Rolling Stones with Missy Elliot

She'll get down and dirty, but draws the line at kissing Madonna

With her eyes closed, Missy Elliott bobs her head up and down and taps her French-manicured nails gently against the boombox balanced on her lap. She's grooving to "Funky Toyz" -- an old-school-R&B-sounding track from her upcoming album that talks about the pleasure women can get from battery-powered devices. "It's not that dirty," she says, flashing a smile and giggling. "I feel like people kind of look for me to be that voice. You remember when they had that commercial -- 'Mikey will like it'? Now it's like, 'Missy will say it.' "

At this year's MTV Video Music Awards, Elliott, 32, teamed with Madonna, Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera for the now-legendary opening performance, and then she snagged two Moonmen, including Best Video of the Year, for "Work It." Each of Elliott's four albums has gone platinum, but her latest, Under Construction, has been her biggest hit to date, with more than 2 million copies sold. Already Elliott is nearly done with her fifth album in six years, This Is Not a Test, which comes out on November 25th. "Not to say I'm the hardest-working female out there," she demurs, "but I do work very, very hard, and I don't even feel like I do anything else but be in the studio. I have not had a vacation since I've been an artist. I always gotta be doing something or I would just get bored."

What has been the most surreal moment of your career?
I could name so many. When I got my first phone call from Janet. My first phone call from Whitney. My first phone call from Mariah. The first time I spoke to Madonna. Getting a call from Michael Jackson. In my mind, I was like, "I think people need to stop playing with my phone. I'm going to have to get my number changed." I'm still in groupie mode. Madonna was somebody I watched on TV, and I put on all those belts and gloves and started singing "Like a Virgin" in my room. You couldn't tell me I wasn't the black Madonna. So, to get those phone calls, I never adjusted to that. Each one was like, "Wow."

As a woman, you've taken a very nontraditional career path.
I think that happened for a reason. I wasn't what people wanted to see -- the light skin with the long hair blowing in the wind and the Janet Jackson six-pack. So it was honestly better that way, because I got the chance to guest-appear on records, and they loved the records so much that by the time they got the chance to see me, it really didn't matter. They didn't have a chance to judge, like, "OK, who's the big mama on the TV screen?"

Do you think female artists are more competitive with one another than male artists are?
As women, we're funny. If you get a bunch of women in a house, after a while there will be problems. I really love working with somebody like Eve, because she isn't like that. We need more women like her. It makes sense that if you're hot and I'm hot, we should make a record together. Because then we'll both be hot and we'll both have a lot of money. The perfect example is Christina and Britney at the MTV Video Music Awards: "We might not go to Disneyland when this is over. We ain't going to have a sleepover at each other's house. But we see how huge this is." Madonna, Britney, Christina: Who would have turned that down? Not me.

What did you think of the kiss? And why didn't you get a kiss from Madonna?
I wasn't kissing on that stage. Oh, no! I went to rehearsal, and I was like, "Oh, snap, my mama cannot watch this. I can't tell her what time it comes on." But Madonna is Madonna. She's going to do what she does, and you're either going to like it or you don't.

People can't stop talking about that kiss.
That's because we all knew Madonna would do that, but Britney? It was like seeing a nun kissing a rapper or something.

Do you care if your fans think you're sexy?
No. You know, you can't worry about that. You gotta do stuff to please yourself. Showing confidence in yourself makes other people believe that you're hot.

In your music you deal with sexuality from a woman's perspective. Is that something you've had to grow into?
Yeah, I think so. But on the last album, I had so many females and guys come up to me and say they loved "@#%$, don't fail me now" [from "Pussycat"]. I remember when Beyonce was like, "I love that record," and I was like, "I'm gonna tell your mama!"

Do you think it makes fans more uncomfortable to hear a woman being explicit like that than to hear a man doing it?
Oh, of course. Because females, we kind of have stood in the background, and we wasn't supposed to talk. We never had a voice like that, but for a long time guys've been talking like that. It's almost like a wife cheating. We've already accepted that a man is going to cheat. It's so sad that we have adjusted to that, and it's just like that in music. Guys can say whatever, but girls are supposed to be ladylike and quiet, not saying nasty and vulgar things.

Why do you think it's more common in hip-hop for women to go there?
Madonna has taken it there, and maybe now Britney is taking hers to another level. I saw Britney on her last Rolling Stone cover, and I was like, "Oh, God!" Britney is beautiful, but I saw it and I was like, "Britney's doing it like that now?" I can't do that. I ain't got no Britney stomach. She's got a pretty amazing body. I took Janet's picture and put it in places around my house. I put my face over the top of her body, and that's my motivation every time I want to go and eat and get sweets.

Is the music business a man's world?
It's pretty much a man's world all around, not just in the music business. I gotta say, I think the women are stepping up now. We have voices now. We got the control, I believe. It just took a lot of time. I look at a Sylvia Rhone at Elektra. Usually it's just men who run the major labels, but we got somebody like that. We got somebody like a Latifah, who has moved on to the movie side and has opened that door for other hip-hop artists. It's always that door opener, that one woman who really sets it off. Now, we don't want to be the one standing back there with the pack of nails, we want to be the one with the nails and the hammer and doing the work for ourselves.

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