Switched on Pop - ANTHEMS: Missy Elliott — Work It

Episode Date: November 17, 2020

Cultural critic Ivie Ani breaks down how Missy Elliott broke into the pantheon of anthems, and how she changed the scope of who could belong. Songs Discussed Missy Elliott - Work It Blondie - Heart of Glass RUN-DMC - Peter Piper Rock Master Scott & the Dynamic Three - Request Line Snoop Dogg - Y'All Gone Miss Me Vanilla Ice - Ice Ice Baby Justin Timberlake - Sexy Back Trace Adkins - Honky Tonk Badonkadonk Missy Elliott - The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly) Lil Kim - Not Tonight (Remix) Missy Elliott - Lose Control (feat. Ciara & Fat Man Scoop) Missy Elliott - Sock It 2 Me Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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from the first instant and he has a wea. Good Girl Jasmine Absolute, hypnotica, irresistible. Discover it now and let you involve for its essence. Welcome to Switchdown Pop. I'm songwriter Charlie Harding, and this is the final episode

in our series on anthems Today I'm joined by cultural critic and friend of the podcast, EVA, Aene. EVA, thank you for being here. Thank you so much for having me. I'm happy to be back. Here's what we're going to do. I'm going to play you just a few notes of a song, and I want you to tell me what it conjures up for you.

Wow, so much nostalgia. So much nostalgia. We're listening to Missy Elliott's work. of course. And yeah, it came out in 2002. Yes. And it still sounds like the first time I heard it. I mean, if you have an ear for old school hip-hop, you can hear that it's very retro because of what it samples. The instrumental alone, that track in particular, obviously we know Timberland frequent collaborator with Missy Elliott. They were best friends in high school.

Yeah, they're going to be back, Virginia, Virginia, yeah. And they've made it. history together since then. Timbalin has a very particular style of production that is so out of this world, literally. That mixed in with some of those old school samples make this song just like a perfect flashback and futuristic concoction. I love how you put it that way because I totally agree. I hear in just these opening notes multiple decades of music. from the past and, you know, 2002 when it came out, it was in many ways predicting the future.

So I thought it would be fun, maybe we can just dissect a few of these references that are going on. And we can start in the earliest decade with 1978's Heart of Glass by Blondie. We get that little drum machine woodblock beat, which Timblein pitches down, slows down, stretches out, and becomes the framework for working. It's just so intricate because we have that very, very small, blondie moment. And then we have like three other samples in there. The prominent one, I think, is the Run DMC's Peter Piper. It's the sample break. The breakdown.

So the Run DMC sample of Peter Piper brings us into the 1980s and the early heyday of hip-hop. And so we've gone from 70s to 80s. We also have the opening line, the request line from Rockmaster Scott and the Dynamic 3. The other thing that I'm hearing here moving into the next decade into the 90s is that high synth line just has such a g-funk style to it. It reminds me of something like Snoop dogs, y'all are going to miss me. Right, right, right, which is interesting because that's a West Coast and Southern connection. But you put it that this song is in the past as much as it is in the future. I think what we're hearing with Missy Elliott and Timberlin's production is a sound that will be dominant in popular music throughout the 2000s.

That woodblock sound from Blondie from Heart of Glass, we hear the same kind of percussion in the work that Timbalin does with Justin Timberlake. And sexy back. Missy Elliott and Timbalin had already been defining the sound of popular music for a number of years at this point. But I think the sounds and work it end up becoming just essential in a way that people might not have understood right at the moment when it came out. It just points to, I think, the framework of hip-hop as being traditionally hyper-modern and how traditional Missy and Timbalin are,

but how innovative they are at the same time. So they adhere to those pillars of hip-hop, those natural organic elements of hip-hop, but then they always bring this new twist. What you're saying speaks to the strength of their art. They know how to cite the past and to turn it into something new, which makes me wonder what makes this song an anthem. And I don't think that we necessarily,

have to crown it an anthem. It has already been crowned an anthem. Missy Elliott performed Worked at the 2015 Super Bowl, which was and still is the most watched Super Bowl performance of all time. Let's look at the criteria about what makes an anthem. The criteria that we've set up previously in this series, that an anthem has to have a memorable riff, that it has to encourage participation, and that it has to be ubiquitous. Let's make sure that Workett fits within these criteria. So let's start from the top. We've got a memorable riff. We've got to encourage participation, and that it has to be ubiquitous. Let's make sure that Worket fits within these criteria. So let's start from the top. We've got, does Work It have

