Transcript of episode 012 -

Missy Elliott: Digital Innovator

Bridget Todd (00:04):

There Are No Girls on the Internet is a production of iHeart Radio and Unbossed Creative. I'm Bridget Todd, and this is There Are No Girls on the Internet.

Bridget Todd (00:17):

Prince. David Bowie. Les Paul. When we think about the intersection of tech innovation and music, it's not difficult to think about men who fit the bill, but what about all the female digital visionaries and their impact on music? Enter Melissa Arnette Elliott, also known as Missy Elliott. Okay, so some of y'all might be thinking that maybe this whole episode is just an excuse for me to take a little break from the depressing news cycle and talk about my love of Missy Elliott. You know what? You're not totally wrong.

Bridget Todd (00:51):

The girl has not always gotten credit for the visionary that she is. Her work as a producer, changed the landscape of music in ways that we can still hear today, and her innovative music videos blend science fiction and Afrofuturism to throw off outdated patriarchal chains of what it means to be a black woman.

Bridget Todd (01:09):

Now, we talk a lot about girl squads and feminism and music, but for Missy Elliot, that looks like working with other women in the music industry, amplifying their voices, and acting as a creative collaborator with them. Missy is known for her technical production prowess. Alongside her longtime creative collaborator, Timbaland, she's written and produced scores of songs for other artists, many of whom are women whose work she helped find mainstream success. Here's just a little taste of the music she's helped produced.

Music (01:39):

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Bridget Todd (01:42):

Aaliyah, One in a Million.

Music (01:48):

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Bridget Todd (01:49):

Ciara, 1, 2 Step.

Music (01:50):

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Bridget Todd (01:52):

702, Where My Girls At?

Music (01:54):

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Bridget Todd (01:58):

Beyonce, Signs.

Music (02:01):

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Bridget Todd (02:10):

"A lot of people don't know a lot of the records I've written or produced. So that's a highlight for me as a woman," Elliott told the Associated Press. "I always said if a man had done half the records that I've done, we would know all about it."

Bridget Todd (02:22):

Missy is 100% right. It's almost hard for me to overstate the impact Missy Elliott's work has had on me personally, and she's actually one of the reasons I wanted to start this podcast at all. One day, I was thinking about all the different ways she shaped music and music videos and culture and the way music is made, and I thought, "Why aren't we constantly talking about Missy Elliott all the time?" I was even Missy Elliott for Halloween when I was younger. Check the photo in the show description if you want to see evidence. [see above]

Bridget Todd (02:51):

Missy grew up in the South in a small town called Portsmouth, Virginia, and I'm from a small town in Virginia, too. We both grew up in the church, singing in church choirs.

Music (03:00):

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Bridget Todd (03:01):

The summer of 1997 was a particularly hot and muggy one in Virginia. My family had just moved to a new neighborhood, and I didn't really know anyone. I still remember it so clearly. That July, the Pathfinder had just landed on Mars to explore whether or not life could really exist on that planet. I remember watching it on the news on the 4th of July. I spent a lot of that summer up in my room, thinking about things like aliens and outer space and what the future looked like. Well, that and my other favorite pastime, which was watching music videos on MTV.

Bridget Todd (03:34):

That was also the same month when Missy Elliott dropped her debut album, Supa Dupa Fly, and it sounded like something at once from another planet and the future. It debuted at the number three slot on the Billboard 200, the highest charting debut for any female rapper in history. Missy was just getting started, and she was already charting new territory.

Bridget Todd (03:55):

When I was young, it didn't really seem like there were that many ways to be a black woman. I loved the community of strong black women who raised me on church candy and gospel music, but it didn't really match how I felt inside. Though I didn't know it at the time, but looking back, it had a lot to do with me coming to terms with being queer. I just felt like a weirdo, and I was always searching for permission that being a weirdo was okay. So whenever I saw a black person doing something different and new, I latched onto it immediately, I was obsessed with black weirdos like Grace Jones and Prince. I also liked any story that was about aliens having to blend in on earth, and sometimes when I felt out of place, I'd pretend I was from another planet, too.

Bridget Todd (04:37):

So the first time I saw the video for Missy Elliott's The Rain, my mind was blown. I had never seen anything like it, and I just remember thinking, "Is this person from outer space?" Missy probably understands where I'm coming from. When she goes back and looks at her old videos, she thinks, "What was I on?" Here's what she had to say about looking back on those videos in an interview: "I know that was my smoke days, but I was like, 'Whoa." At the time when I was doing those videos, I didn't think much of it. I thought they were hot, but I didn't critique it or go into detail or say, 'This is some next-level shit.'"

