Timeline of Sounds
Missy, We Owed You a Better Future
On rhythm, astronauts, and rain
Update 6/7/22: Level has a new home. You can read this article and other new articles by visiting LEVELMAN.com.
Missy, I am sorry that we are all not cloaked in wild, bloated trash bags bouncing down the boulevard to some high hats kicking against a rattling car window. Missy, I am sorry that finger waves went out of style too quickly for our people to truly savor them, but I will say that before they did, in the dying notes of one late-’90s summer, I did kiss a girl underneath the Bishop Hartley High School bleachers and her finger waves were on point, and the sun shone on them and I felt briefly sanctified, or at least I knew the age-old answer to the question Marvin begged about being sanctified. And I don’t know how much that girl watched your videos, Missy, but I will have to assume it was at least as much as I watched them, and so, for the sake of this memory, let us say a lot. And so I have loved those who loved you, Missy.
In 1997, the critics called it a persona because they couldn’t see the world like you saw it, and perhaps I couldn’t, either. I saw Timbaland say you can’t develop chemistry, and I think about how much of Supa Dupa Fly is about the birth of something that didn’t exist before it and never existed like…