a memorable riff? I think the riff is obviously the chorus because it's very simple and it's a question, can you work it? It's easy to remember. Anyone can sing that. Across ages, generations, race, anyone

can sing that hook. But the other most memorable part of the song is a part that people to this day were still trying to figure out the definition of. Totally. A few years ago, you wrote an article in which you said that decoding missy lyrics had become a childhood pastime of yours. And so help us out here. There is a much misunderstood

lyric and work it. What is going on? Yes. So the lyric that follows, put my thing down, flip it and reverse it. Is a line of seemingly gibberish. It's like a line where we all just kind of wing it. Yes, yes. You have to remember that this came out at a time where we didn't have genius decoding lyrics on the internet. We didn't have artists decoding lyrics on YouTube because we didn't have YouTube. So this was a time where you used to print out your lyrics or type the lyrics up yourself after listening to something on the radio or watching the video and just figure it out. I guess no one could figure out that the next line of gibberish was actually the reversed prior line of put my thing down, flip it, and reverse it.

It's your thing down, flip it and reverse it. It's your remittal. It's your remitted bill for adding me at number five. If you go. Right. I put my thing down, flip it and reverse it. I put my thing down, flip it and reverse it. It's your remitable. It's brilliant.

It's brilliant. It's brilliant. Because she's doing what she says she's about to do. And Missy is actually like a really, really skilled lyricist, along with being a skilled dancer, a skilled singer, a skilled producer. She's a really skilled lyricist. Oh, yeah, absolutely. And it's interesting that there's a section that is incomprehensible and could not easily be Googled at the time.

And yet it is memorable for its sort of curiosity. What is that line? It has us all sort of leaning into the music, to listen more closely, to try to decode it. And of course, we can't unless we flip the song around and we reverse it. And, you know, you point out to these different riffs. And I think one of the things that is so anthemic about Workit is that it doesn't have a single memorable riff. It has so many, right? Like, I even think the opening little, don't, don't, don't da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da.

It has a, like, ice-ice-baby kind of simplicity and memorability to it. There are just so many hooks here. Even the sort of sound effect that is sort of siren-like, the G-Funk kind of background noise. For me, that is a hook in of itself. And it's totally appropriate that it ends up in arenas because it sounds kind of air hornish. So there's just like riff after riff after riff here. I think memorable riff, absolutely. Participation.

You'd said, all right, we've got this memorable. line. What other ways do you feel like this encourages participation? Man, where do I even start? Besides the hook, there are other smaller lines in there that seem to have stood the test of time and have always been referenced. Particularly the line with the word badunk-a-donk. Right. That was a word that was only used in hip-hop culture. And Missy, can be credited as making that a mainstream word or introducing it to the public beyond hip-hop.

This word transcends and moves outside of hip-hop all the way into country music when Trace Adkins makes Honky Tonk bdonka-dunk in 2005. Mm-hmm. Three years later. And there's so many other lines. You know, this almost feels like a song that was made for TikTok 20 years before TikTok came out?

Yes, yes. Because there are just so many lines. What are some other favorites? Well, first and foremost, the TikTok reference is spot on because this is a dance song at the end of the day. This is like an old school hip hop song centered in dance, break dancing, and everything else. Missy Elliott is a dancer, so she has an ear for what resonates with dancers.

And the video highlighted dancers. So this is very much so a dance song. And that's why it works in sports and stadiums because of that element of movement, right? Absolutely. So I think that that's what helps people participate in this song is that element of motion and movement and how the words are fluid

and how the words just lend to the rhythm, the melodies, and everything else. Yeah, her lyrical performance is even percussive and something to dance along to. The line, ratatata. Yes. It's the can to beat the go batata. Ratta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta. She's imitating the drums.

She's giving something for us to dance to. And also, if we're hanging out with all our friends watching the game, we can all say ratat-tata. You know, there are lots of other lines here where you might stumble because she's so dexterous in her. rapping, but we can all participate in that moment. Yeah, Missy tends to go with Anamonapia a lot in her music, which I think helps kids sing along, and I think it helps make a song stick for small children. So I think Missy has like a real gift for that type of animated lyricism. It's a really good point because a song that's going to be anthemic needs to be appropriate for all ages. And even though there are moments of lyrics here that might not be for all children,

there are so many sections you can pull out that it feels like, yeah, this is just a universal. Anybody can sing along. I was like nine or ten when this song came out. I had no idea of all the sexual innuendo or references in this song. It's just a fun song, you know, and it resonated with kids and adults and everyone else. So she found the formula. The last criteria we talked about about what makes an anthem is it has to be ubiquitous. Let's dive into this. What makes work in Missy Elliott ubiquitous?