Missy Elliott’s innovative visuals use science fiction and Afrofuturism to throw off the outdated patriarchal chains of what it means to be a black woman

Bridget Todd (05:12):

Take the iconic video for Missy Elliott's The Rain. There's a link to the video on the show description [above] if you haven't seen it for a while. Her innovative visuals use science fiction and Afrofuturism to throw off the outdated patriarchal chains of what it means to be a black woman, and even at 14, I picked up what Missy was putting down. Now as an adult, I wanted to know more about her work and how it fit within this context. It turns out I'm not the only one asking the deep questions when it comes to Missy Elliott.

Steve Shaviro (05:43):

Hi, I'm Steve Shaviro, DeRoy Professor of English at Wayne State University. I'm a scholar, and I work mostly on science fiction and music videos.

Bridget Todd (05:54):

Dr. Shaviro says Missy's music just sounds like the future, and you can hear her influence in all different kinds of music today.

Steve Shaviro (06:01):

The Chemical Brothers just came up with a new album and made some videos. It's very interesting, but it sounded like it was music from the mid-1980s. I mean, it's great music, but it could have been easily been made in the 1980s, because it's that kind of sound. With Missy Elliott, even though she's doing her own sound, which recognizably [inaudible 00:06:17] the '90s and early 2000s, it seems contemporary at the same time. That's partly because lots of other people are so influenced by her, I think.

Bridget Todd (06:27):

That is something I love about Missy Elliott's music, is that when you listen to it, it sounds like it could be written in 1980, 1990, and also it sounds like music that could come out today. Also, it sounds like music from the future. She's been quoted as talking about how her style and her music is so futuristic, and I hear that so much in her music. It's timeless and futuristic all at once.

Steve Shaviro (06:51):

She and Timbaland 20 years ago were experimenting with very odd rhythms and with things which push the edges. I mean, it's still danceable, but it pushes the edges of what a groove. That's the best way I can say it. I don't feel that that's adequate, but that's sort of how I think about it.

Bridget Todd (07:12):

In his article, Supa Dupa: Fly Black Women as Cyborgs in Hip Hop Videos, Shaviro argues that her song The Rain is about her using scifi-inspired cyborg visuals to subvert the patriarchy and what we think of as traditional black femininity. He writes, "The videos thus raise the question about identity and otherness and about power and control. They ask us to think about how we're being transformed as a result of our encounters with the new digital and virtual technologies, or better, they raise the question of who we are as beings whose very embodiment is tied up with technological change as well as the ascriptions of gender and race. Even the song's main sample, Ann Peeble's classic 1973 hit I Can't Stand the Rain is a kind of subversion."

Music (08:04):

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Bridget Todd (08:04):

In the original song, Ann is post-breakup and heartbroken, plagued by the sound of the rain outside of her window. But in Missy's version, it's raining indoors, and she's broken up with some guy before he can dump her.

Music (08:21):

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Bridget Todd (08:24):

I've been a Missy Elliott fan my whole life, and this was something that weirdly had never occurred to me, that her use of Ann Peebles's sample of The Rain actually subverts that, because that original song that she samples is about a woman who her man has left her and the sound of the rain is just making her think about it. Missy in that song uses the sample, but completely subverts it and flips it on its head. She's the one who's breaking up with the guy before he can dump her.

Steve Shaviro (08:51):

Yeah. Right. Again, as I think I said in the article, the way the video works, it's only raining on the sound stage inside, while on the scene outside, it's these hyper-real colors, green, blue, blue sky, green grass, and the 2001 model that's in the background. So the fact that they have the rain indoors instead of outdoors, I think it signifies that in a real way.

Bridget Todd (09:23):

Let's take a quick break. We're back. You probably already know that Missy Elliott is synonymous with iconic music videos. I probably spent hours in my room watching her trippy visuals. When I was growing up, an iconic music video could make an artist. But these days, artists can get big without having a video at all. So labels don't really spend the money to produce them like they used to, and it's kind of a shame you don't even get to see them as an expression of an artist's vision anymore. Missy's visuals were all about being subversive. You know how she rocks that iconic black inflatable suit and helmet in he rain video? Shaviro says it's a futuristic response to her being shut out of the music industry for daring to be a black woman who wasn't a size four.

