Missy Elliott - Under Construction
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Missy Elliott sounds like she has something to prove. Why else would feel compelled to explain herself with 1:15 of under-rehearsed intro? Why else would she keep telling us she doesn't care if we like her or not? She does care. She cares so much. Missy Elliott is a female hip-hop artist, and being a female hip-hop artist in a time where her female peers (Aaliyah, Left Eye) are dying for no good reason and other hip-hop artists (Biggie, Tupac, Jam Master Jay) are being shot for no good reason, Missy is reacting like any mother in a time of grieving - she's trying to hold the family together.
Under Construction is a plea to current rap artists to get it together, expressed through manifold tributes to hip-hop's inspirational stars past and present. One of her spoken-word diversions references classic East Coast Rap All-Stars cut "Self-Destruction," and it's clear that Missy would like to have a similar unifying effect on the artistic community around her.
But if she's going to show us vulnerability and awareness, she is going to make sure we're all having a damn good time while she's doing it. She remains as sexy as ever, too, her sultry vocal presence and sexual forwardness if anything turned up a notch. She's at her hottest on the wonderfully weird single, "Work It," both seducing and confusing, flipping vocal tracks backwards and pondering over what it would be like for Lil' Kim to date a pastor. On "P***ycat", she earnestly asks her p***y (hey, her asterixes, not ours) to help her flex all her skills so they can both hold on to her man. In general, though, Missy's take on sex is refreshing, not so much about the conquest, more about the fun.
Unlike most of her peers, she knows that fun is really the fifth element of hip-hop, and she keeps finding thrilling new ways to make this music danceable and fun. If, as she claims, she would love to go back to the days of Eric B. and Rakim, Run DMC, and MC Lyte, she knows that we would be bored with straight up retro. Instead, she and Timbaland take the bare elements of the genre's early minimalist beats and thrust them into the present, dousing them in their static-y, bouncing, Southern Alien brand of hip-hop, in the process bringing alive the spirit the music was born with. "Funky Fresh Dressed" hits it right on with clever, light-hearted boasting and an homage to the Beastie Boys' "Paul Revere," but never loses its Dirty South grit. "Gossip Folks" has a similar attitude and has Missy's most humorous vocal performance, throwing out jibes alongside a wonderfully deranged Ludacris.
The most explicit tribute to hip-hop is "Back in the Day," where Missy reminisces bitter-sweetly about the negative turn hip-hop culture has taken. "Mama said we'd be straight-A kids/ If we did our homework/ like we knew those songs," she sings. Jay-Z, deftly dodging the commercial rap haters, offers a call to arms in response: "So fuck Chuck Philips and Bill O' Reilly/ If they try to stop hip-hop/ we all gon' rally." The...
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