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Gossip frontwoman Beth Ditto loves everything about Missy Elliott’s second album Da Real World. The non-stop bangers, the icy production from Timbaland, the tight vocal harmonies — it’s basically flawless. More than just quality music, though, the record also reminds Ditto of a time when her musical taste was developing. On this episode of The Spark Parade, Ditto explains how the album shaped her young mind. Listen above, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Ditto dives into how she initially discovered Da Real World just as she was starting to break away from the musical palette of her parents. “That was probably the first record that I really thought about ‘sound,’” she recalls. “That was, I think, the first record that I was like, ‘I’m starting to really get it as a grown up. This isn’t just catchy to me.’ It started to make me understand why I liked other music and why [those songs] made sense to me.”
Missy Elliott would go on to heavily influence Gossip, as the group looked to Southern soul music for inspiration. Hear how it manifested on the band’s comeback effort, Real Power, here.
Listen to Beth Ditto dive into Missy Elliott’s Da Real World above or on your preferred podcast provider. Also, make sure to follow and review to support The Spark Parade, and keep up to date with all our series by following the Consequence Podcast Network.
Host Adam Unze (The Opus) explores creativity in all its forms on The Spark Parade by asking musicians, artists, comedians, and other creators to share the single cultural work that has most inspired them. Whether it comes from the world of music, film, comedy, visual art, or literature, we all have something that sparks our own creative desires. On The Spark Parade, guests reveal the single piece of art that ignites within them to fire of creation.