Steve Shaviro (10:16):

This whole emphasis on standards of women's beauty for the male gaze being slender and things like that, and she's violating that. But it's like that plastic thing, it's both emphasizing and concealing her body at the same time, which is like ... I mean, other people have noted how some women musicians deliberately try to resist being hyper-sexualized by wearing loose or baggy clothes and stuff like that. There's a whole list. I mean, you can think about the 1990s early TLC videos, where they wore these baggy pants with condoms on as decorations and stuff like that, which was smart and funny. I mean, but today, you see someone like Billie Eilish, [inaudible 00:11:04] the reason she wears these oversized clothes is because she doesn't want people to be completely objectifying her body.

Steve Shaviro (11:09):

So Missy Elliott is ... I mean, her career, from what I've read, is that she was doing production work for Aaliyah and many other artists and writing songs and stuff like that. She wanted to perform herself, but was told by people in the industry that she wasn't attractive enough to be a star. So she's always faced that kind of thing. So it's a way of affirming herself, and it's sort of doing two things at once, because, on the one hand, it is this kind of loose or ... Literally, it's baggy. It seems to be made out of plastic bags. So it's rather saying, "No, you can't just look at my curves and objectify them," but at the same time, It's emphasizing her physicality and her presence there. It makes her bigger, so it makes her fill up the screen more. So it's sort of like doing these both things at the same time, I think. Does that make sense?

Bridget Todd (11:58):

That makes so much sense. Here's how Missy described it on VH1's Behind the Music.

Missy Elliott (12:03):

We came up with this idea of being in a big plastic garbage bag, basically. I said, "I'm going to show them. I'm going to make a record, and it's going to be big. I'm going to be big, too, and I mean literally. I'm going to stay my size and have a big record, and that's that."

Bridget Todd (12:21):

Now, this actually makes a lot of sense. Missy was shut out of making a public-facing music video because of her looks. In 1993 Raven-Symone, then the adorable child star of the Cosby Show, debuted her hit single, That's What Little Girls Are Made Of. It was written and produced by Missy, and Missy also performs a rap on it. But in the music video, a thinner and lighter-skinned actress lip syncs Missy's part. Missy recalls that she was intentionally left out of the video shoot because she didn't fit the image they were looking for.

Missy Elliott (12:52):

Nobody even told me they shot the video. I heard later it was like, "You didn't quite fit the image that we were looking for." I was like, "Oh, they're trying to say I'm fat." Immediately, I'm like, "Oh, hating on the big girls." I said every curse word. I was distraught.

Bridget Todd (13:15):

In Elle Magazine in 2017, she said the rejection was so painful she almost gave up on being a star. But now she's embraced having her own brand of black femininity, telling the New York Daily News what a blessing it is to be known for being different. Missy really sets herself apart by playing with our understanding of race and gender.

Missy Elliott has a kind of hyper-stylization that doesn't fit with traditional, stereotypical, sexist beauty norms. It’s an individualist self-assertion against being stereotyped in traditional gender ways.

Steve Shaviro (13:36):

It's a kind of hyper-stylization, but which doesn't fit in with traditional, stereotypical, sexist beauty norms. So it's very much a form of individualist self-assertion against being stereotyped in traditional gender ways.

Bridget Todd (13:53):

There's a real power when women claim our expertise and impact. Missy Elliott openly talks about the massive impact she's had on the music industry, an industry that hasn't always been quick to recognize her. She calls herself an innovator. She doesn't wait for the industry to define her own success. She defines it herself, and why should we wait around for someone to tell us our value and our worth? There is such a power in saying, "Yes, the work I produce is changing the game, and I'm going to own it." That's exactly what Missy does. Personally, do you think of Missy Elliott as a digital innovator?

Steve Shaviro (14:31):

Yeah, I mean, definitely, because, I mean, she's always been doing new things, and it's partly, again, being a woman and presenting herself in a way that only men were privileged to or refusing the roles that women are relegated to, but also I agree. Again, it's very hard quantify this or it's very hard for me especially to put my finger on what it is which is doing this, but yeah, it always does feel futuristic. It always feels it has a kind of ... I mean, it sort of has an edge. There's a famous statement by Lenin, the leader of the Bolshevik Revolution. When somebody said, "Are you sure you're not being too radical?", Lenin replied, "The only trouble is it's really hard to be as ... We must be as radical as reality itself." So that's the kind of phrase I would apply to Missy Elliott. She's one of the few people who is trying to be as radical as reality itself.

