Songfacts®:

• Elliott wrote and produced this song with Timbaland, who also worked on her debut single "The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly)." This track came together very quickly when Timbaland was working with some Indian music he discovered in his travels. The beat was based on Bhangra music, which gave it a very unusual sound. Timbaland used a one-stringed guitar called a tumbi and recorded individual notes into a keyboard.
• In the April 2007 issue of Blender magazine, Elliott explained the meaning of the song: "It could be about dancing - the bedroom, whatever. You're cleaning your house? Get your freak on!"
• "Get Ur Freak On" marked Elliott's first music video collaboration without Hype Williams, the creative mind behind her trademark futuristic look. The problem was, Elliott didn't want a trademark and was already feeling pigeonholed to fit the image that was expertly laid out for her in Williams' videos. "You see, I change my music and I change my image at the same time. I felt like as long as me and Hype continued to work together we would probably keep it going in the same kinda of direction," she told interviewer Amy Linden.
  
  Instead, she turned to Dave Meyers, another prolific director known for his work on Outkast's "So Fresh, So Clean" video and frequent collaborations with Pink, among others. Meyers became Elliott's go-to director for her next ten videos.
• Elliott was the surprise guest at the Super Bowl halftime show in 2015. After Katy Perry did a few songs, the lights dimmed and Misdemeanor attacked the stage, emerging to this song's signature beat with a team of monochrome backup dancers in a precision performance that was a stark contrast to Perry's jaunty beach scene of her previous number, "California Gurls." Elliott did bits of two more songs - "Work It" and "Lose Control" - before Perry returned to close the show.
  
  The song re-entered the Hot 100 at #40 in the week following the Super Bowl performance.
• Not long after making this song with Elliott, Timbaland found himself producing a white rapper from Georgia named Bubba Sparxxx. Needing a "hick-hop" hit, he re-used the "Get Ur Freak On" beat for Sparxxx' first single, "Ugly." Elliott got in on the action as well, appearing at the end of the track to reprise some of her lines. She and Timbaland both appeared in the video.
  
  The song was a hit, going to #15 in the US in November 2001, just five months after "Get Ur Freak On" reached its chart peak. Other artists have sampled themselves (Beastie Boys would often reuse bits from older songs) but this was a rare case of a producer double dipping. It worked very well, introducing Bubba Sparxxx with a familiar and bankable beat.
• The music video was shot in an old bakery in Glendale, California. Elliott gets her freak on by swinging from a chandelier and stretching her neck out to impossible lengths towards the camera. The clip is jam-packed with cameo appearances from rappers Ludacris, LL Cool J, Ja Rule, Busta Rhymes, Master P, Lil' Romeo, Eve, Nate Dogg and singer Nicole Wray.
• "Get Ur Freak On" was used in a 2018 Super Bowl commercial where Morgan Freeman lip syncs it in a rap battle versus Peter Dinklage, who takes on Busta Rhymes' verse in "Look at Me Now."
• This was a last-minute addition to the Miss E record. According to Missy Elliott, the album was just about done but she and Timbaland decided she needed one more cut. They put together "Get Ur Freak On," which became the album's lead single.
• "Get Ur Freak On" came in #1 on Rolling Stone's list of the 250 Best Songs of the 21st Century (So Far), which they unveiled in October 2025. The magazine praised it as "a nonstop freak manifesto that made the musical future sound limitless."