Missy Elliott tops iTunes charts after killing it at the Super Bowl

As the Washington Post reports, hip-hop dynamo Missy Elliott is topping the iTunes charts following her epic Super Bowl halftime guest-star appearance. Billboard is calling it a 1000% sales gain. That’s huge — and Missy hasn’t released an album since 2005!

Missy’s stint alongside Katy Perry was a massive comeback performance after a 4 year hiatus from the public eye, and the rapper put her thing down, flipped it and reversed it all over Katy’s overwhelmingly underwhelming anthropomorphic shark show.

Performing a medley of hits — “Work It,” “Get Your Freak On,” and “Lose Control” — Missy followed up with a shrewd marketing move: Discounting the price of her songs to a mere $.69 on Apple’s media player, allowing for a potential spike in sales to emerge. At the time of publication, these tracks sit, respectively, at the #4, #5, and #9 iTunes chart positions, while Katy Perry’s lag behind at #22 (“Roar”), #29 (“Firework”), and #73 (“I Kissed A Girl”). In fact, Missy Elliott is currently trouncing several other pop queens (we’re talking to you, Meghan Trainor) in a baller re-emergence to the American cultural centerstage.

So where has Missy been all this time? Battling the crippling condition Graves’ disease, with which she was diagnosed in 2008. Suffering through weakening symptoms, Elliott hit pause on a solo rap career that had generated five Grammy awards, 30 million album records sold, and a music production career that single-handedly launched the careers of Aaliyah, Ciara, Timbaland, Tweet, and Ginuwine. But at 43, the rapper seems to be slowly (?) making a comeback, what with her surprise performance at last fall’s Alexander Wang H&M launch, and her recent re-teaming with her old “Superfriends Clique” members, Timbaland and Tweet.

Whether 2015 will be the year Elliott drops a long-awaited follow up album has to yet to be determined, but it’s pretty much safe to we are all here for it.

Marjon Carlos is a style and culture writer for Fusion who boasts a strong turtleneck game and opinions on the subjects of fashion, gender, race, pop culture, and men’s footwear.