Back when the rapper Missy Elliott embarked on her first headline tour, she turned heads for the alien brilliance of her music. She was confident that the freaky, relentlessly inventive tracks she cut with producer Timbaland in the late ’90s and 2000s would endure for decades. By the end of her tour’s first night in Los Angeles, hip-hop had a new superstar filling arenas.
The year was 2024. The show was Thursday. It’s wild that at 53, one of rap’s most important and creatively bountiful artists had never actually got around to touring before.
That feels like a trivia point you could toss out at a party that no one would believe, all frantically Googling if it could possibly true. Tens of millions of records sold, boasting cherished and still-shocking singles; generations of artists influenced by her. Fully inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, where you must be 25 years off your debut to qualify.
Welcome to the road, Miss E. Glad to have you here at last. Elliott fully remade the sound and style of rap with albums like 1997’s nimble “Supa Dupa Fly,” 1999’s brash “Da Real World” and 2001’s rave-imbued “Miss E .
.. So Addictive.
” Timbaland’s beats were icy and clanging; her delivery was hot and bothered. Tracks like “She’s a B—” and “Get Ur Freak On” were evidence of the new pleasures possible with a bit of mind-expansion. (And mind-dirtying — it’s hard to overstate how horny these records were).
So after she finally took the sta.
