Songfacts®:

• Part of the chorus is backwards. There was a lot of speculation that Missy was hiding a dirty message, but when reversed, the lyrics are simply the other part of the chorus: "Put my thing down, flip it, and reverse it."
  
  Elliott revealed to Billboard in a 2018 interview that it was a happy accident caused by the finger slip of an engineer.
  
  "The reverse thing, that was a mistake," she said. "The engineer happened to hit something, and it just went backward, and I was like, 'Oh that's kind of crazy' because it went backward on the beat."
  
  Elliott added: "So, after that happened, I said, 'Yo, keep that in there and I'm going to write around it.'"
• What's it mean to "work it"? The lyrics are loaded with innuendo, which can be summed up in the line:
  
  Sex me so good I say blah-blah-blah
  Work it, I need a glass of wa-tah
  
  Missy is working it so good, she's losing control of her speech function.
• This samples Blondie's 1979 disco hit, "Heart Of Glass," and it also uses part of the 1984 Rock Master Scott and the Dynamic Three song "Request Line" at the beginning.
• At the end, after Missy says, "To my ladies...." it goes into a beat taken from a song by Bob James called "Take Me To The Mardi Gras." That beat, featuring some distinctive bells, was popularized by Run-D.M.C. on their 1986 song "Peter Piper." The beat was manipulated by Run-D.M.C.'s DJ Jam Master Jay, and "Peter Piper" is his showcase song on their Raising Hell album. Shortly after this was released, Jay was shot and killed in his New York studio.
• The video was directed by Dave Meyers, who also did "Lose Control" and "We Run This." It won Video of the Year and Best Hip Hop Video at the 2003 MTV Video Music Awards. At the beginning of the show, Missy, Madonna, Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera performed part of "Work It." What most people remember is Madonna kissing Spears and Aguilera before Missy came on stage.
• "Work It" spent 10 weeks at #2 on the Billboard Hot 100 without ever managing to make that final leap to the top spot. It was thwarted that whole time by Eminem's "Lose Yourself," which locked down #1 for 12 weeks.
• The first attempts at recording this song were without the reversal. After about five tries with different lyrics, Elliott hit on the idea to put her thing down, flip it and reverse it. Timbaland, who produced the track with Elliott, was impressed. "When she came back and played it for me, I was like, 'That's the one,'" he told Entertainment Weekly.
• "Work It" was the lead single from Missy Elliott's fourth album, Under Construction. Along with "Get Ur Freak On," it's one of her most popular songs.
  
  Elliott was very prolific as a producer and artist from the mid-'90s until the mid-'00s, but after her 2005 album The Cookbook, she was a lot less visible. Elliott later revealed that she suffered from an autoimmune disorder called Graves' disease that sapped a lot of her energy. Her output slowed considerably in the ensuing years, but her influence was monumental. In 2023 she became the first female rapper inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The following year she toured for the first time since 2004.
• Missy Elliott performed part of "Work It" at halftime of the 2015 Super Bowl. The star of the show, Katy Perry, joined Elliott on stage and acted as a hypewoman/backup singer during this section, gamely imploring the crowd ("let's go Super Bowl!") before disappearing for a costume change.
  
  Elliott's appearance was a shot of hip-hop adrenaline after the bouncy pop of Perry's "Teenage Dream" and "California Gurls," which were performed in a beach scene with dancing palm trees.
• Missy Elliot recalled to Billboard that at one stage during the recording of Under Construction, she and Timbaland hit a block. After a fortnight without coming up with any ideas Missy urged the producer "to go to some mom and pop stores to get some break beats". He finally got some records and from one of them came up with the vibe for this song.
  
  Missy went into another room and recorded some rhymes. She ran back and played it to him and Timberland said, "Nah, that ain't it." Four times this happened and Missy was getting really annoyed with her collaborator. However, the fifth time round he was finally happy and told her "Yes, that's it! That s--t hot!"
• The song returned to #35 on the Hot 100 in the week following Elliott's 2015 Super Bowl performance. "Get Ur Freak On" also re-entered the chart at #40. They marked Elliott's first appearances on the tally as a lead act since 2008.