Ciara Looks To ‘Friend’ Missy Elliott For Album Advice

‘I go to her house and play her the records really early in the process,’ Ciara tells MTV News of sharing music with Missy.

To find inspiration for her upcoming album One Woman Army, Ciara tells MTV News that she did a little “digging,” looking back to artists like Al Green for fresh ideas, but the singer also admits that she frequently bounces ideas off her pal Missy Elliott when looking for constructive feedback.

“I dug deeper and started to pick up on things that I probably would’ve never [noticed] before that are minor, but really stand out and mean so much more and being around my friends, people like Missy — she’s really a huge inspiration to me,” Ciara explained. “I remember looking up at her one time like, ‘My friend is Missy Elliott,’ and I’m thinking to myself ‘that’s crazy,’ just because of how much I respect her and what she’s contributed to music. Being around people like her is always inspiring to me.”

Ciara revealed that she recently had a conversation with Missy and L.A. Reid about teaming up to record together, so a new collaboration in the near future is not out of the question. In the meantime however, she’s been previewing her new music for Missy.

“I always share my projects with her early. I’ll go to her house and play her the records really early in the process, and it’s always so cool, but I just have pinch myself in moments when I see her a lot,” she said. “I’ll be like, ‘OK, this is really my friend,’ but it’s dope because I really respect her.”

The singer continued to describe Missy’s value in hip-hop. “She’s done something in music that no one has done and when you look at her old references and just her references period, you wonder what the mind of that person is, and she’s my friend, so I get to get a little bit more out of that mind, and it’s really cool.”

Ciara’s fifth album isn’t due out until early 2013, but fans can also expect a new song with Nicki Minaj on the project. “It was actually something I’ve been wanting to do for a while, and [she] reached out to me to do something and then it just worked out,” she said of their collaboration. “Now we’re gonna be doing two songs so it’s gonna be fun.” One of those songs will appear on Minaj’s upcoming re-release of Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded.

 

 

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