Bridget Todd (15:25):

I love it. I was not expecting a Lenin quote. That's not where I thought you were going, but I love it.

Steve Shaviro (15:32):

Yeah. Well, I mean, yeah, it's a great quote, so it's worth taking out of context.

Bridget Todd (15:41):

Definitely.

Steve Shaviro (15:43):

I mean, that's part of what a lot of art today does, including hip hop, is taking stuff out of context. On one side, they want you to recognize the original context. On the other side, they're really doing something really different than original with it. So it doesn't have the same meaning it had originally.

Bridget Todd (16:00):

So I've always thought of Missy Elliott as a tech innovator, as a digital innovator. I also think we're so much more comfortable calling male artists and male musicians innovators. No one will bat an eye if you call David Bowie or Prince an innovator, but we're so much less comfortable applying that label to women. Do you think that that's true, that we're less comfortable applying the label of innovator or genius to a female creative?

Steve Shaviro (16:24):

That's probably true out of general sexism.

It’s important for Black female creatives to claim titles like “innovator” for themselves

Bridget Todd (16:26):

I actually think it's really powerful and important for black female creatives especially to be claiming these titles for ourselves and not waiting for somebody to say, "Yes, you are a genius. Yes, you are an innovator," but saying, "Yeah, I know I'm innovative. I'm making music that nobody else is making. I'm taking risks. I'm taking chances. Yes, I am an innovator."

Steve Shaviro (16:47):

My only reservation is that I'm not thrilled with the word innovator, just because anytime any word gets adopted by business schools and so it's repeated about everything, but in mainstream discourse now, I don't know, taking away the headphone port and replacing it with something else that you need an adapter is described as innovation on the phone, shit like that. So it's always just depressing when words which have positive meanigns turn into business-speak, that you wonder whether to use them anymore.

Bridget Todd (17:21):

Oh, I'm right there with you. More There Are No Girls on the Internet after this quick break. (silence).

Bridget Todd (17:36):

We're back. Missy stopped making music for a while to deal with her health after finding out she had Graves' disease, but she is solidly back. Only recently, she gained the kind of respect as a digital innovator that she deserves.

Missy Elliott (17:48):

This Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award means so much to me. I have worked diligently for over two decades.

Bridget Todd (17:59):

Last year, she won MTV's Vanguard Award, given to commemorate outstanding contributions and a profound impact on music videos and popular culture. Some are even campaigning to have the award, once named after Michael Jackson, to be renamed in Missy's honor. She also earned an honorary degree from the prestigious Berkeley School of Music.

Bridget Todd (18:21):

In 2015, Katy Perry headlined the Superbowl halftime show. She brought out Missy Elliott as a special guest. Despite not having made any new music for years, Missy's performance was a massive hit. All three songs she performed entered the top top list on iTunes, even though they were all several years old. Google released their top Google searches during the performance, and they were all from youngsters Googling, "Who is Missy Elliott?"

Bridget Todd (18:48):

Missy took it in stride, tweeting, "The kids think I'm a new artist, and I'm about to blow up like Paul McCartney. Lord have mercy. I think it's cool that new kids think I'm a new artist. That just goes to show you that I'm still on fire and will rip down stages 20 years later."

Bridget Todd (19:03):

Missy Elliott just now is sort of getting a lot more recognition than I feel she's gotten in the past. She's spoken about how the fact that she's been behind so many important songwriters and musicians, but doesn't really get the credit. She's been clear that if she was a man, she feels like she would.

Steve Shaviro (19:19):

Of course. That's obviously true.

Bridget Todd (19:22):

Why do you think right now, in this moment we're in culturally, Missy Elliott is sort of getting those props? She just became the first rapper to get an honorary degree from the Berkeley College of Music. She's getting the VMA Vanguard Award, all of this.

Steve Shaviro (19:36):

It's hard to say. I mean, part of the problem I think is that she's been ill for much of the last decade, so she couldn't ... I mean, her last full-length album was I think in 2005. Since then, she's released a few singles. It may be partly just that she's now in better health and more able to do stuff. I mean, I don't know. It's like four or five years ... I mean, she's made partial comebacks. People forget about you if you don't have a new album out.

Steve Shaviro (20:04):

But the performed in the Superbowl halftime show four or five years ago. I can't remember the exact year, and my kids who are ... My two daughters are 17 and 14 now. So they were few years younger. They were tweens. They weren't quite teenagers yet. We were watching the midtime. I forgot who the main headliner was, but Missy Elliott came out of it, and my kids were just like, "Oh, listen, she's amazing." They'd never heard of her, of course, because they were babies when her last album had come out.

