Missy Elliott reveals she went to hospital for an anxiety attack hours before Super Bowl performance

Rapper ‘freaked out’ ahead of show that marked her return to the public eye

Missy Elliott has revealed she was sent to hospital after suffering an anxiety attack the night before her 2015 Super Bowl performance with Katy Perry.

The rapper said she “freaked out” ahead of the show, which was watched by 108.7 million people in the US alone.

Elliott's half-time performance marked her return to the public eye after suffering from Graves’ disease.

“I ended up in the hospital for having an anxiety attack,” Elliott told The Guardian.

“I think any artist who has had a break such as that one would be anxious."

She added: “I remember Katy saying: ‘This is the perfect time to perform your new record. It’s the biggest platform.’

“I was like: ‘I don’t even know if they remember the old ones so I most definitely don’t want to do a new one!’ I’m always anxious whenever I drop anything because you just never know if they’re going to get it. So I’m always biting my nails and pacing the floor.”

Elliott also said not many people in the music industry talked about mental health during the 1990s, adding: “Anxiety and depression, I’m not going to lie, I rarely heard that back then.

“But now I hear it a lot. Before social media you really didn’t know what people thought of you but now it’s so in your face that I think it probably gives a lot of artists anxiety. You have a lot of people coming at you, good or bad.”

In February, Elliott and Cardi B discussed coping with anxiety in a candid Twitter exchange.

Elliott released her new EP Iconology in August.