There Are No Girls on the Internet - Missy Elliott: Digital Innovator - Best of TANGOTI

Episode Date: May 27, 2022

Woof, it’s been a rough few weeks.  Let's take a little break from the depressing newscycle and talk about the iconic Missy Elliott and how she's been changing the digital game since the very beginning.   Check out the video for The Rain: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHcyJPTTn9w “Supa Dupa Fly: Black Women as Cyborgs in Hiphop Videos" by Dr. Shaviro: http://www.shaviro.com/Othertexts/MissyKim.pdf  "Missy Elliott" with Margot and Richie Tenenbaum, Halloween 2008: https://www.tangoti.com/episode-12-missy-elliott-digital-innovator  Join our newsletter: Tangoti.com/newsletter Want to support the show? (thank you!) Subscribe, tell a friend, leave a review, or buy some merch at There Are No Girls on the Internet’s store: TANGOTI.COM/STORE Say hello at [e-mail] See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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So I'm not going to lie, it's been a pretty rough few weeks. And usually I like to show up and grapple with whatever is going on on the podcast, you know, bring it to the pod. But honestly, I just don't have it in me. And that feeling, it really reminded me that, you know, sometimes it's okay to step back and step away and unprofit. hug when things just feel like too much. So this is me doing that. And I'm doing that by revisiting a joyful episode of there are no girls on the internet about one of my favorite overlooked tech

heroes, Missy Elliott. And I hope that wherever you're listening from, whatever you're carrying, that you're also making time to engage with things that bring you joy and comfort to. And I also wanted to thank y'all for deciding to spend a little bit of time listening to the show today. It really means a lot knowing that you're listening. 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. And you know what? You're not totally wrong. But 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. Now we talk a lot about girl squads and feminism and music, but for Missy Elliott, that looks like working with other women in the music industry, amplifying their voices and acting as a creative collaborator with them. No 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 produce. Alia, one in a million. Sierra, one two-step. 702, where my girl's at. Beyonce, signs. 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, Elliot 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. And 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. Missy grew up in the South in a small town called Portsmouth, Virginia. And I'm from small town, Virginia, too. We both grew up in the church singing in church choirs.

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 now. outer space and what the future looked like. Well, that and my other favorite pastime,

which was watching music videos on MTV. That was also the same month when Missy Elliott dropped her debut album, Super 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. 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. Now, I didn't know it at the time, but looking back, it had a lot to do with me coming in 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 on to it immediately. I was obsessed with black weirdos like Grace Jones and

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. 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. Take the iconic video for Missy Elliott's Lorraine. There's a link to the video in the show description if you haven't seen it for a while. Her innovative visuals use science fiction and Afrofuturism to throw off the out of 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. And it turns out, I'm not the only one asking the deep questions when it comes to Missy Elliott. Hi, I'm Steve Schiviro. I'm the Deroi Professor of English at Wayne State University. I'm a scholar and I work mostly on science fiction and music videos. Dr. Chevereaux says Missy's music just sounds like the future. And you can hear her influence in all different kinds of music today.

The Chemical Brothers just came up with a new album and there's a video for her interesting. But it sounded like this music could have been made in 1980s. I mean, it's great music, but it could have been easily been made in 1980s because it's that kind of sound. With Misty's Elliott, even though she's doing her own sound, which recognized as a long time for 90s and early 2000s, it seems contemporary at the same time. And that's partly because lots of other people are so influenced by her, I think. 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, and also it sounds like music from the future. You know, 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. You know, it's timeless and futuristic all at once. She and Timberland, 20 years ago, were experimenting with, you know, 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 is.

I thought it's the best way I can say it. I'm not sure that that's, I don't feel that that's adequate. That's sort of how I think about it. In his article, Super Dupa Fly, Black Women as Cyborgs and Hip-Up Topped Videos, Shavira argues that her song, Lorraine, is about her using sci-fi and science. 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 descriptions of gender and race. Even the song's main sample, Anne Peebles'les' classic 1973 hit, I Can't Stand the Rain, is a kind of subversion. In the original song, Anne 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. I've been a Missy Elliott fan my whole life, and this was something that weirdly had never occurred to me.

Yeah. Her use of Anne Peoples' sample of The Rain actually subverts that because that original song that she samples is about a woman who, you know, her man has left her and she's just, you know, the sound of the rain is just making her think about it. And Missy in that song uses the sample, but completely subverts it and flips it on its head. You know, she's the one who's breaking up with the guy before he can dump her. Yeah. Right. And again, I mean, it fits that, you know, the way, as I think I said in the article, the way the video works, it's only raining on the soundstage inside. While on the scenes outside, it's like these hyper-real colors, you know, green blue, blue-sky green grass and this 2001 monolith in the background.

