It was a celebration of her gold mind and its evolution through the years.
But it was weirdly cathartic to hear everyone sing along with Missys late-night driving mantra Oh.
Missy, attempt to maintain!
Derek Blanks/crowdMGMT
complete with the windshield-wiper noises.
The Out of This World show is designed as a flight in a space capsule.
Well, well we have left Earth, a narrator announces.
This is the Met Gala of outer space.
That sums it up.
The whole show is steeped in rap and soul history, evoking the 1990s/2000s anything-goes days.
Everybody was feeling that vibe tonight.
But Missys always had her own unique flair for onstage spectacle.
(None of us who witnessed that moment will ever forget it.)
(The only previous song transmitted into space?
The Beatles Across the Universe.)
and added, I didnt say put your hands down, either!
He did a roll call of his kids, toasting them with hilarious proud-dad speeches.
(This is my oldest son!
Back in 1996, he was the three-year-old in the Woo Hah!!
He brought out Rah Digga for I Know What You Want and sprayed the bubbly in Pass the Courvoisier.
I wasnt even rhyming yet, Busta testified.
I was 12 years old.
But I went to the crib, took theB.A.D.album, and I wrote four verses.
Thats how the Leaders of the New School formed.
The first motherfucker to get on this Hercules shit!
But the crowd was fiending for Missy all night.
Her all-killer no-filler show covered her whole history, paced like an expert DJ set.
Where my day-one Missy Elliott fans at?
she yelled early on.
Im talking about 1997!
It felt like a nonstop Missy bombardment.
I couldnt come all the way to Brooklyn and not do it the B-K way, she announced.
Timbaland came out for his 1997 hit with Magoo, Up Jumps Da Boogie (R.I.P.
Magoo, who died exactly a year ago, in August 2023).
She dueted with Busta for Touch It and Ciara for the epic climax Lose Control.
Everybody onstage bowed down to one another, but everybody was really there to bow to Missy.
The crowd chanted a 10-9-8 goodbye countdown as the queen climbed back into her capsule and vanished.
Missy kept returning to the interstellar theme all night, asking, Are yall still out of this world?
But theres always been that sense that Missy came from somewhere different.
