Missy Elliott is on a press tour promoting her newest single and video, "WTF (Where They From?)," and she's revealing a lot of interesting tidbits about her career.
For one, even though she took a hiatus as an artist, she's been in the studio recording and has enough material for at least six albums.
“If I wanted to do The Missing Files of Missy Elliott, I have probably six albums just sitting there,” Missy said during an interview with Billboard.
And get this: Even though she's this prolific songwriter who has written for nearly everyone and their mama, not a lot of people—not even her closest collaborators—have ever seen her actually record a song. Yep, not even Timbaland.
“I never record in front of anybody,” Missy explained. “Tim has never seen me record a day in his life.” Missy said that she used to record with a few engineers, but now she records by her dolo: “It’s just me and my little Yorkies, Poncho and Hoodie.”
Missy was a bit of a spender early on in her career but has since tightened her belt with the help of her mother.
“When I first started in the business, I spent so much! Staying in a Trump hotel for two years, spending eight G’s a month just living," Missy recalls. “My mama don’t play. When it’s time for taxes to come around, she’s like, ‘Yo, taxes are due. I’m on my way to send your money off.’”
And the night before Missy was scheduled to come out onstage to perform during Katy Perry's halftime show at the 2014 Super Bowl, Missy had an anxiety attack.
“Like, IVs in my arm, everything,” she said. “Nobody knew.” Even right before she came out, she was super nervous.
“I said, ‘If I can get over this step, then I know all my dance steps will be on point,’” Missy recalls. “I know it was nothing but the grace of God that lifted me up and took me through that performance.”
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Diana Ozemebhoya Eromosele is a staff writer at The Root and the founder and executive producer of Lectures to Beats, a Web series that features video interviews with scarily insightful people. Follow Lectures to Beats on Facebook and Twitter.
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