Despite never topping the Hot 100 chart, the song topped the Billboard Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart for five weeks. Instead, the song stayed at number two for ten weeks, a record that it shares with " Waiting for a Girl Like You" by Foreigner from 1981. On the chart issue dated November 16, 2002, the song reached number 2, but because of the massive success of " Lose Yourself" by Eminem, it never reached number one. Within five weeks, it reached the top ten, at number 8, and gradually rose from there. In its second and third weeks, it leaped up to number 42 and number 24, respectively, taking the Airplay Gainer title in both weeks. "Work It" debuted on the US Billboard Hot 100 on chart issue dated September 14, 2002, at number 75. In 2003, The Village Voice named "Work It" the best single of 2002 on their annual year-end critics' poll Pazz & Jop "Get Ur Freak On", a previous Elliott single, topped the same poll a year earlier. Rolling Stone ranked "Work It" 25th in its list "100 Best Songs of the 2000s". John Bush of AllMusic described the song as "turn the tables on male rappers, taking charge of the sex game, matching their lewdest, rudest rhymes, and also featuring the most notorious backmasked vocal of the year." Bush cited the song as an example of Elliott's "artistic progression, trying to push hip-hop forward.neatly emphasizing her differences from other rappers by writing tracks for nearly every facet of the female side of relationships." This was done after people had been asking her why she didn't dance with Missy Elliott and Katy Perry during the 2015 Super Bowl. In 2015, 13 years after "Work It" came out Alyson Stoner reunited with her former co-stars to release a tribute dance video of "Work It" for Missy Elliott. In 2018, Billboard critics ranked it 2nd among the "greatest music videos of the 21st century." Alyson Stoner tribute video Alyson Stoner won the role of Lead Kid Dancer out of 400 to 500 kids. In a 2010 interview with "Dance Spirit", Alyson Stoner revealed that she almost didn't go to the audition for "Work It" and her dancing is featured in a clean part of the video. The video won the award for Video of the Year at the 2003 MTV Video Music Awards. Additionally, he forgot to replace a glass of wine with a glass of water when filming the restaurant scene, so Elliott was heavily drunk after production. In shooting the video, director Myers shot the opening scene with live honey bees only one crew member was stung. There is another music video that features 50 Cent rapping the first verse on the remix. It also features an appearance by dancer and graffiti writer Mr. They are commemorated in the music video with their images airbrushed on a car's hood. The video pays tribute to Aaliyah (1979–2001) and Lisa "Left Eye" Lopes (1971–2002), who at the time had both recently died. Timbaland and Tweet make cameos in the video. The music video to "Work It" was directed by Dave Meyers. In both the explicit and edited versions, the song uses onomatopoeia such as "ra-ta-ta-ta" and "buboomp buboomp boomp" to refer to sexual bodily moves. There is no version of the song that replaces the elephant sound with a word it is meant to hide there is no word to hide, as it is meant to be left to the listener's imagination. In the song's chorus, an elephant trumpeting is heard to hide a sexual reference ("If you got a big, let me search it"). This vocal reversing trend made it to several of her productions during the following years. In the middle of the song, after the lyric "Listen up close while I take you backwards", the lyric "Watch the way Missy like to take it backwards" is also played in reverse. ĭuring the chorus, the lyric "I put my thing down, flip it, and reverse it" has literally been reversed, a part many have assumed to be gibberish. A portion of the song's lyrics helped popularize the slang term " badonkadonk" with mainstream audiences ("Love the way my butt go bum-bump-bum-bump-bump/Keep your eyes on my bum-bump-bum-bump-bump/And think you can handle this badonk-a-donk-donk").