Missy Elliot is a Hip Hop icon. But the star says that things were not always so smooth sailing for her.
Lil Wayne recently interviewed with DJ Khaled, who asked him rapper which artist influenced him the most as a youngin’.
“Missy Elliott,” Weezy replied.
He added, “That was my favorite rapper… that would be why I was making so many sounds. Missy was into the whole ‘BRRT’…So when Mannie Fresh would get you in the studio he would remind you, ‘Hey you need to throw the ‘ha ha’ in there. I was like ‘Man he want me to do a sound for every d—line.’ And so the ‘Block Burner’ song was my favorite song because my favorite artist was Missy Elliott.”
Missy reshared a clip of the interview.
“When i 1st came in the game people laughed at me doing sound effects in my music – I used to cry when they clowned me but then I kept doing wild sounds/crazy adlibs in my songs & people began to rock wit it Years later those same sound effects are big in songs today,” she wrote.
Missy stayed true to her style and it was ultimately her unique sounds and adlibs which led the rapper/ producer to dominate the late 90s and early 2000s.
The star took a lengthy hiatus from the industry due to health issues, but in a 2019 interview with The Guardian, she revealed that she has always been in the background.
“I hate to say I’m back because in reality I never went nowhere,” she said. “I was still doing stuff behind the scenes. I don’t always want to be upfront. I’m very shy,” she shared.
“I was like that as a child,” she says. “We would have family reunions and they always wanted me to get up on the table to perform. After an hour of them begging me, I would finally get on the table and become this other little kid. Then they couldn’t get me off. Once I set foot on the stage, I block out everything. I can be in my own world.”
