Missy Elliott is a national treasure. Forget your MacArthur grants, your NEA endowments (if they exist anymore), your humanitarian awards, and your Pulitzer Prizes. Elliott deserves a kind of recognition that hasn't even been invented yet. In contemporary hip-hop and r&b, she has no peer. As a triple threat-- singer, songwriter, producer/arranger-- she's bested only by Prince and James Brown. (And her raps certainly slay Prince's, if not JB's.) Throw her longtime production pal Timbaland into the mix-- "we so tight that we get our styles tangled"-- and those other two start getting night sweats. That she does all this while being a wickedly funny, openly sexual, plus-sized woman in a waif-sized world is just gravy. That she does it while wearing a trash bag, hocking loogies in her videos to the tune of backward baby elephant talk-- well, that's the kind of shit that makes you start to believe in benevolent higher beings.
Forget the six albums she's released over the past nine years under her own name and check the résumé: She penned the best songs on Aaliyah's best album-- "One in a Million" alone earning her a place in heaven-- and major hits for Tweet, Total, 702, Monica, Ciara, on and on. Scene-stealing guest appearances, videos that make you care about the art of the music video in 2006-- Missy is the total package in an era of Cassies and Ashantis, a great bosomy hug of MORE in a time of miserly, single-serving mp3 blog "pop." Respect M.E. is the long-awaited-- and long-deserved-- best of. It is, amazingly, only being released in Europe. This is unconscionable. The suits at Missy's American label need to have their knuckles rapped, Catechism-style. (On the other hand, its Euro-only status means it includes Basement Jaxx's house remix of "4 My People". Some corporate cock-ups work out in the listener's favor.)
The early tracks like "Beep Me 911" and "The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly)" still sound like funky faxes from Skylab a decade later. Like, what's with all the baby robot gurgles where the basslines should be? Depending on your point of view, Timbaland either beefed up the clickety-clackety drums of southern bounce with New York hip-hop muscle, or he took a hole punch to DJ Premier, snipping every third kick drum, every sixth snare. Missy's lyrics are rarely "deep"-- you know, like, uh, Pastor Troy-- and her flow continues to be mocked by guys (and it's always guys) who conflate grad school rhyme schemes with good pop. But, good as they are, appreciating Missy singles for just the beats is like appreciating a car for just the engine. You wouldn't buy a souped-up '87 Hyundai hatchback, right?
Missy singles are about stuff like the way she sup-sup-sups on "Get Ur Freak On", her stoned izzy izzy ah patter on "The Rain", all the free-associative babble of an Afro-psychedelic sexpot who considers the package at least as important as the stuff being delivered. It's the sound of her lazy, horny drawl on the panting, lovestruck, dumbstruck "Hot Boyz". It's the way she bounces along "jump in this b-e-d" on "Sock It 2 Me". The way her voice scrunches up into a cartoon sneer on all those "e" sounds on "Gossip Folks". It's "to the M-I, puuurrrrr, cat like a semi." Then there are all the little sonic touches, ad libs, and the cherries on top of cherries-- the "Double Dutch Bus" gibberish on "Gossip Folks", two of Ludacris' best-ever guest verses, the whole of "Work It".
Respect M.E. isn't perfect-- my editor and I will have to respectfully part ways on the merits of Missy's ballads, though I suspect I'm a bigger sucker for gospelized cheese than he is-- but you certainly get all the hits. And since it samples from all of Missy's albums, it gives you more of that more than any of them will on their own. Respect M.E. is also, thankfully, non-chronologically arranged. More recent Missy singles like "Pass That Dutch" and "I'm Really Hot" sound much better here than they did on the radio where they were merely "not as good as ‘Get Ur Freak On'." But here are the caveats: The first four Missy albums are still required listening, I'm still not sure about greatest hits packages in an iTunes world, and Respect M.E. is probably an expensive import wherever you live. Still, if you're some kinda sociopath who doesn't have all these songs on a hard drive/iPod/discman, buy the damn thing already.
