All Made Up, Ready to Go

It’s about two hours before Missy “Misdemeanor” Elliott is to appear on Keenen Ivory Wayans’ late-night TV show in Hollywood, and backstage, in her dressing room, Elliott functionaries are bopping in and out to relay messages, iron out logistics, deliver lunch and just reassure her that, yes, the taping’s due to start on time.

Through it all, Elliott, who emerged last year as the most promising female artist in the male-dominated world of hip-hop, placidly sits on a ratty chair while her hairstylist carefully administers the intricate finger-weave that is rapidly becoming her most recognizable feature. The hair will take roughly an hour, then it’s time for her makeup, which will burn up another 60 minutes or so. And she hasn’t even gotten to her wardrobe yet.

“I’m very picky about my clothes,” Elliott says. “My people know that if my wardrobe isn’t right, or my hair isn’t right, I ain’t goin’ onstage. I don’t like to wait until the last minute to know what I’m wearing, ‘cause I’ve got dancers to worry about.”

To say that the 25-year-old performer is particular about her clothes is an understatement of epic proportions. She has a wardrobe designer working for her on each coast.

Three years ago, when she was still a fledgling songwriter and performer in Portsmouth, Va., the notion of custom-made designer threads would have been beyond her wildest dreams. But this writing, singing and rapping polymath has emerged as a major player in hip-hop, and critics have even begun to tag her Puff Mommy--a nod to artist-impresario Puff Daddy (a.k.a. Sean “Puffy” Combs), a virtual cottage industry of hits.

At a time when most female R&B; and rap artists are mere figureheads whose music and image are controlled by male producers and handlers, Missy Elliott is her own boss, from writing and producing her music to dictating the visual style of her videos. She even manages herself.

In an industry whose freewheeling image belies a timid, follow-the-leader mentality in its day-to-day operations, Elliott might be the irresistible force that can finally break down the barricades keeping women from parity--in the broader pop world as well as hip-hop, in the executive suite as well as the recording studio. The only woman to even approach her impact in hip-hop is Queen Latifah, who never truly rivaled the males the way Elliott does now.

That would be a welcome byproduct of Elliott’s grand plan to become hip-hop’s first female multimedia mogul.

“Missy wants to be like a Quincy Jones, a major producer who does all sorts of different things,” says Elektra Entertainment Group Chairman and CEO Sylvia Rhone, who last year rewarded Elliott with her own label imprint--a rarity for such a young artist, and virtually unprecedented for a young female artist. “She’s really a one-woman arsenal. When it comes to producing, writing and performing, she can step to anybody, and I’m talking male or female.”

Elliott’s list of credits is already impressive, and she’s just getting started. As with Combs, coincidentally, her first success was behind the scenes. As a songwriter, she and her partner Tim “Timbaland” Mosley have penned hits for Aaliyah (“One in a Million”), 702 (“Steelo”) and SWV (“Can We?”), among many others.

Then, also like Combs, she stepped into the spotlight herself during 1997 with a debut album. That collection, “Supa Dupa Fly,” was packed with smoldering R&B; grooves, bumptious beats and limber-tongued raps that breathed new life into hoary hip-hop cliches.

The album, which has sold almost 900,000 copies since it burst into the Top 10 in the fall, has made her a trailblazer for a new generation of artists that has rejected gangsta rap’s garish nihilism in favor of f-u-n.

“Rap’s coming around again to stuff that isn’t all about discussing negative things,” Elliott says during a rare lull in the backstage rush. “That’s why I think my music may be getting over.”

Elliott doesn’t like to dawdle. If you linger too long between questions in an interview, you’re likely to lose her--sometimes for half an hour or more. If she’s not focusing on her hair, she’s looking at the monitor to watch Wayans’ house band rehearse. And there’s the ever-present cell phone, which rings incessantly. One minute it’s her mom on the phone; the next, it’s someone calling about an upcoming live date.

You get the feeling that Elliott was made for the fast pace of show business. She certainly feels at home in the one area that many young musicians dread: videos.

It was Elliott’s striking video for her single “The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly)” last year that made millions of MTV viewers sit up and take notice.

A hyperkinetic, vaguely sci-fi clip featuring Elliott declaiming into a fisheye lens and sporting a Buzz Aldrin-meets-Josephine Baker get-up, “The Rain”--which lifts the chorus from Ann Peebles’ early-’70s soul classic “I Can’t Stand the Rain”--was nominated for three MTV Video Music Awards, including best direction and breakout video of the year.

“I want my videos to be different, to be cutting-edge,” Elliott says, setting down the phone momentarily. “I just got tired of seeing all these rappers in videos driving around in Mercedes and drinking champagne. Artists are usually more concerned about looking nice than making a video that’s fun and interesting, one that people want to sit down and look at. But Iwant people to look at my videos and say, ‘What’s she gonna do next?’ ”

Unlike hip-hop contemporaries such as Lil’ Kim and Foxy Brown, Elliott doesn’t hinge her videogenic appeal on overt sexuality. What sets her apart is her playfulness and her willingness to challenge rap’s rigid fashion and behavior codes.

“Missy is very irreverent, which is a rare and wonderful thing in hip-hop,” says Danyel Smith, Vibe magazine editor in chief. “There’s something very natural and confident about her. Unlike so many other female rappers, she doesn’t come off regal, and she’s not a hot mama either. I mean, here’s this pleasantly plump woman making fun of Kate Moss’ Calvin Klein ads in her video for ‘The Rain.’ Now that takes real confidence and self-assurance.”

Elliott also exhibited confidence by spending $1 million on her second video, “Sock It to Me,” which employs Japanese animation techniques. Her boldness has raised the bar among hip-hop rivals in terms of video production values.

“I think after I made the video for ‘The Rain,’ a lot of [artists] started stepping up on the way their videos look,” says Elliott, who, despite her flashy video persona, speaks in soft, measured tones. “Sometimes you have to spend money to make money, and you can’t always be tight-fisted, ‘cause people like to connect videos to the song. I think the money’s been worth it, ‘cause I got a lot of sales from that video.”

But don’t think her success is just based on image. Beneath everything is a groundbreaking musical sensibility.

“Supa Dupa Fly’s” whimsical wordplay and stutter-step beats have caught the ears of artists across the spectrum of dance music.

“I love Missy Elliott’s record, because she uses underground beats in a mainstream context,” says Ed Simons of the British techno duo the Chemical Brothers. “Her sounds have a great edge to them, with those clipped drumbeats. It’s almost got an English experimental feel to it.”

Her album has also connected with critics. Rolling Stone named Elliott best new artist of ‘97, while Vibe declared “The Rain” to be song of the year. Shortly after the Wayans TV taping, Elliott was nominated for three Grammys, including best rap album--the only woman nominated in the category.

“Getting those Grammy nominations means a lot to me,” Elliott said later. “It’s something you dream about as a kid. I remember watching TV to see who would get nominated and who would win, and now I’m one of those people. Even if I don’t win, it’s great to just be nominated your first time around.”

There’s no disputing that Elliott is on a mission to change the sound and look of hip-hop; it’s just that her mission took a little longer to gain momentum than she had originally anticipated.

Elliott actually made an album in 1994 with childhood friend Mosley and three other Portsmouth friends under the name Sista, for Devante Swing records, an Elektra label imprint run by singer Devante of the R&B; group Jodeci.

But the record was never released.

“It was really discouraging to me,” she says during the dressing-room interview. “I felt like I had let my family down. I didn’t feel like I could make it again the second time around.”

But Elliott did bounce back--with the same resilience she has demonstrated throughout her life.

Elliott’s parents separated when she was in junior high school in Portsmouth--a breach that Elliott now looks upon as for the best.

“My parents didn’t get along,” recalls Elliott. “It’s amazing to think that I’m here now, ‘cause they thought I was gonna have to see a psychiatrist, with all of the things I saw.”

Elliott visibly tenses up when discussing her father. “I see him from time to time,” she says sharply, as if closing the door on the subject. “I still have love for him, but I don’t talk to him.”

It’s only when she turns to the subject of her mother that she again begins to appear comfortable. In fact, Elliott regards her mother--a dispatcher for a power company--with an almost worshipful reverence.

“When I was a kid, I wanted to be like my mother,” she says. “She’s a very classy lady who always wore great clothes and loved to wear nice shoes. She used to sing every Sunday for the church choir, and people would love to hear her sing. I wanted to earn that kind of respect from people the way she did.

“By raising me by herself, she showed me how strong a woman she was. When my father first left, it scared her, but she had the courage to take on the challenge.”

Elliott caught the performing bug early. As an only child, she spent hours making up games to keep herself entertained. Even today, you can sense the joy of that period in the impish grin that crosses her face as she reminisces about those times: “I would line up all of my dolls against the wall and get a shampoo bottle for a mike and sing to them.”

In her early teens, Elliott fell under the spell of rap pioneers such as the Sugarhill Gang and Run-DMC, trying to mimic their rapping styles. Eventually, imitation turned to emulation, as Elliott began writing her own songs. Some victories in local talent shows pointed to a direction for her. She recalls, “I thought, ‘Well, there’s something there.’ ”

Emboldened by her success, Elliott quickly formed Sista and started angling for ways to get her act noticed.

When Jodeci made a tour stop in Portsmouth, she seized the moment.

“We managed to get ourselves onto the list for the after-party,” says Elliott. “We ran into Devante and told him about our band, so he asked us to come to his room and sing for him. He liked it, and we were flying to his studio by the next Monday.”

Although the Sista project fell apart after Devante’s label declared bankruptcy, Elliott and Mosley, who co-wrote all of Sista’s material, did manage to land a few writing credits on Jodeci’s album “Diary of a Mad Band.”

After that success, Elliott moved to New York, where she and Mosley peddled their songs to various labels and production companies. Their hard work paid off in 1996 when Craig Calvin, an artists and repertoire executive at Atlantic Records, hooked them up with teenage R&B; singer and R. Kelly protegee Aaliyah.

When Aaliyah’s version of their “If Your Girl Only Knew” went to No. 1 on the R&B; charts and No. 11 on the pop charts, Elliott and Mosley (who is also half of the duo Timbaland & Magoo) were suddenly in demand. They now have a dozen Top 20 R&B; hits to their credit. New Yorker writer Hilton Als has even called the duo a “latter-day Ashford and Simpson.”

“Tim and I have great chemistry together,” says Elliott. “We are really of the same mind, in that we want everything we do to sound futuristic, and not like everything else on the radio.”

Rather than sample a popular song wholesale and lay a rap over it--which is what producer Combs has done on such hits as “I’ll Be Missing You”--Elliott and Mosley prefer to keep the emphasis on unique beats and rhyming schemes.

“What Missy and I have is very deep,” says Mosley in a separate interview. “We tend to have the same ideas about music. Neither one of us likes to sample too much, and if we do, we like them to be unpredictable.”

Elliott’s strategy obviously paid off, with “Supa Dupa Fly’s” million-plus sales. “I think the key to Missy’s success is the backbone of sincerity and honesty that comes through in her music,” says Elektra’s Rhone. “She comes from a totally different place than any other male or female hip-hop artist. It’s not about T and A with her. She’s just real.”

When it came time to record “Supa Dupa Fly,” Elliott made sure that it worked as a cohesive album, and not just a slapdash collection of potential radio hits. The idea, shesays, was to “make a record where people wouldn’t want to fast-forward past certain songs.” She wanted something, she said, “sorta like that first Mary J. Blige album, where you could just bust every song off of it. We wanted to make something fun that you could ride along in your car to.”

Now that Elliott has reaped the spoils of success, including her Elektra-financed Gold Mind label, she has no intention of relinquishing them.

“I’m a female, and this is a male- dominated business,” she says, carefully applying the finishing touches on her finger-weave as time for the taping nears.

“I want to show people that females can do the same thing as a male. After Sista didn’t happen, I realized that I didn’t want to make the same mistakes twice, so instead of being signed under someone else’s production deal, or signing directly to the label, I realized that I could sign to my own label and make more money. Now that I have the final say-so, if it fails, then it’s my fault. I don’t have to go around blaming the label.”

Elliott’s first Gold Mind signing, Nicole Wray, will be releasing her debut album in the spring. Elliott is also at work on a screenplay and is exploring other outlets. She recently shot a Sprite commercial and had a cameo on the sitcom “Family Matters.”

“Now that I’ve gone from being unsuccessful to being very successful,” she says, “it’s important for me to have a lot of power and show people that women can do it too.”

With all the activity surrounding her these days, it’s surprising to find that hip-hop’s latest star still lives at home in Portsmouth with her mom (who runs her fan club).

Although the town is no one’s idea of a music mecca, Elliott likes it that way. She splits her recording time between a Portsmouth studio called Master Sound and the occasional jaunt to New York.

“My mom’s really cool about giving me my privacy,” says Elliott of their living arrangement. “If I close the door to my room, she knows not to bother me. . . .”

Her comment is interrupted as a production assistant pokes his head into the dressing room to tell Missy they’re ready for her on the set.

Giving herself a final primp in front of the mirror, Elliott ties up her fluorescent green sneakers and makes her way to the sound stage. But not before doubling back to grab her cell phone. “You never know,” hip-hop’s newest tycoon jokes. “I may have some business to conduct.”

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Hear Missy Elliott

* Excerpts from the album “Supa Dupa Fly” and other recent releases are available on The Times’ World Wide Web site. Point your browser to: http://netblogpro.com/soundclips