Missy Elliott “wishes” fans could enjoy a concert without being on their phones.
The rapper reminisced about the days when superstars would take to the stage before the onset of camera phones. She said she would prefer it if audience members weren’t all clamoring to record the show but just take it all in.
“I wish people could live in the moment like how we did,” she told “Entertainment Tonight.”
“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,” she said.
However, the “Work It” rapper conceded that if she were in the audience, she would feel the need to capture everything on camera because she would ultimately be afraid of missing things she could see later if she recorded it.
“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,” she said.
The Grammy-winning star’s comments come on the heels of fellow rapper Busta Rhymes‘ rant about constant filming during his performance at the Essence Festival in New Orleans on July 5.
“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—s don’t control us all. F— your phone,” he said.
