We’ve all been quite relieved by Missy Elliott’s comeback after the hip hop goddess seemed too plagued by health issues to dedicate the necessary time to a new album. Her first major public appearance took place last year during, what else, the Super Bowl Halftime Show during which she and one of the sharks stole the show from Katy Perry. Now, on the heels of “Where They From” featuring Pharrell, it seems Missy is doing her best to cash in on her newfound cachet.
Unfortunately, this means teaming up with Alec Baldwin, Dan Marino and Jason Schwartzman on a commercial for Amazon Echo that features her new tie-in appropriate single, “Pep Rally.” And while it’s all very evolved of Missy to so willingly hang out with a gaggle of white men in order to behoove the promotion of her song, it is, tragically, a bit tone-deaf–especially in comparison to the “flawless” nature of Beyoncé’s latest track and accompanying video, “Formation“–also released to coincide with the Super Bowl, a gross entity that becomes increasingly less about football with each passing year (which is kind of preferable, but still makes you feel uncomfortable about how much money is thrown at advertising and cross-promotional endeavors to mask how boring the game itself is).
With the majority of the song featuring Missy screaming in a none-too-inviting pitch, “Pep rally, my friends, we at da pep rally” and “Pep rally, dis a pep rally,” one starts to wonder if our beloved MC wasn’t too overly influenced by her time with white men, who may or may not have subjected her to the Hitler theory of enticing people, which is to shout the same phrases repeatedly. In any case, maybe a video for the song will help its cause–or at least be better than the Baldwin Bowl commercial.