Does she fit this criteria? Of course. All of Missy's work fits this criteria. Because Missy kind of straddles the fence. She can talk about serious topics. She can talk about love. She can make the dance anthems. But most importantly, she has a comedic element that not a lot of people can pull off.

Hip-hop and comedy goes hand in hand. But Missy has like this real gift for fun. and funny lyrics. Like, there's a line in there where she says, don't I look like a hollyberry poster? See the Belvedere playing tricks on you. See the Belvedere playing tricks on you.

That was like, I remember hearing that, and I remember seeing the video, and it was just like almost like she was making fun of herself. But in a way where you laugh with her, not at her. Like, Missy is not a joke. She never was a joke. But she has this, like, ability to have fun and talk about herself and talk about other people. And no one ever gets offended.

I feel like she broadens what it means to be a pop star because she is, in many ways, just so her own person doesn't conform to all kinds of expectation, her musical expectations, her image expectations. Yes. One of the things that I find really fascinating about her ubiquity is that when we were first researching this idea of looking at anthems, I was looking at all the sort of listicles that other publications had put together. What are the biggest sports anthems? And they are overwhelmingly male. They're mostly white and largely because the music is rock and roll. And rock and roll has been sort of the ubiquitous thing that exists in stadium anthems. I think Jock Jams era, stuff that we covered, also sort of opens up who can participate to a degree. But still, many of those Jock Jam hits were overwhelmingly male as well. And Missy's work makes it on almost every listicle of sports anthem. So she's kind of broken the norms of what kind of music is appropriate to be played in stadiums and arenas.

She did really break a lot of molds. And it's just interesting to look back on and think about because it's not some, this is not a song that I would have expected to be like the top single on the village voice list. You know what I mean? Right. It's not a song that I would have expected to top the Billboard, Hot 100, on number two. It's not a song that I would have expected at that time. but it was this just beloved song. It's her biggest single to date.

Missy, someone who has such, has decades of a discography. It's her biggest single to date. If you had told me like, oh, it could have been get your freak on or it could be lose control or it could be the rain. Like there are so many epic songs in her discography. And it could be because of the amount that we hear it decontextualized from listening and streaming, watching videos. We hear it just in the background when. We're at public gatherings. Well, when we get to do that again.

Yeah. What's interesting about her ubiquity, though, is I wonder to the degree that her 2015 Super Bowl performance was essential in solidifying her music for or even bringing her music to a new generation. Because when she performed at the Super Bowl in 2015, it had been almost a decade since she had released music under her name. Yeah. And that 2015 Super Bowl performance, it was actually a Katie Perry performance, along with Lenny Kravitz and Missy Elliott as special guests. But Missy Elliott was the one who stole the show. And it's primarily because of the people who knew who she was, who were excited to see Missy perform, who were excited to see her unexpectedly, and who are excited to hear all those classic answers. And then it was because of a new demographic who had no idea who she was, who felt like whatever she was doing was new and riveting, but it was decades old.

So it's that cross-generational element there of likely young white teenagers who listen to Katie Perry being introduced to a hip-hop legend, a pop star, a pop legend. That's what Missy Elliott is in her own right. And after that Super Bowl performance, her sales surged, according to Billboard, by 282% in the week after that Super Bowl performance. Good for Missy. Amazing. So Missy is exposed to an entirely new generation and a new audience with this performance. And you call her a legend. surely this Super Bowl show cemented her work into the pantheon of anthems.

But I want to look beyond how she just fits the criteria and look to how Missy Elliott helps us reimagine what an anthem can even be and who can write one. We'll check that out right after the break. Maria, you have a podcast now and you need to start acting like it. What's the first step as a podcaster? Well, you have to ask lots of questions. I'm Maria Sharpova and I'm hosting a new podcast called, Pretty Tough. Every week, I'm sitting down with trailblazing women at the top of their game

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That's this week on America Actually. Every Saturday in your audio and video feeds. When Missy Elliott performed at the 2015 Super Bowl, you wrote a piece to commemorate that moment called Missy Elliott, Black to the Future. And it explores both your personal, relationship to her and her importance, as well as the components that make her a legend. On top of her visual style, you describe Missy as a contemporary legend for her sound.