So the fact that they have the rain indoors instead of outdoors, I think it signifies in a real way. Let's take a quick break. Another podcast from some SNL late-night comedy guy, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and Friends. Me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier. This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer Streeter Seidel

help an a cappella band with their between songs banter. Where does your group perform? We do some retirement homes. Those people are starving for banter. Listen to humor me with Robert Smygle and Friends on the I-Heart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Run a business and not thinking about podcasting, think again. More Americans listen to podcasts than ads supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora.

And as the number one podcaster, IHeart's twice as large as the next two combined. So whatever your customers listen to, they'll hear your message. Plus, only IHeart can extend your message to audiences across broadcast radio. Think podcasting can help your business. Think IHeart, streaming, radio, and podcasting. Let us show you at iHeartadvertising.com. That's iHeartadvertising.com. There are times when the mind becomes a difficult place to live.

This is David Eagleman with the Inner Cosmos podcast, and for Mental Health Awareness Month, we're dedicating a series to understanding the mind when it struggles. I'm joined by doctors, researchers, and those with lived experience. We'll talk with singer-songwriter Jewel about anxiety. I started living in my car, and then my car got stolen. I was shoplifting, I was having panic attacks, I was agoraphobic. And making it through hardship.

To be present is a learned skill, and it's hard to be present. We'll talk with John Nelson about clinical depression and the brain implant that saved his life. What I learned is that procedure made me happy because I'm disease-free. And we'll talk with leading experts like Judd Brewer about anxiety, and John Hirschfield about obsessive-compulsive disorder. and the science of how the brain can change. This is a month of deeply personal and honest conversations about what happens when the brain goes off course

and what we can do about it. Listen to Inner Cosmos on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, everyone, it's Ryder Strong and Wilfredel from PodMeets World. And now the PodMeets Twirled podcast. We're two men who were completely clueless to reality TV, who now have covered Dancing with the Stars,

traders, and we're gearing up for the season finale of Survivor. So yeah, now we're experts. I know we annoyed a lot of our listeners by our severe lack of survivor knowledge. That is the point of the show. I'm just going to remind you. I have watched some Survivor. I obviously haven't watched enough. Did people not like it?

Like what was just because we? Yeah. We'll be recapping the big conclusion in the 50th season from the final attempts at gameplay to the desperate pleas of finalists to a bunch of, Ha, who. Ah, ha, ooh. Again, we are experts. So make sure to tune into Pod Meets Twirled for all our Survivor 50 takes.

Listen to PodMeets Twirled on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. You probably already know that Missy Elliott is synonymous with iconic music videos. I probably spend 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 we 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 the rain video? Sheviro 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. This whole emphasis on women's standards of women beauty for the male gaze being, you know, you know, slender and things like that. And she's violating that. But it's like that plastic thing is both, it's doing, 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 hypersexualized by like wearing loose or baggy clothes and stuff like that. And there's a whole... I mean, you can think about the 1990s early

TLC videos where they wore these baggy pants with like condoms on as decorations and stuff like that, which was smart and funny. I mean, but today, you know, something like Billy Elish, he just said in the reason

she wears these oversight clothes because she doesn't want people to be completely objectifying her body. So, Missy Alliot is, I mean, Her career, from what I've read, is that she wanted to, you know, 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. And so she's always faced, faced that kind of thing. And the way she's, 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, and literally it's baggies and seemed to be made out of plastic bags.

So it's rather saying, no, you can't just look at my curves and say, and you objectify them. 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 makes it force you to. So it's sort of like doing these both things at the same time, I think. Does that make sense? That makes so much sense. Here's how Missy described it on VH1's behind the music. 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. it's going to be big, and 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. 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 Simone, 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-sinks 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. 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. It doesn't immediately. I'm like, oh, they ain't known the big.

girls, I said every curse word. I was distraught. 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. It's a kind of hyper-styalization, but which doesn't fit in with traditional,

stereotypical sexist beauty norms. It's very much a form of individualist self-assertion against being stereotyped in traditional gender ways. 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. And that's exactly what Missy does. Do you think of Missy Elliott, just personally, do you think of Missy Elliott as a digital innovator? Yeah, I mean, definitely, because she, I mean, she's always been doing new things. And it's partly, again, being a woman and

presenting herself in a way that, you know, only men were privileged to or they were refusing the roles that women were relegated to. But also, again, I agree, it does seem, again, it's very hard to 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 just feels, feels futuristic. It always feels it has a kind of, I mean, it's sort of like, has an edge. It's sort of like, there's a famous statement by Lenin, the leader of the Bolshek revolution, when somebody said, are you jury not being too radical. And Lenin replied, the only trouble is it's really hard to be as, but we must be as radical as reality itself. So that's the kind of phrase I would apply to

Ms. Elyette. She's always, she's one of the few people who is trying to be as radical as a reality itself. I love it. I don't, you know, I was not expecting a Lenin quote. That's not where I thought you were going, but I love it. Yeah. Well, I mean, yeah, you know, if it's a great approach, so it's worth taking out of context. You know? Definitely. I mean, that's part of, I mean, that's part of what a lot of art today does, including hip-hop, is taking stuff out of context.

