Flashback Friday: Missy Elliott featuring 702 & Magoo - Beep me 911 | Dragged back to music

The first Missy song that I'd heard was "The rain (Supa dupa fly)". But the first song that made me fall for her was "Beep me 911".

"Beep me 911" was a big surprise to me, because I didn't think the chick that was giving me lazy flow and Harlem shaking in a garbage bag would ever sing on an R&B jam and be wearing pink with a high ponytail. But that's exactly what Dr. Melissa Elliott did. It made me appreciate "The rain (Supa dupa fly)" in retrospect, because it showed that Missy had a range and that she was not a one trick Pony.

Missy pulled Aces for her third single that most pull for their sophomore album. An entirely different type of sound. Completely different image. A complete switch in gears. Missy doing this so early was a massive risk. But it paid off. Missy had conviction in her sound and her image, and knew how she wanted to be seen and heard. She wasn't gonna wait a couple of years to show us who Missy Elliott was. She was gonna show us now, because she knew that if she did, we'd be sold and would follow wherever she went. And that's exactly what I did. But Missy did more than make me follow her on "Beep me 911". She helped me find my way back to music and love it again.

I went from listening to music constantly, to never listening to it at all. Because video games. Something that shocked my family, because being obsessive over music was what I was known for. But the unorthodox sound of "Beep me 911" enthralled me to such a point that I couldn't stop listening to it. Dissecting it. It sounded unlike anything I'd heard before, but so familiar at the same time. In time I came to realise that part of the reason why I was so quick to turn my back on music was because it wasn't interesting me anymore. Everything was sounding the same. Nothing was exciting me. Gaming helped to fill a void that music had left. It didn't replace it. It's why I gravitated towards Timbaland's sound, because it sounded so different. Missy's videos, because they looked so different. And why I would eventually get into J-Pop, because it was just different altogether.

As a black kid who was nerdy and went against the grain of many's expectations of a young black boy, Missy really spoke to me. She was subverting the expectations of a black woman in music. She was bigger. Her hair was shorter. Her mouth was pottier. Her skin was darker. Her music videos were weirder. Missy was everything that record labels didn't want from their female artists at the time and she gave not one fuck. Her being different is what made her stand out. But Missy wasn't trying hard to be different. It was just who she was. Seeing Missy embrace it was affirming for me. As a kid I didn't really care that I was different. I was more annoyed at everybody else for not being into shit I was into and figured everybody else was stupid because of it. But it was cool to see a different type of black artist than I was used to seeing. Showing me that blackness was everything, and not this one thing. The problem was the box, not that I didn't fit it.

But "Beep me 911" is brilliance in and of itself. It's one of my favourite Missy Elliott songs and videos to date, and also one of my favourite Timbaland productions. The brilliance of this song and video is that there was no compromise to Missy in her switch from rapping to singing, from Hip-Hop oddball to R&B chanteuse. Her lyrics were still whimsical and a bit silly. The beat still knocked hard and had a sound unlike anything else at the time. And the video was still a crazy visual that was as bold, ingenious and timeless as what came before; both of which are as fresh now as they were 20 years ago.