Missy Elliott

Under Construction just may be Missy Elliott’s defining achievement, a perfect addition to her already classic trio of albums, 97’s Supa Dupa Fly, 99’s Da Real World, and 2001’s Miss E…So Addictive.

With Under Construction, Missy melds her multi personalities into a teeming love letter to hip-hop itself. Whether it’s the seductive smash “Work It,” or the mischievous go-round with Method Man, “Bring The Pain,” or a slice-of-life snapshot of two girlfriends phone banter, “Nothing Out There For Me,” featuring Destiny Child’s Beyonce, or the heart wrenching tribute, “Can You Hear Me” featuring TLC, Missy strikes a perfect balance on the new album between seasoned “everywoman” and finger wagging temptress.

But the trim and fit Missy has lost none of her audaciousness either, thank God, as she croons in an almost Lena Horne style “pu**y don’t fail me now,” on “P***ycat,” trumping that a few songs later with guest star Miss Jade in an Ali-meets-Liston skewer of the Beastie Boys nugget “Paul Revere” on the precocious “Funky Fresh.” Where her previous works borrowed and brewed trend spotted mixtures of everything from underground rap, to electro beats, to future rock, Missy and her longtime co-hort Timbaland mine hip hop’s own galactic canyons on this one, making old-school sound new, new school sound old, and blowing up everything else in between. “We like to take a left turn when you think we’re going right,” laughs Missy. “Though sometimes, I have to admit, we go so far left I start thinking ‘we’re gonna lose everybody with this one.’”

Of course, just the opposite has happened. Missy’s first three albums stand as the greatest female rap trilogy in history. So where does Under Construction fit in that legacy? “I call it my sandwich,” she proclaims. “Like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. The old school style is the foundation, but then there’s all this new shit on top you gotta respect. You put that together and you got an unbelievable sandwich.”

But Missy says the truest test for her on this one was garnering Timbaland’s approval. “He tells me all the time that this is his favorite album of mine. I don’t take that lightly. Halfway through it he turned to me and says ‘you know I didn’t even like your last record.’ And he produced it. That’s the kind of honesty we have.”

To put Tim’s high standards, into perspective, Missy’s last disc, Miss E…So Addictive was hailed by critics around the world as one of the best albums of the year, period. It stands as the second biggest selling female hip hop album of all time, and garnered Missy a Grammy Award for “Best Rap Solo Performance,” a slew of MTV Award nominations and the “Best Female Hip Hop Artist Award” at the second annual BET Awards, among other honors.

The writer/producer/artist/record exec (she’s worked with everyone from Whitney Houston to Justin Timberlake to her newest protégé Tweet) could have spent this past summer resting on her laurels. Instead, she returned to the studio with Timbaland and proceeded to make one of the most provocative rap/R&B records ever. “I wanted to make this record,” says Missy. “I needed to make this record. I chose the title for a reason. I am a work in progress. I am Under Construction ý mentally, physically, musically and spiritually. I look at the whole world as being Under Construction. I look at hip hop as being Under Construction. We have to rebuild what hip hop once was. We have to deal with the animosity between artists that’s out there and make it fun again. I realize now after the kind of year that went down. After 9/11, and the death of Aaliyah and Left Eye, I, like a lot of people, look at the fragility of life. A lot of these songs address that kind of thing. But I wanted it to be a fun record too. A celebration of life. Particularly about hip hop. We’ve created a great thing that has influenced the culture of the world. I don’t want to see us f*** it up.”

Born in Portsmouth VA, Missy celebrated music from those very first days when she would sing and perform for family members. Her earliest memories are singing to her dolls, using a hairbrush as a microphone. She pursued her dream with a steady determination, eventually signing to Elektra, as part of the group Sista in 1991 via Devante (of Jodeci) but the album was never released. It was one of those bizarre twists of fate, however, that would give Missy an opportunity to flourish behind the scenes as a producer and writer and even sometimes guest star.

She graced platinum tracks for Jodeci and Aaliyah, landing a breakthrough rap stint on Gina Thompson’s “The Things You Do.” She scored her production/label deal with Elektra soon after. The launch of Missy’s groundbreaking imprint, The GoldMind Inc., was sparked by the release of her debut masterpiece Supa Dupa Fly in June of 1997. A genre defying work that blurred your typical suppositions about black music, the album still reigns as one of the highest debuting discs from a female hip hop star on Billboard’s Album chart, notching an incredible #3 in its first week of release. The ethereal single “The Rain” was nominated for three MTV awards.

Missy began carefully constructing her empire around The GoldMind Inc., releasing the gold plus effort from soulful vocalist Nicole, as well as continuing to produce and write a slew of diverse hits for other superstars, including Destiny’s Child, Janet Jackson and Christina Aguilera. GoldMind hit gold again, so to speak, in the spring of 2002, in unveiling Missy’s newest protégé, Tweet. Her album, Southern Hummingbird, was lauded by critics, with Vibe magazine naming her Best New Artist of the year.

In 1999 Missy released her follow up effort, Da Real World. Not content with the industry’s follow-the-leader mentality, Missy tricked everyone again with the darker, in-your-face-challenge of “She’s A Bitch,” dicing up some serious women’s issues in the process.

When Missy released the album’s third single “Hot Boyz,” she re-wrote the rules about the kind of impact one single could have on a hip hop audience. The single went platinum, remaining on the Billboard Rap Singles chart for almost an entire year, snagging the #1 spot for a mind boggling 18 weeks in a row, easily breaking the 11 week record held by Puff Daddy, Coolio, and Da Brat. In typical Missy ‘genre defying’ style, the single was also the #1 song on Billboard’s R&B Singles chart for six weeks in a row. The platinum-plus Da Real World would eventually be nominated for a Soul Train Award and a Grammy. She was still able to top herself with her much anticipated third album, Miss E…So Addictive, thanks to the historic single “Get Ur Freak On,” which became the most successful effort of the superstar’s career. The video for the single garnered six MTV Award nominations, and ruled the #1 spot on Billboard’s R&B charts for almost two months, the highest charting single for any female rapper in 2001

In addition, Missy has begun to re-dedicate herself to a slew of humanitarian projects a practice she began a few years ago with her work with the domestic violence organization, Break The Cycle. She recently performed at the Vanity Fair In Concert Series, a benefit concert in partnership with the Step Up Women’s Network, a non-profit organization that raises funding and awareness for breast cancer research and other women’s causes. Missy will also perform at MTV’s World Aids Day concert, raising awareness about the growing crisis in South Africa and around the world.

She points to her love of music as the overwhelming force that guides all other career decisions. She looks to the album’s closer, the aforementioned “Can You Hear Me,” as an example of how a song can capture a subject as heartbreaking as losing a loved one, and possibly even help to ease it. “I wanted it to be a freeze frame for how we all felt when we heard the news about Aaliyah and Left Eye. But even more importantly I wanted to remind people that when a friend loses a loved one, their pain goes on forever. For people like Aaliyah’s mom, every time they look at that door they almost expect that person they lost to walk through it. Music helps us bear those moments.”

Missy points out that she also wanted to celebrate those life-affirming moments on Under Construction. “The news is so devastating now, with stories about suicide bombers and war and all that. Everybody’s got beef. I wanted to put some smiles on some faces with this album. That’s why it’s great to have Jay-Z (he appears on the playful “Back In The Day”) or Ludacris (he appears on the double Dutch laced “Gossip folks”) or Method Man come and do their part too. I think when artists of that caliber appear on a Missy record they know they can get pretty far out. They’re looking for that edge. It’s like, well she’s bungee jumping, here I go too!”