Missy Elliott “Rather”
So what in the hell is really going on with Missy?
From ’96 to ’06, the rapper/ singer/ songwriter/ producer/ “hee-hee”-ist was the life of the (hip hop) party, consistently freaking our inner-spirits with her seemingly endless gifts of visually-stunning music videos, amazing lead singles, WTF rap lines (Who could forget “Beep beep/ Who got the keys to the jeep?/ Vrooooom…”?) and nonsensical mouth-noised catchphrases. But not since the manic electro-hop romp “Lose Control” has Elliott given us anything truly noteworthy.
Yeah, those two singles from the Step Up 2 soundtrack were okay, in a watered-down-”Work It” sorta way, but the sporadic guest raps and leaked future album material she’s been serving the past few years have felt increasingly uninspired, too focused on lame references to her booty jiggle and not attentive enough to the “next level” ish that’s so sick it would leave our mouths dry and our brains a pile a mush.
Our concerns are further heightened with her most recent leakage, “Rather”, a fairly ordinary R&B ballad (!!) in which she urges a boyfriend to stay at home with her and watch a DVD instead of going out doing all kinds of debaucherous things with his friends (?????).
It’s not necessarily a bad record, rocking a fine acoustic guitar groove and highlighting her still-buttery smoove singing voice, but it’s definitely better fitted for protogees Tweet (what ever happened to her?) or Jazmine Sullivan, not for the “Supa Dupa Fly” rap diva who has kept us waiting for a bonafide Y4K club-rocker for far too long.
While we’re just gonna go ahead and assume that this is a late-in-the-tracklisting album cut and not the first taste of a maturing Missy preparing some sort of Mary J Blige-like full-on R&B album, we still must vocalize our pleas: for the sake of female rap, Miss “Misdemeanor” PLEASE give us something new (and hip hop!!) that’ll rock our collective socks off.
This is the sort of song that should appear after five minutes of silence after the last track of an album. It’s nice to listen to, but it doesn’t sound like a Missy Elliott song.
I think 10 years is a pretty good run in the music business, especially if you actually brought something to the table such as Missy and Timbaland did in the late 90s. Maybe they need some time to refocus.
I used to say “when she was fat, she was fun”.
She still creative for sure. But she’s not focusing on being fun and crazy only. She out for other things, like all this old school references that just don’t stop coming on each new release. Creativity is a good point to start, but shes simply building the songs on it with other things in mind…
The bad thing is that, that caused a lot of impact, and i always wait for some taste of that again, but it only shows sometimes on some tracks, here and then… Sad.
I really hope that after Block Party, she would go to crazyland again, and really deep this time.