Missy Elliott feels "fine" to admit she suffers from anxiety.
The 51-year-old rap star - whose real name is Melissa Elliott - has learned to be open about her struggles and thinks lives could be saved if more people had the same attitude.
She told Essence magazine: "Now I’m fine with being like, ‘Hey, I got anxiety’ or ‘I went through depression.' Even the biggest artist, or just the regular everyday working person, we all go through s***. We all do. And it’s okay to say, ‘Hey, I’m not okay today.’ Probably we would keep a lot of people around if we were that open, because we would be able to uplift each other .
"We’d know that I’m not going to look at you crazy if you say, ‘Hey, I’m having a rough day.’ Maybe you’re thinking things that you shouldn’t think, or whatever the case may be.
"I had a peer of mine say, ‘Hey, look, I’ve been through the same thing.' And he was just like, ‘Next time I see you, I’m going to put a mirror in front of your face, so you can remember who you are and all that you’ve done.'"
The 'Work It' hitmaker - who has sold 40 million records worldwide and is one of the best-selling female rappers of all time - went on to reflect that she was never trying to be "outlandish" as an artist and that she has always been "different" from her peers.
She said: "I was having fun when doing the videos. I never even thought, Let me try to do the most outlandish thing.
"That never crossed my mind, ever. It just spoke to who I was in school.
"I was always just different. So by the time I started doing videos, the music just really spoke to who I was as a person. And so I never thought, Hey, I’m going to do this, and this is going to change the world. It’s going to change the way videos look. Or I want to do the craziest thing ever. Nothing seemed crazy to me."
