It's hard to believe it's taken almost 30 years for hip-hop legend Missy "Misdemeanor" Elliott to headline her first tour. Why now? As she put it, the timing felt right. She recently experienced many milestone firsts. Last November she became the first female hip-hop artist inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Flash forward to Thursday night, where alongside some of her oldest friends and collaborators, she kicked off Out of This World: the Missy Elliott Experience at Vancouver's Rogers Arena in interstellar fashion.
The show lifted off with the ever-prolific Timbaland warming up the crowd with songs he either featured on or produced. He rapped his parts on (or at least played hype man to) perennial crowd-pleasers including Beyoncé and Jay-Z's "Drunk in Love," Aaliyah's "Are You That Somebody," and Justin Timberlake's "Cry Me a River." He even treated Vancouver to home province rep with Nelly Furtado's sweltering "Promiscuous."
After 30 minutes of Timbaland's guided karaoke, Ciara rose from the centre of the stage with a royal crown atop her head. Though she cranked the heat with bangers like "Oh," she also brought things down to a simmer with slow jams "I Run It" and "I Bet," a welcome change of pace for what was to follow.
Next, the tag team of Busta Rhymes and Spliff Star unleashed so much hype, they bordered on aggressive. Unfortunately, though, their set ended on an awkward note. Rhymes declared that he was ready to keep the energy going with his classics and asked for a bottle of champagne. It didn't arrive, so he was reduced to toasting Elliott with an imaginary glass. He called for the house lights to come on so he could see every fan's imaginary glass in the air. ...Nothing. "I can wait!" he warned as much as he insisted. He even got the audience to clamour "House lights up!" …The arena stayed dark. It turned out Rhymes couldn't wait after all — he finished his song, then unceremoniously left the stage.
Finally, it was time for the Missy Elliott Experience, and it was all that and more — an immersive, hyper-stimulating spectacle that was part carnival, part Broadway show and part Mad Max extravaganza.
Upon entry, fans received automated wristbands that lit up in colour coordinated patterns. Elliot's unhinged stage production boasted lasers, moving screens and risers everywhere; Videos, costumes and set pieces predicted technological futures both sleek and dystopian. Elliott and her squad of 20 or so "Out of this World Dancers" were dressed in full sparkling gold and white space suits before switching to shiny, black, spiky trench coats and visors, boucning on exercise balls and scaling a moveable wall of cage fencing. Some distinguished dancers wore tutus. Another wrapped himself in a fit that looked like Gene Kelly in Singin' in the Rain (complete with an umbrella) mashed with the metal fetishist in Tetsuo: The Iron Man. Elliott donned pillowy body-morphing suits, the same types that exaggerated her body in her iconic, eye-popping music videos.
Not to be overshadowed by the towering videos of her avatar hurling through space or swimming in amorphous bodies of water, Elliott and her dancers performed for 45 minutes nonstop, flying at warp speed through "Cool Off," "4 My People," "Sock It 2 Me," "She's a Bitch" and "All n My Grill." At one point, she and two dancers took to the air on a floating stage that drifted to the centre of the arena as blasts of smoke trailed them and balls of red pyro dripped from the ceiling behind her.
After a well-earned break filled by a DJ, Missy Misdemeanor and her dancers re-emerged. Somehow, they hit it even more strongly, leading off with "Get Ur Freak On" and keeping the ruckus going with "Lick Shots," "One Minute Man" and "Hot Boyz." As if fans weren't already going to lose their minds over "Work It," she took it to the next level, rapping the paradigm-shifting club anthem while strutting a full loop around the arena floor.
After a round of thank-yous, to Elliott's fans for their years of support, to Ciara and to Elliott's day ones Busta Rhymes and her "co-pilot" Timbaland, one by one, her collaborators joined her on stage. Together, they jammed out some final joints — Timbaland jumped on for "Up Jumps da Boogie," and Ciara played navigator on "Lose Control." They bowed out with a hug fest, a final reminder that Missy Elliott rose to prominence in the aftermath of a fractious time in hip hop that culminated in the murders of 2Pac and the Notorious B.I.G. She broke the mold, leading a new era that looked toward a more prosperous, more fun and more inclusive future, no matter one's gender or body type. The Missy Elliott Experience honoured the movement she pushed forward. Whether standing in the audience or hugging it out onstage, everyone can pop the cork for that.