How 1983 gave Missy Elliott one of her biggest hits of all time
Although Missy Elliott was only 12 years old in 1983, it was musically crucial to her career later in life. Of course, at the time, the then-child wasn’t aware of all the hip-hop subgenres emerging across the US. However, some of the decade’s hits would help Missy reinvent herself well into the 2000s.
When the female lyricist first emerged in the mainstream during the 1990s, she was backed and propelled by her best friend, super-producer Timbaland, who himself became a legend in his own right. However, while working with Elliott, he made some instrumentals that still sound fresh today.
From ‘Sock It To Me’ to ‘The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly)’ with catchy, original beats and an exciting aesthetic, there was nothing like Missy Elliott when she first appeared. As such, she had her own lane and continued to superstardom well into the new millennium.
With Miss E…So Addictive dropping in 2001, within a year, Missy was releasing Under Construction and by 2003, This Is Not A Test was flying off shelves. Still, Elliott wanted to go even bigger with her music and even produce some herself.
That said, when Elliott released her 2005 project The Cookbook, there was one track that reinvented some classics from 1983 and became a huge anthem for the emcee, and that was the project’s lead single, ‘Lose Control’. Still, many don’t know that the instrumental for the song was built with the use of samples. The main melody of the track, which hears an elevating synthesiser on a hypnotic loop, will be familiar to fans of 1980s electro music. However, to many of rap’s younger listeners, it is alien.
The melody and many of the track’s chords are, in fact, borrowed directly from the 1983 Cybotron single ‘Clear’. Comprised of Detroit musicians Juan Atkins and Richard Davis, Cybotron was a shortlived duo, but their album Enter spawned a classic that has been sampled on numerous occasions.
Still, ‘Lose Control’ was, by far, the most successful reinvention of the 1983. However, the track’s title is derived from another song released in 1983. In fact, the phrase “Music make you lose control”, which features multiple times in Elliott’s song, was sampled from Hot Streak’s track ‘Body Work’.
During the intro of the single, the main vocalist “I don’t know, but I’ve been told / Music make you lose control / Work your body to the beat / Body work will set you free.” The second line of this intro was used by Elliott in 2005 and gained much more fame as a result.
Although Eliott boosted some aspects of ‘Clear’ including the drums, polished up some of the track, added her own claps and did a bit of refinement, many would be shocked at how simple and similar the original is to Elliott’s 2005 smash hit which is a multi-platinum single. The sampling of old songs to create new magic is nothing new in hip-hop, but it’s safe to say Elliott did a fantastic job with these 1983 classics.