40. Missy Elliott feat. Ciara & Fatman Scoop - Lose Control (2005)

The first time I got an inkling that things are moving towards electro was when this record came out. Electro emerged out of hip-hop in the beginning of the eighties, and was an indivisible part of it for a while, but by the middle of that decade hip-hop turned to hard street realism, and lost its futuristic dimension. Electro went underground, merged with European dance, broke into the mainstream with Kylie Minogue in the beginning of the naughties, but still did not reconnect with black music. Now, in the middle of the decade, when hip-hop reached an impasse, Missy Elliott joined singer/rapper Ciara and rapper/shouter Fatman Scoop, to create a record that sounds like a throwing of all hip-hop's elements into a cauldron and stirring them up to start all over again. In the process, she also throws electro back into the mix.

Two samples here, from two classic 1983 electro records. One is Hot Streak's 'Body Work', and out of it comes the slogan that's always true: "music makes you lose control". That is, after all, the common denominator of every pop style - they are all ecstatic in their basis, driving you to intoxication. With this sample, Missy goes back to the sources of hip-hop and draws from them, to create an ecstasy fit for our time. The other sample, however, is from Cybotron's 'Clear', and it signifies something else. Cybotron was Juan Atkins' electro group, and in it Atkins already began to develop his philosophy, which would be the basis for a new style. From the mid-eighties, when hip-hop stopped imagining the future and focused on the here and now, Atkins and some of his Detroit peers took the music in a more futuristic direction, offering science fiction from a black man's perspective, and by that offering an alternative view of the present and the past as well. Thus, they detached from hip-hop, and created techno. But hindsight shows that the foundations of techno already exist in Cybotron's music, and the sample, which loops throughout the record and gives it its forward momentum, takes hip-hop back to the future.

Has the message been received? Still hard to tell. Hip-hop, like pop in general, turned more electro in recent years, but I've yet to hear anything truly creative and futuristic. I have a feeling, though, that it will come.