Lizzo in a fur stole and a cowboy hat? Check. A fleet of souped-up, gravity-defying lowriders? Check. Fire? OK! Acrobatics? Wait, what? Missy fucking Elliott popping out of the hood of a car? Break the internet, why don't you!
The highly anticipated visual for Lizzo's collaboration with her personal hero, Missy Elliott — a trailblazer and, as of this year, the first female hip-hop artist to be inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame — dropped today, and it's peak peak.
“Tempo” is the second single from the Detroit-born superstar's debut record, Cuz I Love You, and one of many feel-good, body-positive Lizzo songs that champion curves, eating ass, and living that thicc life. The video opens with Lizzo taking to the parking lot of the Lizzo diner where she channels her inner rodeo queen, donning a bedazzled and patriotic two-piece and draped in a blue fur stole, cowboy hat, and booty — lots of booty.
Midway through, and just after some vehicular pyrotechnics, Missy Elliott pops out of the trunk of a car sporting a silk Tempo tracksuit, and shares some screen time with her biggest fan while rolling her R's like a “kitty-kitty cat.”
The two rappers squad up, both smiling, twerking, and genuinely in awe of one another. Lizzo's scene-stealing Sasha flute makes an appearance, as does a bevy of high-flying babes who treat the hoods of the lowriders like trampolines — making for a Missy-approved spectacle that calls to mind 2015's “WTF” feat. Pharrell Williams.
”My entire life, I've looked up to Missy Elliott,” Lizzo shared in an interview with Apple Music's Zane Lowe. “She represented what I felt like was me. I felt very seen. Like she was brown-skinned, she wasn't, like, the archetype of what your body should be like as a pop star. She was weird. She said weird stuff, she made weird sounds with her mouth. She rapped and she sang and she was good at both.”
Lizzo goes on to say that it was Missy's 2001 hit “One-Minute Man” that granted the twerking flutist permission to be “fat and a freak.”
Lizzo will make a hometown appearance at this weekend's Mo Pop Festival as part of her mostly sold-out Cuz I Love You North American tour.
Watch the video for “Tempo” below.
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