Hollaaah! Miss Melissa Arnette Elliott has reached her half century. Random Jukebox honours her the only way it knows how…
”It could be about dancing, the bedroom, whatever. You’re cleaning your house? Get your freak on!”
That‘s what Missy Elliott said of her most head-turningly famous hit in 2001. The tempo was a brisk 178 BPM, the speed of drum-and-bass, while the instrumentation — a head-knocking riff played on a one-string Punjabi tumbi, a tabla coming hard on the downbeat — came from South Asian bhangra.
Missy rides the swerving rhythms expertly — her verve and the track’s sheer newness shot it into all kinds of club playlists, most memorably DJ /rupture’s shattering set Gold Teeth Thief. Ready?
Go, get your, get your, get your, get your, get your freak on!*
Steve Pafford
*And she did – she soon worked with Madonna. Ugh
