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Missy Elliott to Embark on First Headlining Tour Ever, With Busta Rhymes, Ciara and Timbaland as Support
Missy Elliott will do the first headlining tour in her career, with Busta Rhymes, Ciara and Timbaland as support acts, hitting arenas in 24 cities.
variety.com
Missy Elliott to Embark on First Headlining Tour Ever, With Busta Rhymes, Ciara and Timbaland as Support
By Chris Willman
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Missy Elliott, whose career has provided the very definition of “leave ’em wanting more,” has long resisted touring, but that’s changing in 2024. Along with some high-profile support acts, the hip-hop icon will embark on a tour of arenas in 24 cities this year — shockingly, the first time she’s toured as a headliner in her entire career, which began with a bang in the 1990s.
Supporting her along the way will be a trio of figures that are also instantly recognizable to anyone who knows Elliott’s career: Busta Rhymes, Ciara and Timbaland.
Elliott’s longtime manager and the tour’s co-producer, Mona Scott-Young, tells Variety: “Having been with Missy for so long, what I came to realize very early on is that things happen exactly as they’re supposed to, and when, and that’s usually according to Missy time. So even though there have been things that I felt she was ready for that I was looking for her to expand into, she would go, ‘No, the time’s not right. No, I’ll let you know when the time is right.’ And so when she finally said, ‘Hmm, I think we should go out on tour,’ it was like, holy crap! So of course we jumped into gear.”
Scott-Young credits a key historic milestone for spurring Elliott into action. The call that she was read came “probably after the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction. I think that was a seismic moment for her as well, where she realized that this was a goal and a dream that she had been working so hard to attain. And now that she felt that she had achieved that pinnacle, she wanted to really do this thing that she put off for so long, which was go out on the road. It certainly wasn’t for lack of opportunity or offers. I think it was the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame of it.”
The tour — dubbed “Out of This World: The Missy Elliott Experience Tour” — begins July 4 in Vancouver and wraps up Aug. 22 in Rosemont, Illinois. Key stops along the way include shows July 11 at L.A,’s Crypto Arena, Aug. 9 at Newark, NJ’s Prudential Center and Aug. 12 at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center. The outing will also take her to cities including Boston, Detroit, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., Las Vegas, Oakland, Seattle, Austin, Houston, Tampa, Baltimore, Montreal and Toronto.
The tour was teased Monday with a sci-fi-oriented clip, directed by famed music video director Dave Meyers, starring three of the four principals (minus Timbaland, who wasn’t available for the shoot).
“This is an incredible time in my life as I am experiencing so many milestone ‘firsts,'” Elliott said in a statement. “Being the FIRST female hip-hop artist to be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and now going out on my FIRST headline tour,. Fans have been asking me to tour forever but I wanted to wait until I felt the time was right because I knew if I was ever going to do it, I had to do it big, and I had to do it with family!”
The tour is being produced by Live Nation in association with Scott-Young, CEO of Monami Entertainment.
In recent years, Elliott has performed at some isolated festival dates, where she has bowled crowds over, along with a gig last year at Southern California’s Yamavaa Casino, which Variety reviewed, openly wondering why this show was not on the road. (The show was also ranked by Variety as one of the best concerts of the year at the end of 2023.)
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Says Scott-Young, “I mean, look, she’s always been ahead of her time and as much as we’ve heard, ‘Well, so why did you wait so long?,’ she was just like, ‘It wasn’t that I was waiting — it’s just the timing is now.’ And Missy is very absolute about knowing exactly when she feels it is time to do something. So yeah, when we did the Yamavaa Casino, we all had the same reaction you did. Like, oh my God, this is fantastic, and we should be taking this around the country, around the world.”
The full lineup was a key part of why Elliott was willing to do this now, says the manager-producer.
“For Missy it was very important that when she embarked on this journey, she did it with what she’s calling her family,” Scott-Young says. “Busta and Missy have been twins for so long; people have compared them in terms of their unique ability to really think outside of the box, in terms of their personas, in terms of their music. So people have always wanted to see them do something together. And for me, that’s kind of a personal milestone, because I’ve managed them both for many years, and now still to this day am intricately involved with both of their careers and their lives. So to see them together on that stage is going to be a personal moment for me. And of course, Ciara has worked with her and they’ve become friends, and she looks to Missy as a mentor. She has such a dynamic stage show herself and is a pop star in her own right. And of course, Timbaland, who I call her partner in rhyme; those two have a long history.
