While U.K. girl group Little Mix’s breakout single “Wings” continues to sell swiftly in the United States, the quartet will likely gain a bigger stateside profile with “How Ya Doin’,” a track from their debut album “DNA” that features Missy Elliott as a guest vocalist. The official music video for the song was released on Thursday (Apr. 4), with Elliott stopping by to stretch out some phone cords and bust out her most vital verse in recent memory.
The sass-soaked, technicolor clip finds Jesy Nelson, Perrie Edwards, Leigh-Anne Pinnock and Jade Thirlwall generally having a blast while waving off some unseen fools trying to garner their attention. Two minutes into the video, Elliott finally arrives in an orange, jewel-encrusted jumpsuit, and spits lines like, “You don’t do me right because you got too many chicks/You get the wrong number — BRRRR! — it’s unlisted!”
Little Mix, the first group contestant to win the U.K. version of “The X Factor” in 2011, released its debut album “DNA” overseas last November; through a U.S. deal with Columbia, the girls will release the album in North America this summer. The group recently performed its first stateside show, and current single “Wings” is taking flight in America — the single has sold 97,000 downloads thus far according to Nielsen SoundScan, and this past week was its best frame to date, with 18,000 copies sold. The version of “How Ya Doin'” with Elliott was not featured on the U.K. release, but will likely be included on the U.S. version.
“It’s not daunting. It’s exciting,” Pinnock told Billboard in February of a potential U.S. takeover. “It’s always been our dream from the start — we always said we wanted to be international, so we’re just going to work our bones off and hopefully it works out for us.”
As for Elliott, this is not the first time the MC has teamed up with a teen-friendly pop act: she and longtime collaborator Timbaland showed up on “All Night Long,” a track from Demi Lovato’s third album “Unbroken,” in 2011. “What was the last time Elliott was in a music video supporting four female divas?,” you ask? Watch it below: