Thursday in New York City, Missy Elliott became the first female hip-hop artist to be inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame.  At the Hall’s annual gala, Chic frontman and Songwriters Hall of Fame chairman Nile Rodgers told ABC Radio why he’s so happy that Missy received the honor.

“I think it’s amazing,” Rodgers gushed. “I think women in our business are always underrepresented, but the place that they have the best chance of being represented is with songs.  Because in my entire career, I have never heard an artist or a record company say, ‘I don’t wanna do that song because a woman wrote it, or a person of color wrote it.’ Ever!”

Producer and songwriter Dallas Austin — the man behind hits by Madonna, TLC, Boyz II Men, Pink, Gwen Stefani and Monica — was also inducted Thursday night. He told ABC Radio he was thrilled for Missy, because he never thought that people like her, himself or Jermaine Dupri, who was inducted last year, would ever be accepted.

“All of us came up in an era where if you were David Foster or if you were Diane Warren, then you could be in the Songwriter’s Hall of Fame,” Austin told ABC Radio.  “So for me, Missy, Jermaine — ‘OK, we’re probably never going to get there,’ you know? But for the Songwriters Hall of Fame to actually acknowledge us is super-important it’s — just amazing!”

Austin says as a songwriter, his job is to “take life stories and crams ’em into three minutes.”  His proudest creation? TLC’s “Unpretty.”

“The message was important,” he recalls. “I would get letters back in the day saying, ‘Hey man, this song changed my life…I was a cancer patient and this song told me that it wasn’t about what’s on the outside, it’s about what’s on the inside.’…I love that.”

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