Steve Shaviro (20:39):

We're in this very kind of polarized time. At the same time, we have rising fascism in our government and in lots of governments around the world, and yet, at the same time, we have a much bigger explosion of multicultural and multi-gender, I mean, gay and lesbian people, trans people, people of different races and ethnicities. So you have this contradiction. On one hand, there's much more emphasis on the multiplicity at the same time that we have this kind of fascist backlash, which often seems to rule both the United States and other countries. So it's a very kind of weirdly fraught time, and I don't know how to interpret that. But it seems to me that we're pushing these two directions at the same time.

Bridget Todd (21:15):

Oh, that's kind of a hopeful way to put it.

Steve Shaviro (21:18):

Okay. Well, I hope so. I'm more optimistic about what some pop culture can throw up than I am about what'll happen on the political scene. But who knows? I mean, nobody can predict. But even in pop culture, we have more homogenization. A higher percentage of [inaudible 00:21:38] goes to Marvel movies than everything else combined, but on the other hand, we have, in all kinds of areas, especially when they can be lower budget, we have much more wide varieties of expression.

They're doing a museum show on Afrofuturism. They got the money for it because of Black Panther. The hook is Wakanda. But, of course, Afrofuturism has existed for a long time

Steve Shaviro (21:48):

I was talking the other day to a museum director, and they're doing a museum show on Afrofuturism. They said, basically, they could get the money for it because of Black Panther. The hook is Wakanda. But, of course, Afrofuturism has existed for a long time before Black Panther, which was ... I mean, it was obviously by far the best Marvel movie, but there's lots of other stuff going on, but sometimes you don't get the publicity. So I don't know. I mean, again, it seems particularly schizophrenic between the kind of horrible things going on politically and the kind of cultural renaissance which seems to be going on, despite that politics.

Bridget Todd (22:24):

It's so interesting to talk about Afrofuturism. This is just a personal aside, but those were such my foundational through roads into so many broader conversations about black identity, tech, digital thinking, science fiction. When I was a kid, my dad had this one specific Earth, Wind, and Fire album, and it had this really cool cover. I remember I was a kid. I would stare at it for hours and run my fingers over it and trying to figure out, "What does it mean? What does it mean?" Come to find out, I get older, it's like, "Oh, well, it doesn't really mean anything. It just looks really cool." I was thinking there was some sort of secret mystical ...

Bridget Todd (23:03):

I think artists who play with blackness and identity and science fiction and the future, I think for a long time, it probably felt like as a black person or, I think, any person of color or a marginalized community, sometimes it can be fraught to imagine our futures. I think creatives who can help us imagine in our wildest dreams what those futures look like and that they include us, I think is so important and powerful.

Steve Shaviro (23:32):

Yes. There's a show. I live in Detroit, and there's a show in an art gallery downtown of Afrofuturist art. One of the items in the show is ... It's not actually in the gallery. It's on a billboard outside. It says, "There are black people in the future."

Bridget Todd (23:46):

Oh, that's the installation from artist Alisha Wormsley. She puts up billboards reminding everyone that there are black people in the future. I just saw it on Instagram this morning. I thought it was so wild, because, of course, on one hand, it shouldn't be a controversial statement to remind folks that yes, there are black people in the future. But then also, how arresting is that? How powerful is that? We exist in the future. It's kind of a bold reminder. There are black people in the future, and Missy Elliott helped me contextualize myself in that future and embrace all the wonderful weirdness that it could entail.

Bridget Todd (24:20):

We need to lift up our black visionaries and innovators, the weirdos who do things their own way and inspire others that they, too, can march to or even produce their own beats. So Missy Elliott is the visionary who inspired me, but we want to hear from you. What icons and visionaries are inspiring you? Let us know at hello@tangoti.com. You can also find transcripts for today's episode at tangoti.com.

Bridget Todd (24:44):

There Are No Girls on the Internet was created by me, Bridget Todd. It's a production of iHeart Radio and Unbossed Creative. Jonathan Strickland is our executive producer. Tari Harrison is our producer and sound engineer. Michael Amato is our contributing producer. I'm your host, Bridget Todd. If you want to help us grow, rate and review us on Apple Podcasts. For more podcasts from iHeart Radio, check out the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.