June 25, 2007 @ 10:11 am

The Making of Keyshia Cole's "Let It Go"

Julianne Shepherd

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On location from the video shoot, Cole and Missy Elliott talk about their first collabo - and their next albums.

It's still early in the evening on Friday, June 22 - but Home is in chaos. Here, at this Manhattan club, Keyshia Cole is shooting her new video for "Let it Go," the first single from her second album, Just Like You. Its grown, candlelight atmosphere currently resembles a warehouse in the daytime. A host of extras in short-shorts and fake lashes mill about or look bored, sitting in booths, waiting for their party scenes. T-shirted tech dudes manhandle cameras and tripods, shining giant lights on the red velvet wallpaper. Benny Boom - director of videos like Ciara's "1, 2 Step" and Akon's "Smack That," plus three of Cole's videos - wanders purposefully in headphones, pointing at locations, the cameras trailing behind him.

In an adjacent room, Missy Elliott, dressed in a sparkly black Chanel t-shirt and loads of diamonds, is lip-synching against a green screen. A towering bouncer directs gawkers and onlookers elsewhere. "She doesn't like people to watch her while she tapes," he explains. So a crowd of techs, fans and press gathers around the tiny TV screen plugged into the camera. Missy Elliott on a TV screen - it's how we're used to seeing her. Later, Lil Kim will show up in a black mini-dress and a pile of thin gold chains, smiling sweetly, ready for her cameo. It's a club-setting video, rife with dancers and glossy, moody lights. Though there's no juicy poolside chatter, it will pay tribute to the laidback party atmosphere of classic Notorious B.I.G. videos.

This is the final stage of work before the single gets its push, into the real world, to see if it sticks, if its powerful "do-you" charisma and humid, midtempo beats will translate to this summer's jam. "Let It Go," the song, however, almost never happened.

"Fantasia did this track before I did it," explains Cole later, on a short break between shooting party scenes. "It didn't go on her album but I thought it was real hot. So when we were all in New York, I recorded it."

Elliott didn't even think Cole would go for "Let it Go." "I tried to hurry up past it cause I felt Keyshia wouldn't want it. She said she wanted to work with me and I really didn't know what kind of direction she wanted to go in," says Elliott. "But as soon as the chords came on she was like, 'Wait-wait-wait stop! Stop!' She was like all, who record is that? I was like, well [Fantasia] had too many records on her album so I couldn’t take it. And she wanted it."

To make the track complete, they called their friend Lil Kim up to the studio. "It only made sense cause this record takes people back to Biggie, and before Biggie, Mtume," explains Elliott, referring to the original group sampled for BIG's "Juicy" and now, "Let it Go." On her "Let It Go" verse, Elliott raps "They gon' mix it with Biggie 'IT WAS ALL A DREAM!' like dayyyum, that's hot." Elliott continued, "The newer generation remembers Biggie, so we need Kim on there to make it official. We haven't had a ladies night since 'Ladies Night.' Keyshia believed in this record, she made me believe in it. It probably would have been sitting around, collecting dust. But once we put the vocals on it, I had no regrets in giving it to her. It was like a banana split: something just very sweet, we just had to keep eatin it!"

Dressed in a purple leather jacket, white tank, jeans and pumps with voluminous eyelashes and her hair shorn short, Cole spends the day vamping and dancing in front of the cameras, head thrown back, hands thrown high. Missy is always at her flank, grinning luminously, shaking around, riling the crowd of dancers behind them. This scene is in stark contrast to the permanent teardrops and woman-done-wrong videos of Cole's broken-hearted debut album, The Way It Is. Cole explains this song's joy is a mirror-reflection of her forthcoming release, which features Scott Storch, Anthony Hamilton, Missy and Kim, Brian Michael Cox and Greg Curtis, who produced "Love." "This album is more about you, inside," Cole says, "and how you need to get yourself together, rather than pointing at somebody else and saying, 'You don't treat me right, you don't do this.' I'm truly lovin it, I listen to it myself. The last album, I didn't really listen to until I went on tour. [Because] when you listen to your own experience, it's like, I don't wanna hear it anymore. I do write from my personal experiences, but I think it's very important to young women."

"Let It Go" is Missy Elliott's second feature in two years, with only Busta Rhymes' "Touch It" remix between this and her 2005 album, The Cookbook. So just where has Ms. Misdemeanor been? "I been workin' on my album. I should have a single out by the end of August," says Elliott. She is reluctant to give away details, but she does offer, "I don’t think it's gonna be any different from what I do. I just try to give the unexpected. As different as it gets right now, I would wanna do a record with Amy Winehouse, but I don't have her yet. When I go to the clubs lately I notice a lot of the music is real slow tempo. My main thing is to get the girls dancing, cause once you get the girls dancing the guys will always follow. When I go in the clubs now, the records are so hard it's like even the girls are like, [barks] 'THROW YA HANDS UP!' People ain't really havin fun with it no more, so that's my main thing - trying to get people back in the club."

Elliott is also working on her autobiographical movie, which was optioned by Universal Pictures last year. " I'm helping the writer [Diane Houston] to come up with the right stuff cause I don’t want it to be watered down. I want it to be raw and uncut the way my life was," she says. "People gonna be shocked, cause a lot of people don’t know the background of Missy Elliott. They know Missy Elliott the character." The cast has yet to be announced, but the film will be co-produced by Robert DeNiro and Jane Rosenthal.

Meanwhile Cole, no stranger to the emotionally bare, debuts the second season of her reality show this fall on BET. It will depict more intimate portraits of her life - including the weeks following her mother's release from prison. She is comfortable with putting herself out there like that because, as she explains, "It's easier to be yourself than try to make up somebody. A lot easier."

At 10 pm, the cast and crew is kicked out of the club - the location rental is cashed, and Home is about to open for business. The extras scoop plantain chips onto plates from a catering table outside the spot, hoodies now pulled over their camera clothes, while Friday's true clubgoers line up outside along a velvet rope, showing ID to bouncers. For the artists, the night's not nearly through - a driving scene with Cole and Elliott is yet to be shot. But for now, Cole, Elliott and Kim retreat to their trailers, hulking black busses parked inconspicuously one street over, to get their make-up retouched. Missy Elliott throws on a black bathrobe and furry white slippers, but jovially emphasizes it's not her normal gear. "My management wanted me to let y'all know that," she laughs. Her diamond bracelet sparkles from underneath the terry cloth.






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