What are some of the qualities that make up a Missy Elliott production? With a Missy Elliott production, it's essentially almost always going to be a fusion. and she's one of the rappers who should be credited for introducing singing and rapping simultaneously, which is standard now. She should be credited with that, having done that for a long time, and having done that early. I feel like there's been endless think pieces

over the last three to five years about, a look at how Drake has made singing and rapping a thing. It's like, no, no, no, no, like Missy was doing that in the 90s. Yeah, as if Lauren Hill wasn't doing it, as if Missy wasn't doing it. And maybe it has something to do with them being women and not being given the credit. But Miss Elliott is an innovator by definition. And she can actually sing. It's not just her, you know, pulling a 50-cent moment where she's just doing a melody.

She can actually sing. She's a vocalist. Alongside being a lyricist, a rapper, that fusion element is something that you can expect from a Missy Elliott song. Just fun, you know, sex, which is huge because if this, you know, we're talking about a time where there were so much limits on what black women could do with their image and their sound. and the amount of control that the industry attempted to place on black women from Lauren Hill to Miss Yelliot to whoever else. Missy Elliott seemed to be able to do whatever she wanted to do, which is very, very striking for someone to be that popular and to have that much agency over her image and her sound. We could talk about colorism all day, every day in the music industry. Miss Yelley, a dark-skinned, plus-sized woman in hip-hop, in pop music, being sexual, being funny, being lyrical, being musical, being a dancer, being everything.

You do what you don't know you well, I won't chai. Go downtown and eat it like a vo-cha. See my hips, big hips, so chai. See my butts in my lips and my lips don't chai. You talk about how this combination of image sound, the way in which she can so effortlessly combine singing and an orthodox style of rapping, is brought together to tell very unique kinds of messages that perhaps were not popular in their time and are still perhaps in the underground of what's happening in hip hop. you specifically talk about her being a part of the Afro-Futurist canon. Can you tell me about what you mean by that? The phrase Afro-Futurism was coined by cultural critic Mark Derry in his 1994 essay, Black to the Future. Afro-futurism is essentially an ideology and movement grounded in the re-envisioning of the past, present, and future of black people's positioning in the material world,

and beyond. Primarily through the innovations of science fiction, historical fiction, fantasy, the real world, music, movies, books, Afrofuturism functions through the black diasporic lens and kind of serves as this radical departure from traditional Western artistic and historic expressions. A few artists who are usually associated with Afrofuturism are Octavia Butler, John Coltrane, Outcast, Flying Lotus, Sunrod, Janelle Monet, George Clinton. I mean, the list could go on. Missy Elliott has always seemed to weave this ideology through her music overtly and covertly. And it appears in her sound, her look, and her. entire music persona.

Is there a song that really exemplifies Missy Elliott's Afrofuturist's message? Well, when I think about Afrofuturism in Missy's music, I think that we can't rule out the fact that her music is very much so tied to her visuals, even though the music can stand alone and the music is timeless and the music is so fresh

and retro and all of the above, it's important to note that when it comes to assessing the Afrofuturistic aesthetic, her visuals are the key to that conversation. And her visuals and her music go hand in hand. So what I think about in terms of what song and video that applies to is probably Sok It to Me, which was her 1997 song off of Super Dupa Fly, the album. And the video is like clear-cut Afro-Futurism.

She's basically doing this stranger in a strange new land theme. And she's a literal space alien in the video. And she's alternating in between realities with Lil Kim in the video. So I don't know how. how clear, how more clear it can get. But this video is like a testament to the themes that she has throughout her other videos. I like that you bring up the Saketimi example because I feel like it is another great example of where she's using both a retro sound and simultaneously making it completely new and of the

moment. It has lots of sort of funk samples that are reminiscent of parliament funkadelic and George Clinton is of course, has always been sort of atrofuturist adjacent. And so I feel like she's using some of those sounds, but putting them into a hip-hop context and making them totally new. I just love that song. And what you just said makes me think of what writer Trisha Rose said. She wrote something in 1994 where she said. She wrote something in 1994 where she said we can read hip hop as the response of urban people of color to the post-industrial landscape. Was that quote from Black Noise? The Trishman's quote? Yeah, Black Noise. And I think that quote just sums up the type of music that Miss Yelliot makes. It exists in all of hip-hop's inspirations prior,

which is the funk in the soul and everything and those early ages of hip-hop. And then it exists in the future because Missy is so innovative and makes this type of music that can still have replay value and still sound fresh and sound new. And she does that by working with Timberland and having this sort of soundscape that is very much so cinematic. I think that's the best word to describe her music is cinematic. So it works best with visual elements. And that visual component is how she enforces that Afrofuturistic aesthetic.

So she has a way of using all of her artistic talents to help people imagine an alternative future, and specifically an alternative future for black people. Yeah. Yeah, her music just explores these unrefined themes within black culture and beyond, whether it's feminism, sexuality, music, hip-hop, body positivity, womanhood, liberation in all its forms, creativity in all its form. Do you think you do a double tape? Plan, rock, a show, stop, a flow, pop a head, knock a beast. Do you think we can bring this back to Workit? Is there something about what Workett is communicating that fits within this tradition?

Worket seems to fall into Missy Elliott's Afro-Futuristic canon because of its ability to pull from the past and the present at that time, but still lean into the future. because when you play it now, you hear all the relics of the past and the familiarity and the nostalgia, but it still feels fresh. So I think it's that straddling between the past and the future that makes Work It fall into the category of Afrofuturism. I feel like in the last couple of years, there's been a greater recognition of Missy Elliott's talents. But it seems as though perhaps that recognition has come quite a bit late. How is it that her legacy has become so cemented recently? Well, recently she won the Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award at the MTV Video Music Award.

The running argument on the internet for years has been Missy Elliott should be getting the Vanguard award. Her fans, critics, everyone has been bringing her up in conversation and kind of chastising MTV for not giving her this award earlier. And last year, 2019, is when she finally won the award. She's won many awards in the past. I think she has four Grammys already. but she was the first female rapper to be awarded with the Vanguard Award and the fourth rapper to receive the award. So she's following L.L. Kujay, Beastie Boys, and Kanye West.

Yeah, my understanding is that there was actually a whole campaign that was started to make this happen. There was. And I believe Missy publicly thanked the podcast called The Read with Kid Fury and Cristles because they had really campaigned really hard for her to get this award. Kid Furry, Chrysle, they're the ones that cape for me to get this. They worked so hard with my fans and super friends. Her fans across the internet in general have been campaigning for years for her to get this award. So from her early work defining the sounds of R&B and hip-hop in the 90s to her enormous moment at the 2015 Super Bowl performance and all the way to just last year's

recognition at the Video Vanguard Award. It's quite clear that she has made it into the pantheon of anthems. Yeah, I mean, Missy is without a doubt a part of America's Sonic Vanguard. Her innovation, her track record, her accolades because she has them. She's not just a thing. She's not just a fan favorite. She isn't just like an industry favorite. She has the numbers. She has the awards. She has the material accolades along with the, you know, not so tangible influence. So Missy Elliott is vanguard. All I can think to say is that when I go through the biggest tracks of the last couple decades, Missy Elliott is there, whether as a performer or as a producer. And I, really believe that her music career is still young and we will see an endless number of anthems

coming from her in the future, which I continue to look forward to. Same. And I think it should be mentioned that Missy dealt with like extreme health issues over the years that she dealt with in silence and then publicly addressed. And she revealed that the night before the Super Bowl, she was hospitalized. And she was, and she, still put on an amazing performance. And part of the reason why there was a lull in her music output was because of her health issues. So we're talking about someone who has persevered through that to still be the cultural icon that she is and to still be standing alive today. What a powerful story. Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts, your writing, and your

appreciation of Miss Elliott with us. Thank you for having me. It was a pleasure. This episode was Switched on Pop was produced by Megan Lubin, Bridget Armstrong, and me, Charlie Harding, Brandon McFarland, engineers the show, Abby Barr's on social media, and Iris Gottlieb makes wonderful illustrations that accompany each episode, which you can see on Twitter and Instagram at Switchedon Pop. Executive production by Deschak Kerwaw and Liz Kelly Nelson, and we're a member of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Thank you for taking a look into the past, into all these anthems with us.

It's been a lot of fun. If you missed the earlier episodes on Queen, Jock Jams, and Smashmouth, you can find them on our website, www.Switchdownpop.com. And of course, you can listen anywhere you get podcasts. Next week, I'll be investigating a musical melody that I think will make you laugh, smile, and maybe cry, more likely to cringe. It's going to be really fun. And until then, thanks for listening.