Missy Elliott does not appear to have aged a day since she rose to stardom in the mid-1990s, and a new video package demonstrates the timelessness of her presence.
On Tuesday (February 6), the Virginia native took fans and followers on a trip down memory lane with an Instagram clip in which she rocked some of her most iconic getups from her hitmaking heyday.
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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):
Missy Elliott is considered one of the most influential figures in Hip Hop history, but even she has her heroes. Among them, as many might expect, is Queen Latifah.
Last year, the “U.N.I.T.Y” hitmaker became the first female rapper to be honored at the annual Kennedy Center Honors in Washington, DC. The ceremony, which CBS aired in late December, featured her discussing the importance of the accolade as well as a tribute put together by MC Lyte, Monie Love and D-Nice in the New Jersey native’s honor.
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The highlight of the evening, however, was when Missy took the stage to reflect on how much the 53-year-old legend means to her.
“I want to tell y’all a little backstory,” she began. “I was coming home from high school and I used to watch a lot of videos and I happened to see this young woman rapping, but what caught my attention was her clothes, because she had on an African print — the African medallion. And I kept hearing her say, ‘Oh, ladies first, ladies first,’ over and over and over again.”
She continued: “I sat there and I was like, ‘Wow, she’s saying that during a time that we kept hearing it’s a man’s world.’ She was saying this unapologetically, changing the narrative right there. Something that I was so accustomed to hearing, but now I’m hearing, ‘Ladies First.’ Then I said, ‘Who is this girl?’ And I looked at the bottom of the screen and it said ‘Queen Latifah.’ Not Latifah, but Queen Latifah.
“That only said to me that she was saying, ‘You will respect me … I will be a leader, I will be a provider, I will be an inspiration to many, I will be the blueprint to success.
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“I won’t be just a part of the culture; I’ll be royalty to the culture. I won’t set the bar; I am the bar.’”
