Missy Elliott‘s sophomore album Da Real World spawned major hits including “She’s a Bitch,” “All N My Grill” and “Hot Boyz (Remix)” – but it happened to be quite a stressful experience to make it.
In a conversation with Variety published on Monday (June 17), the superstar music maker reflected on the 1999 effort ahead of its 25th anniversary on June 22, and explained what made the process of creating it so tough.
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“That album was stressful,” she said. “That was my most stressful album. And I appreciated that album later. It was the most stressful because if you know anything about the periods of albums and the second album, we call it the sophomore jinx, and so especially if you have a successful first album, you are stressed out because you’re chasing trying to be that first album.”
She continued: “So that album was successful for me, that first album, so I was trying to find something that was going to be bigger than ‘The Rain,’ visually and sonically. Years later, I look back on that and that was probably one of the most creative [periods] because it was theatrics mixed in with Hip Hop. If you listen to a lot of the songs, it’s a lot of strings. I don’t want to say dark strings, but very theatrical, very dramatic strings happening.
“Everything was very dramatic. And so I can appreciate that album as one of my tops because at that time, it was stressful but when I look back, I’m like, damn, we were in a pocket, a different kind of pocket that was amazing to blend the two because it was Hip Hop but it still had the theatrics to it.”
Missy Elliott took fans on a trip down memory lane in an Instagram clip earlier this year where she rocked some of her most iconic get-ups from her prime.
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“Yooooo so I found all my ORIGINAL outfits I wore in some of my most ICONIC videos & I decided to see what I would look like in these fits in the year 2024,” she wrote on Instagram. “I went back in time WOW. Father I thank you! I’ve come along way!”
Watch the montage below for throwbacks to the music videos of “The Rain” (1997), “Hot Boyz” (1999), “Sock it To Me” (1997) “Beep Me 911” (1998) and “Gossip Folks” (2002).
