Missy Elliott, rap’s freakiest visionary, had never toured. Until now

Back when the rapper Missy Elliott embarked on her first headline tour, she turned heads for the alien brilliance of her music. She was confident that the freaky, relentlessly inventive tracks she cut with producer Timbaland in the late ’90s and 2000s would endure for decades. By the end of her tour’s first night in Los Angeles, hip-hop had a new superstar filling arenas.

The year was 2024. The show was Thursday.

It’s wild that at 53, one of rap’s most important and creatively bountiful artists had never actually got around to touring before. That feels like a trivia point you could toss out at a party that no one would believe, all frantically Googling if it could possibly be true.

Tens of millions of records sold, boasting cherished and still-shocking singles; generations of artists influenced by her. Fully inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, where you must be 25 years off your debut to qualify.

Welcome to the road, Miss E. Glad to have you here at last.

Elliott fully remade the sound and style of rap with albums like 1997’s nimble “Supa Dupa Fly,” 1999’s brash “Da Real World” and 2001’s rave-imbued “Miss E … So Addictive.” Timbaland’s beats were icy and clanging; her delivery was hot and bothered. Tracks like “She’s a B—” and “Get Ur Freak On” were evidence of the new pleasures possible with a bit of mind-expansion. (And mind-dirtying — it’s hard to overstate how horny these records were).

So after she finally took the stage the Crypto.com Arena on Thursday to a packed, howling crowd, she told fans that “if you came here tonight, you’re a person that thinks outside the box.” She meant that as a compliment to the fans on her wavelength back then, but also to those who championed her now, as she took perhaps the biggest risk in a career already full of them.

Elliott hasn’t released a full-length album of new material since 2005, so any tour today will by necessity be a bit of a nostalgia trip. But the 90-minute, hit-packed set didn’t need anything but the gale force of her vision to feel current. “I raised all these babies,” she taunted on “Throw It Back,” from her 2019 EP, “Iconology.” “Don’t look for another Missy ’cause there’ll be no other one.”

What other rapper would have dropped a niche MDMA reference like “Here’s a glass of orange juice, let’s go X it out” at the height of her powers back in 2001 on “4 My People,” which sounded salacious and enticing again in 2024? Who else would have danced with a billowing, building-sized cape as she did on “She’s A B—,“ evoking the sculptural costumes of her beloved Hype Williams-directed music videos?

Missy Elliott meant possibility, then and now. In a time when social media is a vicious panopticon and artists live in mortal fear of a flop era, she showed how exhilarating it is to simply do exactly what you want, unbowed by anyone’s expectation of you. Doja Cat closing her Coachella headline set with mud-wrestling during her song “Wet Vagina”? Probably not possible without Elliott’s “Pussycat” before her.

Alongside all that invention, Elliott remains one of the best technical rappers and songwriters working. No one has had more fun with the sound of their own voice, or penned verses that ran laps around such exceptionally tricky beats. When she brought out opener and longtime collaborator Timbaland to perform their very early cut “Up Jumps da Boogie,” they proved their chemistry was a once-in-a-generation event.

Whatever mixed feelings about performing had kept her off stages for this long, it had nothing to do with her talent. While she’s been open about her struggles with Graves’ disease (which can cause extreme weight loss, among other ailments), she was in stellar physical form onstage Thursday, riding a levitating riser over the crowd, strutting in front of a cornfield clipped by UFOs and changing outlandish costumes with Beyoncé-caliber frequency.

Elliott built this whole bill around the idea that the late ’90s and early 2000s were an extraordinarily fertile time for Black music in America, when old-school ability was given new instruments through modern tech and media.

Busta Rhymes, who recently blew the roof off the Grammys’ tribute to hip-hop’s 50th anniversary, took another victory lap with his opening set, a hurricane of gruff breath work and towering stage presence. Ciara, the R&B siren who ran up the charts in mid 2000s, inherited Missy’s mantle on cuts like “Oh,” “Goodies” and “1, 2 Step.” On Thursday, she paired heated sexuality with lithe, modernist soundscapes. Her set proved those hits belong among the most resonant pop and R&B of her era.

Together, all four of them made an unimpeachable argument that they saw the future back then, and finally put it all on stages today. Miss E, still addictive.