This month we select our favorite songs by the incomparable Missy Elliott. As a producer, songwriter, rapper, and singer she’s a quadruple threat. Luckily, we only had to choose from the seven albums she put out herself, but she’s worked and featured on so many other great records it’s daunting. Whether you’re a fan, or indifferent to her whimsical lyrical style, you can’t deny that she ups the pop ante every time she puts out a new single. That’s why we admire her so and why she deserves to be celebrated today.

aDawgg:

“Lick Shots” and “Get Ur Freak On” proved tough to the bitter end of the selection process. Ultimately, these two superb tracks were mere pretenders against perhaps one of the best single hip-hop tracks of the past decade. With the press-on nails and velour cleared, “Work It” was the boss of its domain. The beat. The smoothly hilarious wordsmithery. It’s all crammed in there and will bounce indefinitely. The incredibly talented Missy Elliot is the only female rapper certified six times platinum. In “Work It” she and partner-in-crime Timbaland crafted a masterpiece that displays precisely why.

   Missy Elliot – Work It

Bean:

Missy Elliott’s greatest strength is most definitely her playfulness. That sounds like something you say about a cutesy child-friendly band, but I can’t find a better word. Missy’s got a fantastic, wicked sense of humor (a rare quality in hip-hop), plays around with words and sounds and manipulates them with her incredibly versatile voice, and then messes around with the interaction between her vocals and her beats. And with “Work It”, she took all that stuff to a whole new level. Plus, “Work It” made “get your hair did” a household phrase and that always cracks my ass up.

   Missy Elliot – Work It

Tamboosh:

Missy’s quirky style – often bordering on cartoonesque – and crazy lyrics were revolutionary when she first came out in 1997. Over a decade later she’s still going strong and continues to push the boundaries of pop, dance, and hip hop. In spite of amazing hits like “Get Ur Freak On”, “Work It”, and the more recent “Ching-a-ling”, her first single “The Rain” is still extra special to me. The lyrics are non-sensical (the answer to ‘Beep-beep, who got the keys to the jeep?’ will always be VRRRRRRRMMM!) and the surreal video hurt my brain – it was so new, so alien and so addictive.

   Missy Elliott – The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly)