We've gotten our hopes up for the return of Missy Elliott a few times over the past several years, but all too often the hope has fizzled out, before the buzz had even started. Remember when she dropped "9th Inning" and "Triple Threat" back in 2012? And then there was her phenomenal Super Bowl performance, another glimmer of hope which also didn't last too long. Timbaland has been touting that a Missy Elliott album is "on the way" since last summer.
With the release of her new music video for "WTF (Where They From)" featuring Pharrell, most of us felt as though we were transported back to the Missy-domination era of the early 2000s. From the outrageous outfits to the weird visual scenes to the completely off-trend vibe of the record itself, "WTF" had just about everyone praising Missy's return. This time, it seems for real, for real (no that's not a typo, I mean #frfr). A new Billboard magazine cover would indicate the same.
In the issue, she talks about making a comeback in the millennial generation: "I have to be very careful," she told Billboard. "It’s different now. People are quick to be like, ‘You’re irrelevant, you’re a flop, you’re washed up.’"
She also spoke on her lengthy absence, and how she was writing a lot for other people during that time.
"If I wanted to do The Missing Files of Missy Elliott, I have probably six albums just sitting there," she revealed. "People hadn’t realized that I haven’t just been an artist, I’ve been a writer and a producer for other artists. When you’re writing that much, your brain is like a computer. You have refresh it."
Finally, she spoke on the impact Graves disease had on her, a diagnosis only made in 2008. Read the full story here, and check out her cover above.