Lizzo and Missy Elliott Are the Duo the World Needs on "Tempo"

"I been waiting for this one," Missy Elliott screams at the beginning of "Tempo," Lizzo's new single from her upcoming album Cuz I Love You and to be real, we have too. The energetic collaboration comes ahead of Cuz I Love You 's April 19 release date. "Slow songs, they for skinny hoes / Can't move all of this here to one of those," she raps on the song's frenzied hook. Halfway through the record Elliott enters the track purring through her verse in a way that makes Cardi B's "okurr" seem tame.

Last month in a Beats 1 interview with Travis Mills, Lizzo shared her vision for her upcoming album ("What if Aretha Franklin made a rap album in 2019?") and how she got Elliott on "Tempo." The rapper met Elliott before Cuz I Love You materialized, in what she considers to be her "trap phase," but it wasn't until she created "Tempo" that she reached out to her idol. "This new one I heard it and I was like this is so obviously Missy," Lizzo told Mills. According to Lizzo, it took two months for Elliott to return the track with a verse and the Virginia native did it in an unconventional way. "She sent me a memoji of herself singing her verse." If Missy Elliott wasn't already the coolest person on Earth, she definitely just got a lot cooler.

Kristin Corry is a staff writer for Noisey. Follow her on Twitter.