Missy Elliott

Missy Elliott, a hip-hop mega star, was born in Portsmouth, Virginia, on July 1, 1971. Her music life began with the membership in the band Sista. This outfit signed a contract with a company that collapsed before the release of their debut album. This motivated Missy to go in for her solo career. The celebrated producer Timbaland helped her make the first steps in her journey and gave her a chance to cooperate with mature performers to gain so much vital experience. Only then, in 1996, she made an agreement with Elektra Records.

Elliott’s debut studio work, Supa Dupa Fly, saw light in the mid 1997. The record features her first big hit, The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly). This composition promoted the young artist to the influential radio stations and won her instantly multiple loyal supporters. The other singles from the album, Beep Me 911, Hit 'Em Wit Da Hee, and Sock It 2 Me, managed to draw attention mostly because of the names of the musicians who contributed to their recording. Critical reviews on Supa Dupa Fly were radically different. Some considered the presented material lacking new ideas, while the others claimed that any song from the record could be a successful single. The same year, Elliott performed the remix for Not Tonite together with her colleagues Lil' Kim, Da Brat, Angie Martinez and Left Eye. They sang this composition at the MTV Video Music Awards ceremony in 1997.

In 1998, Elliott’s music career kept making rapid progress. She was active in cooperating with the leading R&B/hip-hop performers and worked in the studio on the new material. Her sophomore effort, Da Real World (1999), was commercially as good as the first one and ran platinum in February 2000. It presented two especially notable tracks, Hot Boyz, and She's A Bitch. In 2001, the singer issued the third long player, Miss E... So Addictive. The preparation of this release involved the top level personalities of Ludacris, and Jay-Z. The album was a great commercial hit and featured such memorable compositions as One Minute Man, and Get Ur Freak On. Always craving for more, Elliott took a short time to deliver the subsequent studio work. Under Construction was released in 2002 to bring to the listeners one of the artist’s best songs, Work It, recorded in duet with Ludacris, and another colorful track called Gossip Folks. Both songs were regularly demonstrated by the leading music channels.

Such productive and high quality labor brought Missy the title of the hip-hop queen and a long list of prestigious awards, and yet she had no idea of having a break. Elliott had energy and time enough for both recording her own stuff and writing songs for other performers. However, it was getting harder and harder for her to seek new inspiration. The 2003 album titled This is not A Test managed to cause some interests only on the basis of her previous achievements, but featured mediocre material. Nevertheless, Elliot’s reputation and prominent credits guaranteed acceptable sales even to this work. In 2004, Missy made up her mind to suspend her music activity for a while and too up producing to promote young talents. Her new solo album hit the stores in 2005. The Cookbook was significantly more advantageous than its predecessor and brought Elliot back to the positions she had lost. The video for Lose Control was nominated for six MTV awards, winning two of them. In 2006, Missy Elliot released her first official collection of the best songs, Respect M.E., exclusively for Australia, Brazil, Japan and Europe. The release of her follow-up studio effort, Block Party, is expected in 2009.