#26 - Phil

Missy Elliott

Under Construction

2002

As a middle-school teen who pretty much only listened to hip-hop, Missy Elliott was the first female artist I significantly gravitated towards. Her first three albums – Supa Dupa Fly, Da Real World, and Miss E… So Addictive – were each stellar outings, solidifying her place as queen of the genre in less than four years. It would have been easy for Miss Misdemeanor to simply go through the motions and live off doing Sprite and Gap ads for a few years. Instead, she put out not only the greatest album of her career, but one of the greatest female rap albums of all-time in 2002’s Under Construction.

This record is Missy’s homage to the old school rap legends that came before her. In fact, the reason she named it Under Construction is because she believed the state of hip-hop needed to be overhauled and reverted back to the peaceful ways of the past. “What happened to those good old days / When hip-hop was so much fun? / Oh, house parties in the summer ya’ll / And no one came through with a gun,” she sings on the rich, old school-flavored jam “Back in the Day.” This album is indeed a party, and one with a celebrity guest list as Jay-Z, Beyonce, TLC, Ludacris, and Method Man all make fantastic appearances throughout. And I couldn’t possibly talk about this album without mentioning Missy’s greatest single ever, “Work It,” a track that my close friends know has a very special influence in my songwriting history:). With all due respect to MC Lyte, Salt-N-Pepa, Lauryn Hill, Foxy Brown, Lil’ Kim, and M.I.A, Missy is STILL the greatest female artist in hip-hop history. -P.W.

I had never heard Missy Elliott before listening to Under Construction. Here’s a hip hop album we can agree on. This was just great. I loved the soul in all the production work and Missy Elliott had excellent delivery. The song “Work It” is particularly humorous to me because it sounds like she’s playing off the crude sexual references found in the music of other mainstream rappers, except it’s from the female’s perspective. I guess what I loved about this album most is that it’s very apparent that Missy Elliott cares a lot about the music and pushing hip hop forward and avoids getting caught up in a lot of things I dislike about the genre (as I wrote about before). - Ryan

While I loved hearing the Missy Elliott tunes at parties, I had never sat down to hear an entire record of her work. I understand the hype, this is smart, considered and yet it can still hit hard. I especially dug Missy's brief monologue at the end of "Work It". She drops the names of a few earlier hip-hop artists and explains that they were able to dance and still be respected, so let's subside some of that hard shit and have fun. Missy's in a league of her own. - Steve