And, you know, on one side, they want you to recognize the original context. The other side, they're really doing something really different and original with it. So it doesn't have the same meaning it had originally. 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 mail, 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? That's probably true out of general sexism. 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.

My only reservation is that I'm not thrilled with the word innovator just because anytime any word gets adopted by business schools and starts repeated about everything. But, you know, in mainstream discourse now, you know, I don't know, taking away the, you know, the headphone port and replacing it with something else. in an adapter is described as innovation, you know, on the phone. I should like that.

So, you know, it's always just depressing when words, which have positive meanings, get so, you know, turn into business speak that you wonder whether it's used them anymore. Oh, I'm right there with you. More, there are no girls on the Internet after this quick break. Another podcast from some SNL late-night comedy guy, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends. Me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letter help make you funnier.

This week, my guest, S&L's Mikey Day and headwriter, Streeter Seidel, help an a cappella band with their between songs banter. Where does your group perform? We do some retirement homes. Those people are starving for banter. Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and Friends on the I-Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Run a business and not thinking about podcasting, think again.

More Americans listen to podcasts than ad-supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora. And as the number one podcaster, IHearts twice as large as the next two combined. So whatever your customers listen to, they'll hear your message. Plus, only IHeart can extend your message to audiences across broadcast radio. Think podcasting can help your business. Think IHeart. Streaming, radio, and podcasting. Let us show you at iHeartadvertising.com.

That's iHeartadvertising.com. There are times when the mind becomes a difficult place to live. This is David Eagleman with the Inner Cosmos podcast. and for Mental Health Awareness Month, we're dedicating a series to understanding the mind when it struggles. I'm joined by doctors, researchers, and those with lived experience. We'll talk with singer-songwriter Jewel about anxiety. I started living in my car, and then my car got stolen.

I was shoplifting. I was having panic attacks. I was agoraphobic. And making it through hardship. To be present is a learned skill, and it's hard to be present. We'll talk with John Nelson about clinical depression and the brain implant that saved his life. What I learned is that procedure made me happy because I'm disease-free. And we'll talk with leading experts like Judd Brewer about anxiety,

and John Hirschfield about obsessive-compulsive disorder, and the science of how the brain can change. This is a month of deeply personal and honest conversations about what happens when the brain goes off course and what we can do about it. Listen to Inner Cosmos on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Everyone, it's Ryder Strong and Will Ferdell from PodMeets World. And now the PodMeets Twirled podcast.

We're two men who were completely clueless to reality TV, who now have covered Dancing with the Stars, traitors, and we're gearing up for the season finale of Survivor. So yeah, now we're experts. I know we annoyed a lot of our listeners by our severe lack of survivor knowledge. That is the point of the show. I'm just going to remind you.

I have watched some Survivor. I obviously haven't watched enough. Did people not like it? Like what was just because we? Yeah. We'll be recapping the big conclusion of the 50th season from the final attempts at gameplay

to the desperate pleas of finalists to a bunch of ha, hoo. Ha ha, ha, who. Again, we are experts. So make sure to tune in a pod meets twirled for all our Survivor 50 takes. Listen to Podmeets Tworrell on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or

wherever you get your podcasts. And 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. And only recently is she getting the kind of respect as a digital innovator that she deserves. This is Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award

means so much to me. I have worked diligently for over two decades. Last year, she won MTV's Vanguard Award, given to commemorate outstanding contributions and a profound impact on music videos and popular culture. And 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. In 2015, Katie Perry headlines the Super Bowl 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 10 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? 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 of Mercy. And 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 we'll rip down stages 20 years later. Missy Elliott just now is sort of getting a lot more recognition than I feel she's gotten in the past. Like she's spoken about how the fact that, you know, she's been behind so many important songwriters and musicians, but doesn't really get the credit. And she's been clear that if she was a man, she feels like she would.

