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Missy Elliott

Melissa Elliott is the most inventive figure in rap's production and visual history, and the first female rapper inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Her records still sound like they arrived from somewhere else.

Early life and origins in Virginia

She grew up in Portsmouth, Virginia, and formed a girl group, Sista, that was signed and then shelved. That period is where she met Timbaland, and their partnership shaped everything either of them did afterwards.

Writing and producing before rapping

She wrote and produced for Aaliyah, SWV, 702 and others through the mid 1990s, and was an established credit long before she was an artist. She has continued to write for other people throughout.

Album discography

Supa Dupa Fly (1997), Da Real World (1999), Miss E... So Addictive (2001), Under Construction (2002), This Is Not a Test! (2003) and The Cookbook (2005).

Notable songs

"The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly)", "Get Ur Freak On", "Work It", "Lose Control" and "Pass That Dutch".

What she is known for musically

Rhythmic invention. The Timbaland productions she rapped over used stuttering, off-grid drum patterns and non-Western percussion at a point when American rap was built almost entirely on straight loops. Her videos, mostly with Hype Williams and Dave Meyers, were surreal and technically ambitious in ways nothing else on television was.

Legacy

She was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2023, the first female rapper to enter it. Her influence is audible across two generations of producers who never sampled her but absorbed how she arranged rhythm.

The Timbaland partnership

They met in Virginia as teenagers and have worked together across nearly every record either has made. The division is not clean — she contributes to arrangement, he contributes to writing — and their joint output through the late 1990s and early 2000s is among the most influential production work in American popular music, not just rap.

Writing for other artists

Her credits include substantial work with Aaliyah, whose One in a Million she and Timbaland largely built, plus SWV, 702, Destiny's Child, Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey. A large share of late-1990s R&B runs through her pen.

The videos

The inflatable suit in "The Rain", the contorted bodies in "Get Ur Freak On", the reversed choreography in "Work It" — the visual work was as formally inventive as the music and considerably more expensive. She won four Grammys and a stack of MTV awards across that run.

Health and later career

She was diagnosed with Graves' disease in 2008, which curtailed her output for years. She has continued to write and produce, released the EP Iconology in 2019, and toured again in the 2020s. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction in 2023 made her the first female rapper in it, and the first rapper of any gender inducted primarily for production and songwriting as much as performance.