Master Missy - writer, singer, producer and label head Missy Elliott - Interview

Interview, June, 1999 by Michael Musto

MM: What about Latoya? You never wrote Latoya?

ME: [laughs] No, I didn't get a chance to write Latoya.

MM: Someone like Whitney just calls to tell you she likes your music?

ME: She called me one day and I didn't believe it was her. When I got off the phone, I screamed so loud. She was so down-to-earth: "What up, girl? This is Whitney." I'm like, "Yeah, fight. Whatever. Stop playing." And then I realized it was her and said, "I love you, I love your music." She was like, "I wanna do something with you on my album." Just to hear that come from somebody who's had the success she's had, sold the records she has. . . . I would never have thought I could sit in the same room with Whitney and we'd laugh and joke like we've known each other for years.

MM: Do people make too much of your plus-size image?

ME: Not now, 'cause I'm losing weight. [laughs] But no one has ever, in magazines, made fun of my size. I get healthy women coming up to me all the time saying, "I'm so glad you opened up the door for us. I was sick of seeing skinny women on TV." They respect me for my music - and that's another blessing from God. 'Cause it could have been that people were just not having it: "You're not a one-two, so you need to move over. We want to see the girl who can fit in a bikini, not the girl who gotta have on the shorts and the T-shirt 'cause she don't want her stomach to show."

MM: How much weight have you lost?

ME: I've lost thirty-some pounds, but not because I felt like I had to be in that rank with other small females. I wanted to be in good health for my shows 'cause I do a lot of dancing and running around, and I don't want my heart to fail on me. I go to the gym maybe three days a week, and I do exercises every day - three hundred crunchies, two hundred leg lifts. Sometimes I have to smack my hand 'cause I still have sweets in my cabinet and sometimes I gotta move a Twinkle over to get to a protein bar and I'm like, "Maybe just a little piece of this Twinkle won't hurt me."

MM: Do you think people are too hard on Calista Flockhart [the actress who plays TV's Ally McBeal] for being so thin?

ME: I really don't know her situation. I have a couple of friends who are really, really skinny who eat all day long, like football players, and they never gain weight! Meanwhile I'm nibbling some lettuce, you know, or a little piece of chicken meat. So if she can't help it, I think people should lay off her, but if she's going to the bathroom and throwing up because she feels like this is the fly look of the year, then she's bugging.

MM: Everything I've read about you is so sickeningly positive. Do you ever get bad press?

ME: I'm pretty much a happy person, so it's kind of hard to write something bad about somebody who doesn't give off negativity. Every day is not a beautiful day for anybody, but I try to treat all my fans nice and all the interviewers nice. When it comes to people getting in my business, though, I have a problem. When interviewers ask me who I'm sleeping with or if I don't like such-and-such or what is my sexuality, that's not beneficial to the world. They need to ask me about stuff that may help readers, like how my father abused my mother for many years. A lot of kids go through that and need to know what they should do.