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“So from beginning to end, I will say this, it will be a seamless experience,” Scott-Young says, while declining to say exactly what format individual or collective sets might take. “I think everyone is aware they all have songs that they’ve collaborated on together. So of course we want the show to feel like a family affair.”
A Verizon presale begins Tuesday, with other presales happening throughout the week before a general on-sale Friday at 10 a.m. local time. Further tour details can be found here.
Scott-Young says she’s met with disbelief when she reminds industry supporters that there has never been a proper Elliott tour, despite her rise to fame in the ’90s, even as she participated in group road shows like Lilith Fair back in the day.
“Everybody that I tell this is her first headline, they go, ‘Oh, no, no, no.’ Then they’re like, ‘Oh crap, you’re right.’ Because her presence is so powerful and we felt her throughout music for the last three decades. But the idea that she has never done great stages across the country is a little mind-boggling when you think of that, because she’s always felt so omnipresent.”
Is that just-as-elusive-a-thing — a full new album, which would be her first since 2005, if it were to come to be — also possible? “I mean, I would always say with Missy, you can never say never,” Scott-Young says. “And you can also never predict. I think we all thought this moment would never come, that we would see her headlining a tour, and here we are. So I would never say no. That’s all I will say about Missy Elliott.”
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Scott-Young already had a big year ahead with a tour that will bring together XSCAPE and SWV along with Mya, Total and 702. “2024 is the year of intention for me. Everything that I’ve set my mind to and become determined to see come to life is coming to fruition. To put up these two tours within weeks of each other is unprecedented week and they were both very, very important to me personally for different reasons.”
The XSCAPE/SWV/et al. concept “came about as a result of the show that I did on Bravo, ‘The Queens of R&B,’ where the goal was to take the ladies out on a tour,” before a contretemps got in the way of that. Then, “we were able to come back together and realize that, collectively, they were stronger, leaning into just the women empowerment and supporting each other. These ladies put their differences aside to give the fans what they want. … This show is gonna be a women’s anthem from start to finish. It’s just a symbol of the resilience of women overcoming adversity, coming up on the other side, triumphant and celebrating their talents and gifts and sharing it with the world.”
As for Elliott and company, “Don’t take the tour itself for granted, the manager is urging: “All I’ll say is this: we never know when this will happen again,” Scott-Young says. “So this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. I know what we’re getting ready to deliver on that stage.”
The itinerary:
Thursday, July 4 — Vancouver, BC — Rogers Arena
Saturday, July 6 — Seattle, WA — Climate Pledge Arena
Tuesday, July 9 — Oakland, CA — Oakland Arena
Thursday, July 11 — Los Angeles, CA — Crypto.com Arena
Saturday, July 13 — Las Vegas, NV — T-Mobile Arena
Tuesday, July 16 — Denver, CO — Ball Arena
Thursday, July 18 — Austin, TX — Moody Center
Saturday, July 20 — Houston, TX — Toyota Center
Sunday, July 21 — Fort Worth, TX — Dickies Arena
Wednesday, July 24 — Tampa, FL — Amalie Arena
Thursday, July 25 — Sunrise, FL — Amerant Bank Arena
Saturday, July 27 — Atlanta, GA — State Farm Arena
Thursday, August 1 — Baltimore, MD — CFG Bank Arena
Friday, August 2 — Hampton, VA — Hampton Coliseum
Saturday, August 3 — Belmont Park, NY — UBS Arena
Monday, August 5 — Philadelphia, PA — Wells Fargo Center
Thursday, August 8 — Washington, DC — Capital One Arena
Friday, August 9 — Newark, NJ — Prudential Center
Saturday, August 10 — Boston, MA — TD Garden
Monday, August 12 — Brooklyn, NY — Barclays Center
Thursday, August 15 — Detroit, MI — Little Caesars Arena
Saturday, August 17 — Montreal, QC — Bell Centre
Monday, August 19 — Toronto, ON — Scotiabank Arena
Thursday, August 22 — Rosemont, IL — Allstate Arena