Missy Elliott on the giant Super Bowl XLIX prop the NFL nixed, inviting aliens to her own halftime show and why her Rock Hall nom is so important
Missy Elliott has had quite a career, and she’s having a quite a month. On Sunday, she took part in the Grammys Awards’ epic “50 Years of Hip-Hop” tribute, by far the highlight of the nearly four-hour ceremony. Last week, the pioneering rapper, songwriter, and producer was nominated for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, in her first year of eligibility; if she makes it into the Class of 2023, she will be the sixth solo hip-hop artist and 11th hip-hop artist overall to enter the Hall, but the very first female rap inductee.
And now, Elliott is once again headed to the Super Bowl, in a funny new Doritos commercial co-starring Jack Harlow and Elton John, that could do for the triangle what Christopher Walken and Will Ferrell did for the cowbell on SNL years ago.
Elliott, of course, is already a Super Bowl champ. At Super Bowl XLIX, she practically stole the show from headliner Katy Perry — and even from Left Shark! — in front of 118.5 million viewers. (Eight years later, Perry’s roaring spectacle still holds the record for the most-viewed halftime show in NFL history.) Elliott, a surprise last-minute addition to a halftime lineup that also included Lenny Kravitz, ended up dominating nearly three minutes of Perry's 12-and-a-half-minute show. The superstar rapper, who had been largely absent from the U.S. concert circuit since her 2011 Graves’ disease diagnosis and later tweeted that she had been hospitalized for undisclosed reasons the night before the 2015 Super Bowl, remains forever grateful for the moment.
“Katy, I owe her everything, because she could have done it solo. She has enough hits to have done that all by herself. … She didn't have to share that. She was on fire,” Elliott tells Yahoo Entertainment. “When I got the call, I thought she was going have me do the song that her and I had did together [“Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.)”]. I thought she was just going to be like, ‘Hey, can you come out and do your rap?’ And then she was like, ‘Just know that I want you to do three of your own records. … This is as big as it gets.’”
As thrilling as Elliott’s “Get Ur Freak On”/“Work It”/”Lose Control” medley was that historic day, her performance wasn’t actually as big as it could have gotten. Elliott, an MTV Video Vanguard Award recipient responsible for some of the most iconic visuals in pop history, had much grander plans. But the NFL was not having it.
“The craziest thing is that at the last minute I was just like, ‘Hey, I want to have a big, oversized Missy doll,’” Elliott laughingly reveals. “And they were like, ‘Um, we can't do that!’ — not Katy, but I guess the Super Bowl people, because they have to go through… it's very intense, down to your clothing. Everything, they have to see — every little piece — to make sure nothing goes wrong or you try anything. … So, I wanted a doll that extended way in the air to perform with us, but it was too late. It wasn't going to get approved in time. They were like, ‘Nah, not this time! Maybe later in the years, but not for this go-‘round.’
“And so when I got to rehearsal, I see Katy come out on the big lion and it's like, ‘Roaaaar!’ And I'm like, ‘Oh my God!’ And then she goes to this floor and it tilts and I'm like, ‘Oh my God, now she's tilting on the floor!’ And then she ends up on a beach, and I look around at my dancers and I'm just like, ‘Um, it's just us, guys! It's just us. Like, we don't have no props or nothing,’” Elliott chuckles. “But you know, we went out there and we did the best that we could do. And like I said, I appreciate Katy for that, because she didn't have to share her moment with me.”
Elliott, with her many collaborators and amazing videography, could obviously easily star in her own epic halftime show — especially since hip-hop finally got its big headlining moment at last year’s Super Bowl LVI, when Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Eminem, Mary J. Blige, Kendrick Lamar, 50 Cent, and Anderson .Paak all performed. And Elliott already has a lavish vision for her halftime tour de force.
“Oh, if I headlined it, I'm quite sure I would have the aliens that people have been denying for years to come. Like, I know there would be spaceship for me — just something that has never been seen before. The first alien sighting on a Super Bowl stage, for sure,” she says. “[Video directors] Hype [Williams] and Dave [Meyers] most definitely together. We most definitely bringing Area 51 to the Super Bowl.”
And then, finally, Elliott could have her Missy doll. Just how big would it be? “Super-big. Like, remember what I said about the aliens? If I did it, yeah, it was going to be that big.”
In the nearer future, Elliott has a strong chance of being inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of fame this fall, although she hasn’t given any thought to what her Hall performance would look like, or who would induct her, because she’s still in “pinch-me mode,” processing the news of her glass-ceiling-shattering nomination. All she knows is, if she has the chance to give an acceptance speech, she’ll be thanking the many women than paved the way for her, and hoping that her inclusion will lead to more Hall recognition for female hip-hop artists — like Salt-N-Pepa and Queen Latifah, with whom she shared the stage at the Grammys this year.
“There haven't been any female MCs [nominated for the Rock Hall]. And so, to be the first, it is not even about necessarily me — more so that doors will be opened for women, because we do work hard,” Elliott says. “If I'm blessed to be inducted, I most definitely am going to give it up for all of those women before me. Just like when I got the [Hollywood Walk of Fame] Star, I made sure to thank all of those women before me, because they are the reason that I decided to do this. They're such a big part of my career. … I'm never going to just hog the credit. I always say it's not about how quickly you can build a house, it's how long that house can stand. You can be on top of the roof, but the roof can't stand without the foundation, and they are the foundation to me. … So, yeah, I think this would be big for just female artists, and for rap, period.”
In the meantime, you can catch Elliott in her new Doritos ad, in which she serves as a sort of generational and genre bridge between co-stars Harlow and Elton. (As a side note, when Elliott is asked about the fact that many rock snobs/purists don’t think hip-hop belongs in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, she points out: “Rock ‘n’ roll consists of so many different genres of music to me. If you look at Little Richard or Chuck Berry, or you think of gospel, you think of jazz, you think of so many different forms of music that play a part of that. … I'm thankful that [the definition is] changing, and that it has changed. I'm happy that that rap is seeping in there now.”) Elliott had a blast hanging out with apparent longtime secret admirer Harlow on the commercial’s set, so maybe he’ll end up being part of her Super Bowl halftime or Rock Hall performance someday.
“[Jack] actually told me, ‘Hey, I met you, but not formally, before.’ He said we were in the same studio, and I guess the people that worked in the studio were kind of like, ‘Hey, you know, you can't go in there!’ — because at that time, he wasn't the Jack he is now, And I didn't know that!” Elliott chuckles. “He was just so sweet, so kind, and respectable. We had a lot of fun. If anything, we spent more time laughing and just messing up the lines and stuff like that. I said if they had bloopers, it would be funny to get a chance to see that the backstory behind this whole Doritos commercial.”
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