‘I am a champion’: Missy Elliot talks new music, breaking barriers in Marie Claire cover

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Missy Elliot is arguably one of the best female rappers and producers in the game, and in the latest edition of Marie Claire,  she’s opening up about what it was like breaking barriers for women of color in a male-dominated industry.

In her August 2019 cover shoot interview for the magazine, Elliot, 48, who is considered hip-hop royalty, is literally dressed like a queen in an orange brocade embroidered Dolce & Gabbana coat, featuring a colorful lapel.

READ MORE: 2019 Songwriters Hall of Fame — Missy Elliott becomes first female Hip-Hop artist to be inducted

“‘I am a champion for my brown, dark women,” the “Work It” hitmaker said. “I want them to be seen. Because we are beautiful. If we knew how special we were, we would be unstoppable.”

Elliot has won four Grammy Awards, has been nominated a whopping 22 times and sold over 30 million records worldwide. But what many don’t give her credit for is the fact that she was one of the music industry’s first body positive advocates, well before that term was even coined.

Her classic video for “The Rain,” off of her 1997 debut album, Supa Dupa Fly, was way ahead of it’s time, and her impact is still being seen in upcoming acts of today, who have been influenced by her style – whether they realize it or not.

https://twitter.com/iSmashFizzle/status/1150743111309647872

READ MORE: Hip-hop icon Missy Elliott teases finished new project

“I was just going, going, going. It wasn’t resonating what was happening,” she recalls of those early years when she was creating without any sense of just how much of an impact she was making.

“After I did the Super Bowl [in 2015], my friends called me and they are like, ‘So, what you about to do?’ I’m here mopping my floor, and I got to wash the dogs. And they are like, ‘What? You just finished doing the Super Bowl,’ ” she explained. “And the same thing happened…I was in the car with Michelle Obama [for ‘Carpool Karaoke’ in 2016], and they called me like, ‘Girl, we got to celebrate; that’s huge!’ And I’m like, ‘I’m watching a movie on Netflix.’

“Now that I’ve had a chance to slow down,” she said.  “I look back at stuff, and I look back at my ‘She’s a B*tch’ video [1999], and at the time I didn’t even think about it. But I look at it now and I’m like, ‘This is still so many years ahead.’ ”

Fans will be happy to hear that not only is new Missy Elliot music on its way, this time she’s making it her mission to make street dudes enjoy dancing again, like they did in the days of Soul Train.

“It’s okay,” she reassures her male fans. “It’s not corny.”