Melissa Arnette Elliott, better known as Missy Elliott or Missy "Misdemeanor" Elliott, embarked
on her music career with R&B girl group Sista in the early-to-mid 1990's, and later became a member of the Swing Mob collective along with childhood friend and long-time collaborator Timbaland, with whom she worked on projects for American R&B acts Aaliyah, 702, Total, and SWV. Following several collaborations and guest appearances, she launched her solo career in 1997 with her debut album 'Supa Dupa Fly', which spawned the top 20 single 'Sock It 2 Me'. The album debuted at number three on the Billboard 200, the highest charting debut for a female rapper at the time. Her second album, 'Da Real World', was released in 1999 and produced the singles 'She's A Bitch', 'All n My Grill', and top five hit 'Hot Boyz'. The remix of the latter song broke the record for most weeks at number one on the US R&B chart in January 2000, as well as spending 18 weeks at number one on the Hot Rap Singles chart from December 1999 to March 2000. With the release of 'Miss E... So Addictive' (2001), 'Under Construction' (2002), and 'This Is Not A Test' (2003), Elliott established an international career that yielded hits including 'Get Ur Freak On', 'One Minute Man', '4 My People', 'Gossip Folks', and 'Work It', with the latter winning her a Grammy Award for Best Female Rap Solo Performance. Since 2007, Elliott's seventh studio album has had several different forms with extensive delays. Initially she worked with Timbaland, Swizz Beatz, Danja, T-Pain and DJ Toomp and planned to release the album at the beginning of 2008. In January 2008, 'Ching-A-Ling' was released as the lead single for the soundtrack of the film 'Step Up 2: The Streets', which also featured 'Shake Your Pom Pom', produced by Timbaland. 'Best, Best' was released the same year, and Elliott renamed the album from 'FANomenal' to its new tentative title 'Block Party'. Things went quiet over the next few years, and then in 2012 she released two Timbaland-produced singles, '9th Inning' and 'Triple Threat', exclusively to iTunes. Though the songs managed to chart on Billboard Hot Digital Songs, this was not the impetus that Elliott needed to resurrect 'Block Party', saying in an interview with Yahoo's The Yo Show, that sometimes "Your brain needs time to refresh!". In between the recording of her seventh album, Elliott found success behind the scenes, with her writing and production being involved in hits for Keyshia Cole ('Let It Go'), Jazmine Sullivan ('Need U Bad'), Monica ('Everything To Me'), Fantasia ('Free Yourself'), and Jennifer Hudson ('I'm His Only Woman'). All this extra-curricular work has kept her from completing her own music, and so it's now unlikely that 'Block Party' will ever see the light of day, so it's up to us to piece it together so that we can hear what could well have turned out to be Elliott's final album under her own name.
01 Ching-A-Ling
02 Shake Your Pom Pom
03 Best, Best
04 Warped (interlude)
05 Talk That Shit
06 All 4 U
07 9th Inning (feat. Timbaland)
08 Swat That Fly
09 Act A Fool
10 Pep Rally
11 Put It On Ya (feat. Teyana Taylor & Pharrell)
12 Triple Threat (feat. Timbaland)
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