BIOGRAPHICAL DETAILS
Full Name: Melisa Arnette Elliott
Description: Vocalist, USA
Known For: Work It (Hit Song)
Instruments: Voice
Music Styles: Rap
Location: United States of America
Date Born: 1st July 1971
Location Born: Portsmouth, Virginia, United States of America
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CONTACT DETAILS
Web Site: Official website
Other Links:
YOUTUBE VIDEO
BIOGRAPHICAL PROFILE
Misssy Elliott
Melissa Arnette “Missy” Elliott (born July 1, 1971) is an American singer, songwriter, rapper, and record producer. Her first major success came as a songwriter with childhood friend and producer Timbaland on projects for Aaliyah, 702, Total, and SWV. As a record producer and songwriter, she has worked with Mariah Carey, Whitney Houston, Janet Jackson, Christina Aguilera, and Beyoncé as well as contemporary artists Keyshia Cole, Tamia, Monica and Ciara.
In the late 1990s, Elliott expanded her career as a solo artist and rapper, eventually winning five Grammy Awards and selling over 30 million records in the United States. Elliott is the only female rapper to have six albums certified platinum by the RIAA, including one double platinum for her 2002 album Under Construction. Elliott is also known for a series of hits and diverse music videos, including “The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly)”, “Hot Boyz”, “Get Ur Freak On”, “Work It”, and the Grammy award-winning video for “Lose Control.”
Melissa Arnette Elliott was born on July 1, 1971, in Portsmouth, Virginia. She is the only child of mother Patricia, a power-company dispatcher, and father Ronnie, a U.S. Marine. At the age of four in 1975, she wanted to be a performer, although she knew no one took her seriously, because she was always the class clown. While her father was a Marine, the family lived in Jacksonville, North Carolina, in a mobile home. Elliott enjoyed school for the friendships she formed and had little interest in school work. An intelligence test classified her well above average, and she jumped two years ahead of her class. This made her feel increasingly isolated, and she purposely failed all her classes, eventually returning to her previous class.When her father returned from the Marines, they moved back to Virginia, where they lived in extreme poverty.
Elliott’s childhood was strongly affected by domestic abuse committed by her father. As a child, she refused to stay over at any of her friends’ homes for the fear that she would return and find her mother dead. Her father once beat her mother so severely that her shoulders were dislocated. On another occasion, Elliott’s father threatened her with a gun. When Elliott was fourteen, she and her mother fled her father by sneaking out under the guise of a normal bus ride; the pair in reality went to a family member’s home where their possessions were loaded into a U-Haul truck. Elliott lived with the fear that her father would kill them both for leaving. Elliott and her father occasionally talk, but the singer says she hasn’t forgiven him. She later stated, “When we left, my mother realized how strong she was on her own, and it made me strong. It took her leaving to realize.”
Elliott graduated from Woodrow Wilson High School in Portsmouth, Virginia, in 1990.
In the early 1990s, Elliott formed an all female R&B group, called Fayze (later renamed Sista), with friends La’Shawn Shellman, Chonita Coleman, and Radiah Scott. She recruited her neighborhood friend Timothy Mosley as the group’s producer and began making demo tracks, among them included the promo “First Move”. In 1991, Fayze caught the attention of Jodeci member and producer DeVante Swing by performing Jodeci songs a cappella for him backstage after one of his group’s concerts. In short order, Fayze moved to New York City and signed to Elektra Records through DeVante’s Swing Mob imprint, also renaming the group Sista. Elliott took Mosley — whom DeVante re-christened Timbaland — and their friend Melvin “Magoo” Barcliff along with her.
All 20-plus members of the Swing Mob — among them future stars such as Ginuwine, Playa, and Tweet — lived in a single two-story house in New York and were often at work on material both for Jodeci and their own projects. While Elliott wrote and rapped on Raven-Symoné’s 1993 debut single, “That’s What Little Girls Are Made Of”, she also contributed songwriting duties, credited and uncredited, to the final two Jodeci albums Diary of a Mad Band (1993) and The Show, the After Party, the Hotel (1995). Timbaland and DeVante jointly produced a Sista album, entitled 4 All the Sistas Around da World and completed in 1994. Though videos were released for the original and remix versions of the single “Brand New”, the album was shelved and never released. One of the group’s tracks, “It’s Alright” featuring Craig Mack, did however make the cut on the soundtrack of the 1995 motion picture Dangerous Minds. But by the end of 1995, Swing Mob had folded and many of its members dispersed; Elliott, Timbaland, Magoo, Ginuwine, and Playa remained together and collaborated on each other’s records for the rest of the decade.
