Missy Elliott “wishes” fans could enjoy a concert without being on their phones.
Missy Elliott would rather fans lived in the moment at her shows
The 53-year-old rapper recalled a time when superstars would take to the stage in the years before the onset of camera phones and would prefer it these days if audience members weren’t all clamouring to record the show and just take it all in instead.
She told ‘Entertainment Tonight’: “I wish people could live in the moment like how we did.”
“If you go back and you watch, like, old Janet [Jackson] performances, old Bobby Brown performances, you’re watching these people and there were no phones. So all you heard was screams, people dancing, they were in the moment.
“I wish it was [like] that, but also we’re clearly not living in that time now.”
But the ‘Work It’ hitmaker aciquesced that if she were an audience member she would feel the need to capture everything on camera because she would ultimately afraid of missing things she could see later if she recorded it.
She said: “I know me, if I was at my show, I would want to have my phone up because I would be like, ‘Oh my god, there’s stuff coming at you, I don’t want to miss this!’ So it’s like a catch-22 in a sense.”
The Grammy Award-winning star was asked about the notion of filming at once after fellow rapper Busta Rhymes flew into a rage at the crowd constantly filming his performance during his show at the Essence Festival in New Orleans on Friday (05.07.24) night.
He said: “F*** them camera phones. Let’s get back to interacting like humans. “Put them weird a** devices down. I ain’t from that era.
“Them s**** don’t control us all. F*** your phone.”
Busta was shown on footage – ironically shot by fans – pointing out individuals in the crowd and asking them to stand up for his act.
He added: “I’m gon’ point every last one of y’all out until y’all a**** is up.
“Thirty-three years of this s***. I ain’t used to n***** sitting down at my show. “I don’t give a f***. All age groups, get you’re a** up, now.”
Turning to those seated at the top of the room he continued to rant: “F*** goin’ on? Get y’all big head a**** up.”
