Missy Elliott's first headlining tour coming to UBS Arena, with Busta Rhymes, Ciara, Timbaland
Missy Elliot performs at the 2019 Essence Festival in New Orleans. Credit: Donald Traill/Invision/AP/Donald Traill
On her first headlining tour in a more than three-decade career, hip-hop star, producer and mentor Missy Elliott, the only female rapper yet inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, will play UBS Arena in Elmont on Aug. 3.
General-public tickets for “Out of This World — The Missy Elliott Experience,” featuring fellow hip-hop legend and Uniondale High School graduate Busta Rhymes, Grammy Award-winning R&B singer Ciara and Grammy-winning producer Timbaland, go on sale 10 a.m. Friday at Ticketmaster.com.
“This is an incredible time in my life as I am experiencing so many milestone ‘firsts,’ said four-time Grammy winner Elliott, 52, in a statement, adding, “Fans have been asking me to tour forever but I wanted to wait until I felt the time was right because I knew if I was ever going to do it, I had to do it big, and I had to do it with family! So get ready to be taken OUT OF THIS WORLD with me, Busta Rhymes, Ciara, and Timbaland! We can’t wait to share this experience with the fans!”
In a short video accompanying the announcement by tour promoter Live Nation, a light-studded spaceship stands on an eerie, blue-tinged, otherworldly landscape. Against a backdrop of ethereal music, three figures dressed as if from “Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome” stride purposefully toward the camera.
“The year: 2024,” intones a female narrator. “These three icons come together to show you something you've never seen before.” Then the music grinds to a comical halt.
“Uhm. Somethin' not right,” says Elliott, the middle figure. After a moment she realizes, “I know what it is. This is not Earth!”
Rhymes, 51, born Trevor Smith Jr. in Brooklyn and raised in Uniondale since an early age, pulls out a scrolled map reading “Celestial.” “I'm gonna figure this out now,” he assures.
Ciara, 38,,, starts to panic: “I can't breathe.” Meanwhile, Rhymes, nonplused, concedes, “Ah … I done bust the wrong turn at Mars real quick.”
Ciara grows more desperate: “Said I can't breathe! I think I'm gonna faint!” As Rhymes starts fanning her, Elliott dismisses her drama. “You're not gonna faint. That’s that corset. It's so tight.”
Pulling out what appears to be a satellite phone, Elliott calls someone who asks, “Yo, Missy, where you at?” “We made a wrong turn,” she explains in voice-over as the tour poster comes on-screen. The narrator returns to hype: “There will be no tour like it.”
In addition to UBS Arena, the tour, which opens July 4 in Vancouver, British Columbia, and ends Aug. 22 in Rosemont, Illinois, plays Brooklyn's Barclays Center on Aug. 12.
