Miss "E," Misdemeanor, the legendary Missy Elliott, is back and bigger than ever. The iconic rapper, one of the few women eligible to vie for the title of Queen of Hip-Hop, is preparing to launch her first-ever headlining tour, Out of This World: The Experience.
While Floridians weren't able to experience the total solar eclipse, this astronomical event is one you won't have to travel far to experience. Missy will land her hip-hop starship at Amerant Bank Arena in Sunrise on Thursday, July 25. And it is, indeed, a starship: Elliott will be joined by Ciara, Busta Rhymes, and Timbaland — three of her crucial collaborators and stars in their own right. The trio joined Missy for a comedic sci-fi-themed announcement video that demonstrated Elliott still has a flair for elaborate visuals that put her on the map two and a half decades ago.
This announcement possibly clarifies why Busta Rhymes canceled his show at the Fillmore Miami Beach.
Early Years
After escaping an abusive home life with her mother in Northern Virginia, Elliott moved to New York in the late 1980s and subsequently spent years working behind the scenes in New York's rising hip-hop scene. She worked especially close with Timbaland, and the two struck gold — or double platinum, rather — with young R&B star Aaliyah, writing and producing nine tracks on her 1996 album One in a Million. When it came time for Missy's solo debut, 1997's Supa Dupa Fly, it was not only the excellent music, much of it produced by Timbaland, but her dedication to outré aesthetics that launched her solo career. The wild, black garbage bag-looking outfit she wore in the video for "The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly)," which was also filled with fish-eye lens weirdness from director Hype Williams, drove the record to platinum.
Elliott and her collaborators became beneficiaries of a music industry ecosystem in which CD sales and major-label support for hip-hop and R&B combined to form a perfect storm of creative hitmaking — and, as a result, more hits and videos followed, with more spectacular visuals and adventurous production. Elliott reteamed with Williams for the "She's a Bitch" video, a defining work of the Y2K era thanks to its futuristic, metallic visuals; Broward rapper Ski Mask the Slump God would later sample it on "Catch Me Outside"; likewise Cardi B on "Like What (Freestyle)."
From 1999's Da Real World, the remix of "Hot Boys" featuring Nas, Eve, and Q-Tip of A Tribe Called Quest spent a record-breaking 18 weeks atop the Billboard Hot Rap Singles chart. That was followed by 2001's Miss E... So Addictive, which generated "Get Ur Freak On" with its wild bhangra-sampling beat. The song won a Grammy for "Best Rap Solo Performance" in 2002 and has earned spots on best-of lists from Pitchfork (number seven, Top 500 Songs of the 2000s) and Rolling Stone (number eight, 500 Greatest Songs of All Time, 2021 edition). The following year, she released her defining hit, "Work It," with its iconic backmasked hook. ("I put my thang down, flip it, and reverse it.") The track reached number two on the Billboard Hot 100 on the way to triple platinum.
Missy's last major hit was 2005's Ciara-featuring "Lose Control," which solidified her place in the lineage of Afrofuturism by sampling Cybotron's formative Detroit techno track "Clear." After that, she all but disappeared from the music industry. In 2011, she went public with the reason: She had been diagnosed with Graves' disease, an autoimmune condition that affects the thyroid, causing severe spasms that limited her mobility. After years out of the spotlight, she made a triumphant return in 2015 through a surprise appearance at the Super Bowl XLIX halftime show headlined by Katy Perry. She teamed with fellow NoVa native Pharrell Williams on the comeback single "WTF (Where They From)" and has since released an EP, 2019's Iconology, and worked with everyone from Ariana Grande to Skrillex.
In the years following her comeback, Missy has been rightly recognized as a deeply influential artist, with her blending of hip-hop with pop aesthetics reaching everyone from Tyler, the Creator and Janelle Monae to Lil Wayne and Doja Cat. Her success put Northern Virginia on the map as a contender for regional rap. Clipse (Pusha T and Malice) and the Neptunes (Pharrell Williams and Chad Hugo), two more groups prioritizing futuristic hip-hop beatsmithing, would follow in her and Timbaland's wake. She became a star in an era when hip-hop was much more hostile to female rappers than it is today and she broadened the genre's reach. In 1997, the New Yorker went so far as to argue she'd become the first Black female rapper to reach the mainstream in Middle America. She's had streets in Virginia named after her, and the fact that she's only headlining a tour now is a further marker of success — you don't need to tour if every album you release goes platinum.
Tour Dates
Tickets for Out of This World: The Experience go on sale to the general public at 10 a.m. on Friday, April 12, with presales starting on Tuesday, April 9, via missy-elliott.com. Thursday, July 4 — Vancouver, BC — Rogers Arena
Saturday, July 6 — Seattle, WA — Climate Pledge Arena
Tuesday, July 9 — Oakland, CA — Oakland Arena
Thursday, July 11 — Los Angeles, CA — Crypto.com Arena
Saturday, July 13 — Las Vegas, NV — T-Mobile Arena
Tuesday, July 16 — Denver, CO — Ball Arena
Thursday, July 18 — Austin, TX — Moody Center
Saturday, July 20 — Houston, TX — Toyota Center
Sunday, July 21 — Fort Worth, TX — Dickies Arena
Wednesday, July 24 — Tampa, FL — Amalie Arena
Thursday, July 25 — Sunrise, FL — Amerant Bank Arena
Saturday, July 27 — Atlanta, GA — State Farm Arena
Thursday, August 1 — Baltimore, MD — CFG Bank Arena
Friday, August 2 — Hampton, VA — Hampton Coliseum
Saturday, August 3 — Belmont Park, NY — UBS Arena
Monday, August 5 — Philadelphia, PA — Wells Fargo Center
Thursday, August 8 — Washington, DC — Capital One Arena
Friday, August 9 — Newark, NJ — Prudential Center
Saturday, August 10 — Boston, MA — TD Garden
Monday, August 12 — Brooklyn, NY — Barclays Center
Thursday, August 15 — Detroit, MI — Little Caesars Arena
Saturday, August 17 — Montreal, QC — Bell Centre
Monday, August 19 — Toronto, ON — Scotiabank Arena
Thursday, August 22 — Rosemont, IL — Allstate Arena
Missy Elliott. With Ciara, Busta Rhymes, and Timbaland. 7 p.m. Thursday, July 25, at Amerant Bank Arena, 1 Panther Pkwy., Sunrise; 954-835-7000; amerantbankarena.com. Tickets go on sale Friday, April 12, at 10 a.m. via seatgeek.com.
