Missy Elliott’s debut album Supa Dupa Fly was released on July 15, 1997, and remains in the multiple GRAMMY-winning artist’s heavy listening rotation. Her forward-thinking gift for writing, rapping and singing memorable songs with gospel-informed soul hooks and time signature-shattering beats ushered in the 2000s early and sent everyone scrambling to copy the new style.

"A lot of times, when I need some inspiration now, I listen to it," Elliott tells GRAMMY.com in a rare interview. "To be honest, I listen to it because I feel like we were in such a vulnerable place and we didn’t have any kind of expectations, so we just did what felt good to us."

The "we" is Elliott and her friend Tim "Timbaland" Mosley, who served as her co-executive producer and close musical collaborator on Supa Dupa Fly. Together, they served up a perfectly arranged, cohesive collection of songs and interludes that still shows artists around the world how to think outside the box musically. They not only influenced hip-hop and R&B acts, but Southern chopped and screwed DJs, house music producers, drum & bass experimentalists, and much more.

"So I always try to go back to that space," Elliott says, "because once you become successful at something then the expectations become higher and you start to think more. When we did that album, there wasn’t really much thought there …. We really just came out with a sound that we had been doing for some time, but we had no clue that it would be game changing, that we would change the cadence — the sound of what was happening at that time. No clue!"

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