The Left Over Tracks On The "Aaliyah Album"
Over the years, rumors have spread about unreleased material from Aaliyah. As fans hunger for music, track titles have popped without confirmation on what they were meant for. We inquired with the creators of these songs to uncover the history of each track.
“Erica Kane” (Stephen Garrett, Eric L. Seats, Rapture D. Stewart)
Digital Black: “It was a song that, coming from the inner city, we dealt with a lot of different family members on the streets and staying out and drugs disrupting the family, so that was the concept of the song. Def Jam didn’t really get it, Aaliyah knew how she felt about that song and she loved the concept of the song, so she recorded it because she felt it needed to be heard. At the time and still today, our community still goes through what drugs can do to a family. After Def Jam didn’t like it, she was like ‘Let me have it, I’ll record it.’”
Rapture: “It was actually a Playa song. Static wrote it for Playa. She liked the song and wanted to record it even if she wasn’t going to use it. There’s a Playa version and Aaliyah version of that song, but she liked that song and what it talked about. Basically you could be addicted to a drug in that manner and she was moved in that song. So she was like ‘Even if I don’t use it, I want to use it.’ So basically after she passed, that was the only fully recorded song that Keybeats had that she had done. So that’s why they were like ‘We definitely have to use that one.’ We actually have some other records that she had maybe laid the hook on or started laying but she never fully laid the whole song, but “Erica Kane” was a song she already fully laid and we had a full version of her doing it. That song didn’t even get mixed until it was the time for the album because we really fully mixed it because it was never really thought of to be her song, but since we had that version, they were like ‘It would only be right for us to release that on the I Care 4 U album.’”
“Don’t Know What to Tell Ya” (Salah El Sharnobi, Omar Batiesha, Tim Mosley, Steve “Static” Garrett)
Tim Barnett: “January 2001 is when we recorded the Timbaland records.”
“Steady Ground” (featuring Static of Playa)
J-Dub: “It was really the first single after “Rock The Boat”, but my engineer was mixing the record and somehow lost the vocals. So the vocals that you hear are really just the demo vocals. The final vocals got erased, so yeah. So that’s why it didn’t make the album.”
“Questions” (Demo Sung by Static)
J-Dub: “We did “Questions” in Australia and she was doing a movie and she was working a lot. We did that one late one night, she heard it and loved it but never got around to it.”
Bud’da: “That song, oh my goodness, will make you cry. Musically it was beautiful and on top of that, what Static wrote was just dumb!”
“Danc’n” (featuring E.T. Selfish and Digital Black)
Digital Black: “That’s the hook I wrote. That was a group signed to Keybeats and again, this is how Aaliyah was. If she messed with you, she messed with you. She didn’t really mess with anybody else out of the circle, so if you were part of the circle, she didn’t only want to see herself blow up. She was trying to do as much as she could for everyone in the camp. That’s how “I Don’t Think They Know” came about.”
ET Selfish: “When the family got back from Australia, everybody set up shop in LA to mix the Aaliyah album. We were in the studio one day (Digital Black, KeyBeats & Selfish). Black & E. Seats pulled up the track and told us to go to work on it. The song already had Aaliyah’s vocals on it from when Digital Black wrote the song in Australia. So of course when KeyBeats & Black offered it to us, we wanted to kill it. We wanted everybody to hear it and relate. We wanted to make you feel like you were in the club, on the dance floor, getting it in till they turn on the lights.”
“Girlfriends” (featuring Yaushameen Michael)
Tim Barnett: “That song was never a joint that was for the album. Yaushameen was a Southernaire artist and that song was always something meant for Yaushameen. She was a huge fan of Aaliyah so Static was like ‘I’m going to get Aaliyah on one of your records,’ so Static wrote it.”
“True Entertainer” (Demo Sung by Static)
Bud’da: “We did a couple of songs like that like a song called “True Entertainer” which Static did. It was one of those songs where he was definitely feeling it. And he was doing it for her, but was he? *laughs* Static was like ‘Dawg, this is me!’ We cut it and then one night, it was real late, she ended up cutting the hook and we didn’t get around to the verses. It’s interesting too because you know how aggressive that song is. The song sounds crazy.”
“CEO” (Demo Sung by Static)
Bud’da: “Aaliyah was super close to doing the song. We cut the hook and Static finished a couple of other things on there and then we ran out of time, and then she just never got back around to cutting it. I think that was a big song though. It was a girl empowerment song. It was pretty cocky honestly, but the way it was done was great. We only cut the hook on that though and didn’t finish the whole song. We may have cut the hook and the bridge.”
Rapture: “She probably had about six other records that she had at least laid some vocals on. We said we could go back to those records, but we never got around to it because the album started moving at such a pace and it caught fire so we ended up going with what we knew for sure was going to be something that she was going to use. They are archived somewhere, I’m sure Blackground has all of that stuff, and it wasn’t really enough for them to be released. I know it was an idea for a while to maybe take some of the songs she had a hook on and maybe add a rapper to it. We played with that idea for a little while around the time of working on the album after she passed, but it never panned out.”
J-Dub: “I got one in my vault, it’s one we did messing around. Nobody’s heard that one. I forget what it’s called, but it’s somewhere in the archives. I wrote that song.”
Bud’da: “I don’t remember the titles, but we cut all type of songs for her during that time. Along with the joints I cut with Static which might have been six or seven, I probably cut 15 or so other joints, trying to lock down as much as much as I could with different writers. I think Tank and I may have cut three and just one made it on there.”
