At a 24,000-square-foot studio near downtown Los Angeles, Missy Elliott, Busta Rhymes and Ciara are preparing to film the video announcement for a tour no one saw coming.
This summer, the trio — along with legendary producer Timbaland — will hit the road for Elliott’s first headlining arena tour, appropriately titled “Out of This World — The Missy Elliott Experience.”
“Listen, I didn’t realize I never had my own tour,” says a smiling Elliott, holding her tiny Yorkie, named Fendi, dressed in Gucci. “The last real tour that I went on — like, consistent days — was with Beyoncé and Alicia (Keys).”
That was in 2004.
Call it long overdue, but the timing is ideal. Over the last few years, Elliott has been recognized for her talents as a musician, producer, songwriter and beyond.
In 2019, she became the first female rapper inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame and received the Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award at the MTV Video Music Awards. In 2021, she received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. In 2022, her hometown of Portsmouth, Virginia, named a boulevard after her. Last year, she became the first female hip-hop artist inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
“Getting those accolades, I feel like I’ve finally made it,” Elliott says. “It feels amazing. I feel so blessed.”
“What we’re seeing now is kind of the rest of the world catching up,” says Mona Scott-Young, Elliott’s longtime manager and co-producer of the tour. “She’s always been ahead.”
In his green room, Busta Rhymes tells the AP that a tour had never come up in conversation across his decades of friendship and collaboration with Elliott. (He’s the intro and outro voice on her canonical debut album, 1997’s “Supa Dupa Fly.” They’ve long since been inseparable.)
And make no mistake, this isn’t a nostalgia tour.
“We are in the best spaces in our lives, individually and collectively, we’re at the most experienced spaces in our lives,” Rhymes says. “We’re no longer Daniel-san. We’re now all Mr. Miyagi senseis. You know what I’m saying? We’re all at our perfection levels of what we’ve been doing and building together as a collective family for 30 years.”
Elliott echoes the sentiment.
“The lineup feels something special,” Elliott says. “It’s family. It’s not put together.”
Elliott offers a hint at what fans can expect from the show.
“It’s an experience, it’s not just you seeing the artist on the stage,” she says. “I want people to travel to those moments, those (music) videos, I want you to relive it on stage. It is most definitely a lot of good, good stuff. Expensive stuff!”
The “Out of This World — The Missy Elliott Experience” kicks off in Vancouver, British Columbia, on July 4 at Rogers Arena and concludes in Rosemont, Illinois, at Allstate Arena on Aug. 22.
It will hit Seattle; Oakland, California; Los Angeles; Las Vegas; Denver; Austin, Texas; Houston; Fort Worth, Texas; Tampa, Florida; Sunrise, Florida; Atlanta; Baltimore; Hampton, Virginia; Philadelphia; Washington, D.C.; Newark, New Jersey; Boston; Brooklyn, New York; Detroit; Montreal and Toronto.
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