the struggles she’s had to overcome to make it in the rap game.
When we meet at 9am at the end of a long, empty ballroom, Missy has already been up for three hours, having her hair and make-up done. As she sits down at the table, there is no sign of bratty precociousness or holier-than-thou diva-tude. Wearing a simple Adidas top, brown bandana, jeans and a bloated diamond watch from hip hop‘s favourite rhinestone cowboy, Jacob the Jeweler, the most successful female rapper of all time appears calm, physically toned and as grounded as can be expected.
“I want people to feel relaxed,” she says in her familiar Virginian twang. “That‘s why I invited y‘all out here. I know you don‘t want to be sitting in an office doing interviews. I don‘t want it to feel like work.“
While Missy‘s reputation has been built around her ability to appeal to both suburban sorority girls and street hustlers, her easy charm still comes as a surprise, especially considering the A-list‘s aversion to media intrusion.
“For the most part I‘m a regular ‘lets just have fun‘ type person, but I know that I can get bratty when I don’t want to do something, so my friends keep me in check when I start to act like a superstar. When I go home to my family, they don‘t care that I‘m Missy Elliott to the world, I‘m just punkin‘ to them! They always send me into the kitchen to cook and clean up the mess! I‘m still the same ol‘ lil‘ Missy in their eyes.“
Family rates high on her list of priorities, and for good reason. Raised on the breadline in Portsmouth, Virginia, Melissa Elliott‘s formative years were overshadowed by her father‘s predilection for dealing out rough justice with the back of his hand and the heel of his boot. With no one to protect her, Missy‘s mother, Patricia, bore the brunt of it all.
“When my parents used to argue and fight, the first place I‘d go would be my room to write. I‘m an only child so I guess it was my way of shutting out the violence that was happening on the other side of the door. Once I was in there it was like Alice in Wonderland; I had to create imaginary friends because I didn‘t have anyone to play with. I just wrote constantly and ended up loving it so much that the bedroom was where I stayed.“
After years of isolated creative exploration, by the time Patricia had summoned up the courage to leave her husband, the craft of songwriting, rapping and singing had become second nature to the sensitive 14-year-old, who had taken to scribbling lyrics across her walls. While dreams of Michael Jackson taking notice of her bedroom demo tapes helped her to sleep easier at night, it wasn‘t until she met local producer Timothy Mosely that Missy realised that music could be more than a pipe dream.
Instead of simply sampling P-funk or old jazz loops, Mosely, or Timbaland as he‘s become better known, had started to incorporate synths, vocoders and staccato rhythms in his beats, which up until then had been considered anathema to hip hop‘s tried and tested boom bap formula. His musical approach sat perfectly with Missy‘s surreal observations on life and the pair soon became creatively inseparable. Following a few fairly unsuccessful years in the girl group Sista, Missy and Tim were taken on by Jodeci‘s producer DeVante Swing who introduced them to hip hop’s capital city.
“DeVante got me to sing and rap around New York for people like Mary J Blige, Faith Evans and Puffy. It was amazing. I‘d suddenly come from down south where nothing happened, to going around New York with these artists that I used to watch on TV all day long. That was the first time I really had the chance to see how people - stars - reacted to what I was doing. It made me think that maybe I really did have something a little bit different.“
Although creative differences soon pushed her away from Swing, Missy‘s incessant networking eventually landed her guest appearances on chart hits by Gina Thompson and MC Lyte. While these and other cameos helped to raise her profile, Missy still hadn‘t really made her own mark. Then, in 1996, she and Timbaland were asked to write for Aaliyah, the 17-year-old R&B prodigy who had already experienced massive success thanks to her R Kelly produced debut album, Age Ain‘t Nothing But a Number.
“Even though the record business had a problem with my image, the world wasn‘t bothered by how Missy looked, they just loved the way Missy rapped” – Missy Elliott
“It was kind of scary for Timbaland and me because we hadn‘t done any records that we‘d produced or written. I remember people saying, ‘What is Aaliyah going to do now R Kelly's not working with her?‘ Luckily Atlantic Records had heard some stuff we'd done and let us do one song for her, so we went in and recorded “One in a Million“. We connected immediately. After that we were asked to do another, so we did ‘If Your Girl Only Knew‘. Before we knew it, we were eight songs deep! That was the album that made people pay attention to us as writers and producers because everyone wanted to know who was doing Aaliyah’s hot new music.“
As a result of One in a Million‘s huge sales Missy signed a solo deal with Elektra Records. It appeared that Alice had finally reached her R&B wonderland. But as she was beginning to realise, wonderland‘s image department wasn't ready to deal with anyone over a size 10, let alone a size 22.
Choosing to use her weight to her advantage, in 1997 Missy launched her debut album Supa Dupa Fly with a video that caught black music on the back foot. Entitled “The Rain“, the Hype Williams promo featured Missy in a big blow-up suit, which was made even more preposterous by Hype‘s well-placed fish-eye lens. By deliberately making fun of the genre‘s obsession with perfection, Missy not only secured her first solo chart hit, but also became a role model.
“It took a while for me to build up my confidence to do that,“ she recalls with a giggle. “I sure didn‘t wake up one morning and say ‘I‘m fly!‘ It took years for me to even walk into a room with my head up. But when people saw this girl in a video with a big blow-up suit on and they heard these syncopated beats it made them embrace me, because it was something new. Even though the record business had an issue with my image, the fans weren‘t bothered by how Missy looked, they just loved the way Missy rapped.“
Most of the ten million people who own a Missy Elliott LP care little about her size and more about her progressive beats and rhymes, a tradition which she upholds on her latest audio platter, The Cookbook. Featuring guest appearances from old-school stalwarts Slick Rick and Grand Puba, as well as new jacks Ciara, Tweet and Mike Jones, the album features a healthy mix of loved-up ballads and southern-style booty shakers. While constant evolution is still the name of the game, The Cookbook‘s most radical change of direction is Missy‘s decision to outsource its production, with old sparring partner Timbaland contributing just two of the 15 tracks. When reminded of the line, “Me without Tim is like Jamaican‘s with no curry" on 2002’s “Funky Fresh Dressed“, Missy smiles at the appropriateness of the quote.
“That‘s still true, but we both felt the need to grow into different spots. Together we made people take risks and went as far left as you can possibly go, but I wanted this album to be more diverse. Tim was totally with it from beginning to end though, from ‘Joy‘ down to ‘On and On‘, which is the first track I’ve ever done with The Neptunes. He appreciates that there's a little spice in there for everyone, from the ‘Apache‘ break record, to a song like ‘Mami‘ which is for every girl who wants to empower herself. As for me, I think people are going to bug out over it.“
“When Aaliyah died I was supposed to perform in front of the whole Jamaican community, but I couldn’t go on, I just couldn’t do it. People were chanting my name but I was speechless”
Sadly one person who hasn‘t been around to fully experience Missy‘s musical growth is her “baby girl“, Aaliyah, who died in a plane crash in 2001. The memories of that dark day are never far from her thoughts, especially now that she‘s back in Jamaica.
“I always need to go to her mausoleum before I come here because this is where I heard about the accident,” she says, losing eye contact for the first time in an hour. “I was supposed to perform in front of the entire Jamaican community that day, but I couldn‘t go on, I just couldn‘t do it. People were chanting my name but I was so speechless that Puffy had to go out and speak to them for me. When I came back to perform a year later they showed me so much love, which I‘ll never forget. Coming here is like spiritual healing for me. I think it always will be.“
With that, Missy says goodbye and gets up from the table to prepare for the photo shoot. As she strides towards the end of the ballroom, a muffled burst of music can be heard working its way down the Ritz‘s sprawling corridors towards her. Opening its huge double doors, the diminutive rapper gets enveloped with the song‘s familiar warm melody. In the land of strength and spiritual healing Bob Marley's “One Love“ couldn‘t have come at a better time.