There was a moment when the world of post-00s hip hop felt particularly dark in its decided voidness. It happened around 2005, when Missy Elliott released her last full-length record, The Cookbook. Maybe it was her last because, as she stated at the time, “I really do think this is my best album. I was in a really great space with this album. I wasn’t in a great space with some of the other albums I’ve done.” Or maybe it was because, even then, she was already starting to sense all the ingratitude toward her genius. And perhaps wanted to bow out before the public caught wind of her struggles with Graves’ disease. Whatever the amalgam of reasons Missy had for taking a hiatus (one that paused when she graced the Super Bowl stage with Katy Perry, the undeserving pop star and her ignorant fans who seemed not to understand the greatness they were witnessing), she has returned. And she’s made it abundantly clear that her time away has only made her all the more creatively inclined.
To reassert her dominance, she has bequeathed us with a video for the first single from her EP, ICONOLOGY. Fittingly called “Throw It Back,” Missy does just that by commencing the video with a little girl being pushed into a hall of Missy oil paintings as an incredulous greeter demands, “You don’t know who Missy Elliott is? Missy Misdemeanor? The innovator of all innovators? The game changing sensation?” And yes, it would seem Missy herself is a bit incredulous as to how a new generation of music listeners have seemed to sleep on the majesty of her rhythms and rhymes. Thus, she is quick to usurp the Nicki line, “All these bitches is my sons” in reminding, “I raised all these babies, call me Katherine Jackson.” At forty-eight years old, she has every right to make that claim over the likes of Minaj or even her own peer of the 00s era, Lil’ Kim, three years her junior. The latter, of course, showed up to this year’s VMAs to pay her respect to Missy receiving the (still unchanged in name) Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award. The first black female artist to receive one, mind you. And an award that is iterated by her latest visual accompaniment. So yes, let’s go back to the Hall of Missy, where an unwitting girl is about to see just how visually transfixing Misdemeanor can be.
As the red carpet rolls out for Missy on the sidewalk, she calmly waits in her pink suit (which eventually morphs into a minty green) for the beat to drop before explaining, “If it’s competition, I put them to shame/Different kind of chick, we are not the same…/What you doin’ now, I did for a while.” There’s no hyperbole in that, and, indeed, one can’t help but her recent lauded cohort, Lizzo (who featured Missy on this year’s “Tempo”), the present darling of the listenable to whites hip hop world. But Missy has no shortage of knowledge in iconology, as she turns around to show us the back of her jacket, featuring a series of her incarnations over the years as perhaps only Madonna could. For yes, Missy seems always to be forgotten about as a chameleon, the type of person who called an album The Cookbook because “no two records are going to sound alike; each record has its own spices and herbs. Each record is cooking up a hot recipe for a hot album.” ICONOLOGY is no different, from the slick confidence of its lead single to the sweltering slow jam that is “DripDemeanor” featuring Sum1. And all the flavors of Missy’s ever-evolving blender show up in the “Throw It Back” video, particularly when her endlessly long braids provide the jump rope for double dutch on either side of her. In so many ways, this image provides the symbolism for just how much of a lifeline and support system Missy has been to all those who have come after her in the arena of pop-tinged (or at least pop palatable) hip hop. As usual, her backup dancers also play an integral role in tying together her aesthetic, even when just dancing behind her as she’s carried, Cleopatra-style, down the street in a car with its front half torn off or serving as the cheerleaders for her throwing it back all the way to a high school gymnasium.
At one point in the song, Missy declares, “So many VMAs that I could live on the moon,” to the image of her in a spacesuit emulating the MTV moonman look as she plants an “ME” flag on the ground. On that note, it is her well-timed to the release of “Throw It Back” performance at an unsurprisingly nothing to write home about VMAs (in fact, her nonstop tour de force medley was about the only highlight as the subsequent generation of pop culture icons has no one to count on except, evidently, Billie Eilish) that left no question that she can still outperform just about anyone.
“Throw It Back” opened the seven minute safari of her career, in which she appeared in a futuristic, lunar-inspired ensemble as her backup dancers had their wigs snatched off literally while everyone else in the audience did figuratively. Particularly when Missy re-donned her iconic trash bag from the “Supa Dupa Fly” video, suspended above her dancers wearing umbrella hats. A brief “Hot Boyz” interlude led into “Get Ur Freak On,” making all the white girls, unfortunately, bust a move (Taylor Swift included). And as Missy chanted, “Here’s some new shit” of a song that is now eighteen years old (older than Billie Eilish), one had to agree that, yeah, this pretty much does still sound newer and fresher than most of the cobbled together slop that gets bowed down to for whatever is left of radio airplay.
From “Get Ur Freak On” to a snippet of “Work It” before Missy becomes a scarecrow in a cornfield (one can’t help but think that’s been her subliminal feeling after so much time spent in an industry of white folk) for “Pass That Dutch,” the irrefutable icon closed the show with “Lose Control.” Something she has made everyone do time and time again with her inimitable combination of videos, lyrics and live performances. So yes, by the end of the “Throw It Back” video and the VMAs this year, surely there can be little doubt even in the zygote’s mind about who Missy Elliott is.