Personal life
Elliott has said that she wants to start a family, but she is afraid of giving birth. She states, “I don’t know if I can take that kind of pain of labor. Maybe in the year 2020 you could just pop a baby out and it’d be fine. But right now I’d rather just adopt.”
In June 2011, Elliott told People magazine that her absence from the music industry was due to a hyperthyroid disorder known as Graves’ disease. She was diagnosed after she nearly crashed a car from having severe leg spasms. She experienced severe symptoms from the condition, and she could not even hold a pen up to write songs. After treatment, her symptoms stabilized, and she has announced that she would like to get back to her career.
Discography
Main articles: Missy Elliott discography and Missy Elliott production discography.
Albums Supa Dupa Fly (1997)
Da Real World (1999)
Miss E… So Addictive (2001)
Under Construction (2002)
This Is Not a Test! (2003)
The Cookbook (2005)
Block Party (2015)
Hits include.
The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly)
Hot Boyz
Get Ur Freak On
One Minite Man
Worl It
Pas That Dutch
Lose Control
Albums include.
Supa Dupa Fly
Da Real World
Miss E …So Addictive
Under Construction
This Is Not a Test!
The Cookbook
Respect M.E.
The Countdown
LINKS:
- ^ Watson, Margeaux (September 15, 2006). “Rhymes and Reasons”
. Entertainment Weekly (Time Inc.). Retrieved November 21, 2008.
- Jump up ^ RIAA – Gold & Platinum search
- ^ Jump up to: a b c d e Ogunnaike, Lola (May 13, 2001). “Letting the Sunshine In: At Her Mellowest, Rapper Missy Elliott is Still a Ball of Fire”
. New York Daily News. p. 2.
- Jump up ^ “Today in History”
. Associated Press Archive (Associated Press). July 1, 2011.
- Jump up ^ Hunter, Karen (July 28, 1997). “Missy to the Max: How a Regular Homegirl Became Hip Hop’s Freshest Princess”
. New York Daily News. p. 25.
- ^ Jump up to: a b c d e Kessler, Ted (August 5, 2001). “Missy in action”
. The Observer (London). Retrieved October 28, 2008.
- ^ Jump up to: a b Lynch, Jason (January 20, 2003). “Missy Universe”
. People. Time. Retrieved November 27, 2008.
- ^ Jump up to: a b c d e f g h Baker, Lindsay (November 1, 2003). “Scary? Me?”
. The Guardian (London). Retrieved October 28, 2008.
- ^ Jump up to: a b c “What Would Her Mother Say?”
. The Sunday Herald (Glasgow, Scotland). October 31, 2002.
- ^ Jump up to: a b Brown, Ethan (March 23, 2007). “Everyone Wants Timbaland”
. Entertainment Weekly. Retrieved January 16, 2010.
- ^ Jump up to: a b c Birchmeier, Jason (2005). “Missy Elliott – Biography”
. Allmusic. Retrieved April 18, 2008.
- ^ Jump up to: a b c Kimpel, 2006, p. 38.
- ^ Jump up to: a b Johnson, Nicole (February 21, 2003). “Missy “Misdemeanor” Elliott”
. Richmond Times-Dispatch (Richmond, Virginia). p. C1.
- ^ Jump up to: a b Missy Elliott – Me, I’m Supa Dupa Fly
VH1. Accessed September 14, 2008.
- Jump up ^ Wee, Tommy (January 30, 2003). “Missy hitting the mark”
. The Straits Times (Singapore).
- Jump up ^ Caulfield, Keith (July 8, 2008). “Ask Billboard”
. Billboard. Nielsen Business Media. Retrieved 2008.