Where Has Missy Elliott Been?

Missy, where art thou? It was reported on Friday that Missy Elliott will be joining Katy Perry for her Super Bowl half-time show on Sunday, which, if true, is amazing, since Missy's presence is a present. But the illustrious rapper — who brought the world the inflated trash bag suit and told us there ain't no shame, ladies, do you thang — has been largely out the spotlight since 2008. So before we see her on stage this weekend, we have to ask: what the hell has Missy Elliott been up to these past few years?

First things first, the anticipation for her next record is off the charts. The last album that Missy released in her solo career was The Cookbook in 2005, which was hella next level, and Missy knows that we miss her and her jams. Last February she coyly threw her fans a bone when she said that her next album Block Party was definitely in the making. She told Yahoo!'s The Yo Show,

When I create something, it’s gotta be special and it can’t just be to throw something out there because I feel like I’m Missy... I gotta feel like what I’m giving the fans is 100 percent and that it’s game-changing. I don’t just throw out microwave records.

She gave no hints as to when this non-microwave record would drop, but later on producer and collaborator Timbaland gave us some more good news to hang onto, saying that Missy already had the first new single for her record.

So she's been writing a magnum opus for the last nine years — but what else? She has released some bits and pieces over the last few years, like the singles "Triple Threat" and "9th Inning" with Timbaland, both in 2012.

Even though Missy seems like an indestructible force, she's actually had a rough couple of years. She was diagnosed with Graves' disease in 2008, and spoke to People in 2011 about her battle with the autoimmune disease that results in hyperthyroidism. "You live with it for the rest of your life," she said. But! In 2011 she said that she was feeling great, thank goodness.

Obviously, working through an illness would definitely cramp Missy's style for just a little while, but even if she didn't drop a lot of details about her own solo album, she was still hard at work hustling as a writer and producer. She was nominated for a Grammy in 2013 for "Without Me," a song she wrote and produced for Kelly Rowland and Fantasia. Even behind the scenes, she was still flexin'. And even though she'd been low-key for the past few years, Missy performed last October at Alexander Wang's H&M collection launch, looking fly as per usual.

Although Missy's been elusive and hopefully creating the best record of all time for the past few years, the news of her, supposed, Super Bowl performance is so exciting. Maybe even more so because we haven't had the opportunity to see perform much in the last... well, almost nine years. She is one of the best on stage and in her music videos (will you ever in your life forget "Work It?"), and there's no doubt she's going to be the star of the show. Her legacy hasn't diminished even though she's been out of the spotlight, and she still continues to inspire — yep, I'm talking about Abbi on Broad City paying a great homage to that trash bag suit.

Now where is that record?!

Images: Getty Images