{"id":4645,"date":"2010-09-11T21:57:45","date_gmt":"2010-09-12T02:57:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ethanhein.com\/wp\/?p=4645"},"modified":"2011-08-22T15:15:59","modified_gmt":"2011-08-22T19:15:59","slug":"missy-elliot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ethanhein.com\/wp\/2010\/missy-elliot\/","title":{"rendered":"Put my thang down, flip it and reverse it"},"content":{"rendered":"

Missy Elliot is one of the most futuristic electronic adventurers out there, especially in her collaborations with Timbaland<\/a>. Yet her stuff is as hot and soulful as music gets. How does she do it?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/a>My favorite Missy Elliot song out of many is “Work It.”<\/a> Unfortunately, YouTube only has the clean version; it’s well worth seeking out the explicit version, which is unspeakably filthy but flows better and is much funnier.<\/p>\n

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This song came out eight years ago and it still feels like it fell out of the future. During the chorus, the part that sounds like gibberish is actually the lyric “I put my thang down, flip it, and reverse it” played backwards<\/a>. There are more backwards lyrics in one of the verses — the line “<\/em>Listen up close while I take you backwards” is followed by the reversed line “Watch the way Missy like to take it backwards.” There’s nothing new about backwards masking, but you don’t usually hear it as the hook of a pop-oriented dance track. Hip!<\/p>\n

“Work It” uses three great samples. The beginning is from “Request Line”<\/a> by Rock Master Scott & the Dynamic Three. If you care about eighties fashion and dance at all, you must not miss this video.<\/p>\n

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The cowbell rhythm at the end is from Bob James’ recording of Paul Simon’s “Take Me To The Mardi Gras” as famously sampled in “Peter Piper”<\/a> by Run-DMC.<\/p>\n

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Here’s a mashup of Bob James, Paul Simon, Run-DMC and Missy:<\/p>\n

<\/object> Peter Piper Mardi Gras Megamix<\/a> by ethanhein<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

There’s also a synth percussion loop that runs throughout “Work It” sampled from the intro to “Heart Of Glass” by Blondie<\/a>. Sorry, no embedding on this one.<\/p>\n

This has nothing to do with the song, but it’s so awesome I can’t not share it: Missy’s turntable ring.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Like my other favorite hip-hop artists, Missy understands that the record player is the defining musical instrument of our time (along with its cousins the tape recorder, digital sampler and Pro Tools workstation.) There’s nothing intrinsically cold or alienating about electronic music production technology, if it’s in the right hands. Herbie Hancock once compared the synthesizer to an axe<\/a>, that could be used to build a house or murder someone. Missy uses her axe to build awesome houses.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Missy Elliot is one of the most futuristic electronic adventurers out there, especially in her collaborations with Timbaland. Yet her stuff is as hot and soulful as music gets. How does she do it?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[924,9,635,12],"tags":[96,112,190,220,329,1518,575,632,1562,741],"class_list":["post-4645","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-key-musicians","category-music","category-sampling","category-software","tag-blondie","tag-breakdancing","tag-digging-the-crates","tag-eighties","tag-hip-hop","tag-missy-elliott","tag-pro-tools","tag-run-dmc","tag-sampling","tag-timbaland","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pAPdE-1cV","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ethanhein.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4645","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ethanhein.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ethanhein.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ethanhein.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ethanhein.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4645"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.ethanhein.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4645\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7354,"href":"https:\/\/www.ethanhein.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4645\/revisions\/7354"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ethanhein.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4645"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ethanhein.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4645"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ethanhein.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4645"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}