Of course. That's obviously true. Why do you think right now in this moment we're in culturally, Missy Elliott is sort of getting those props? You know, she just became the first rapper to get an honorary degree from the Berkeley School College of Music. She's getting the M.A. Vanguard awards. All of this. It's hard to say. I mean, part of the problem, I think, is that she's been ill for, you know, for much of the last decade. So she couldn't. I mean, her last full-length album was, I think, in 2005. And since then, she's released a few singles. And, you know, maybe I, so, I mean, 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 that people forget about you if you don't have a new album out. But, I mean, I was, we were, this is like, she was, she performed in the Super Bowl mid, you know, half time show like four or five years ago. I can't remember the exact year. And my kids who are, well, they're now seven, my, my, I have two daughters. They're 17 and 14 now. So this was like they were a few years younger. They were like tweens.

They weren't quite teenagers yet. We were watching the, you know, mid. time. I forgot who the main headliner was, but Ms. Yeli came out and did, and my kids were just like, who was this? She's amazing. Like, they never heard of her, of course, because they were, they were babies when her last album had come out. We're in this very kind of polarized time. We're on the same time, we have like 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 multigender. I mean, you know, gay, lesbian, people, trans people, people of different races and

ethnicities, you know, so you have this contradiction. 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. Oh, that's kind of a hopeful way to put it. Okay, Wendy, well, I hope so. I mean, I'm not very, I mean, you know, I'm more optimistic about what some pop culture can throw up than. than I am about what all happened on a political scene. But who knows?

I mean, nobody can predict. I mean, and, you know, even pop culture, we have more homogenization like a higher percentage of Bachluss that goes to Marvel movies and everything else combined. But on the other hand, we have in all kinds of areas, especially when they're lower, can be lower rigid. We have much more wide varieties of expression. I was talking the other day to a museum director,

and they're doing a museum show on Afro-Futurism. And they said, basically, they could get the money for it because of Black Panther. The hook is Wakanda. But of course, Afro-Futurism has existed for a long time before, Black Panther, which was, I mean, it was obviously by far the best Marvel movie. But, you know, 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.

It's so interesting to talk about Afrofuturism. This is just like a personal aside, but that was such a, those were such my foundational throughroads into so many broader conversations about black identity, tech, digital thinking, you know, science fiction. When I was a kid, my dad had this one specific Earth, Wind, and Fire album, and it had this really cool, like, cover. I was a kid, I would stare at it for hours and run my fingers. So we're trying to figure out what does it mean?

What does it mean? Come to find that I get older is like, oh, well, it doesn't really mean anything. It's just like looks really cool. I was thinking there was some sort of like secret mystical, you know, and I think like artists who play with blackness and identity and science fiction in the future, you know, I think for a long time, it probably felt like when you, 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. There's a show. I live in Detroit and there's a show at an art gallery downtown of Afrofuturist art. And 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. Oh, that's the installation from artist Alicia Wormsley. She puts up billboards reminding everyone that there are black people in the future. And I just saw it on Instagram this I thought it was so wild because, of course, you know, 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. 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 at tangooty.com. You can also find transcripts for today's episode at tangoody.com. If you're looking for ways to support the show,

check out our merch store at tangoity.com slash store. There are no girls on the internet was created by me, Bridget Todd. It's a production of IHeart Radio and Unbossed creative. Edited by Joey Pat. 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, write and review us on Apple Podcasts. For more podcasts from IHeartRadio, check out the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Another podcast from some SNL, late-night comedy guy. Not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and Friends.

me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier. This week, my guest, S&L's Mikey Day and head writer, Streeter Seidel, help an a cappella band with their between songs banter. Where does your group perform? We do some retirement homes. Those people are starving for banter. Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and friends on the IHeart Radio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Dr. Maya Shunker, a cognitive scientist and hosts of the podcast, a slight change of plans, a show about who we are and who we become when life makes other plans. I wish that I hadn't resisted for so long the need to change. We have to be willing to live with a kind of uncertainty that none of us likes.

You can have opinions, you can have like a strong stance, and then there's your body having its own program. Listen to a slight change of plans on the I-Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Your 20s can be so exciting, but they can also be really overwhelming, confusing, and honestly, just kind of lonely. May is Mental Health Awareness Month, and the psychology of your 20s is breaking down the science behind the biggest roadblocks we face. I was six years into my career, the 80-hour weeks and just the first one in, the last one out, and I ended up burning out. There was a large chunk of my 20s that I, like, was just so wanting to, like, be out of that.

phase out of my skin and I just like really regret not living in the present more. You don't need to have everything figured out right now. You just need to understand yourself a little bit better. Listen to the psychology of your 20s on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Joey Dardano. And on my new podcast, Hope from a Hypocrite, I'll be changing lives, helping people in need with thoughtful solutions. Syke, I'm a comedian. I'm not qualified to give good advice. Join me and my comedian friends as we riff rant recommends some of the most legally dubious advice known to me. This is Help from a Hypocrite, the worst advice from the dumbest people you know.

Listen to Help from a Hypocrite Wednesdays on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed human.