Aaliyah: More Than A Woman
Today marks the ten-year anniversary of the death of R’n’B princess, Aaliyah Dana Haughton. A plane carrying eight passengers crashed just after take-off in the Bahamas, hours after she shot the ‘Rock The Boat’ video, all onboard died.
I remember where I was, what I was doing and how I felt. Long before the immediate new-breaks us Twitter users are all to acclimatised to, I found out on Teletext and quickly punched in the three-digit number I needed to find out whether on not “it was really her.”
At a time when requesting songs on the radio and ripping them onto cassettes was my version of “MP3 download” we’ve all done today, my Walkman was full of Aaliyah, Monica and Brandy. I was obsessed with the singles One in a Million, Age Ain’t Nothin’ But A Number and If Your Girl Only Knew.
I was her biggest fan, she was my bonafide idol, the girl I knew everything about. I loved her sound and her style and fell in love Missy Elliott and Timbaland as a result. I knew all of her video choreography, in turn idolising the great Fatima Robinson, inside wishing that I would one day grow up to be a dancerina in one of their iconic videos.
Her death was shocking, the end of a short but highly creative and productive career, the end of a young talented life.
A Lyric Contralto/ Soprano with a hauntingly meek voice, her highest notes were reached on the beautifully performed ‘I Care 4 U’. The music's mysteriousness combined with her mellifluous, sensual and soft vocals were what made everyone fall in love with her.
Many say she’s received more critical acclaim posthumously and although she was not the best belt-out singer one cannot undermine the fact that had she been alive today she would still be releasing timeless, well-crafted music, purely based on the way the music she had produced during her life was going.
The music she was championing was a minimalist and futuristic sound at a time when stuttery beats and overt sexual expression was beginning to rise as the way forward in R’n’B.
The R Kelly produced Age Ain’t Nothing But a Number was a great album, but for me the One in a Million album that made people stand up and listen to her music, her voice and her talent. I was just about old enough to fall in love with the self-titled Aaliyah and having spent 10 years with her music on all of my playlists, I listen back now and hear that her voice was weirdly grown up, she was only 14 on Age Ain’t Nothin’ but A Number; but sounded well beyond her years.
Back in the day, We Need A Resolution was one of my favourite singles, for me one of Timbaland’s best production work and a well-written song by the now late Steve “Static Major” Garrett. In the music video, directed by Paul Hunter, she looked stunning, seen posing with a snake and doing a routine with all male dancers. The use of a baby crying for the instrumental and the contrast of her soft voice against the electropop futuristic beats made that song resonate with me and that was where I fell in love.
Sonically, Aaliyah’s collaborative work with Timbaland and Missy was light years ahead of its time, with its influences being seen across R’n’B since. The 90s R’n’B sound may be old but it is not dated and now that cool youngsters like Jhene, Miguel, The Weeknd and Frank Ocean are working to bring pure R’n’B back, people are realising the influences Aaliyah had in the industry and how fresh her work still is.
For me, the saddest and also most inspiring thing about her early, sudden demise was that at the age of 22, she shaped the way R’n’B would be consumed in the future. If there’s one thing she left behind, it’s her passion, her vision and her soul.
Her experimentalism and fearlessness for trying new things made her iconic to young impressionable girls like me. From the baggy trousers tomboy look to a full-blown sensual woman, she retained a special innocence and beauty, flowering from a young girl to a woman trying to live out her dream, which was cut short by the technicalities of life that any one of us can all fall victim to.
Aaliyah, you are missed, but never forgotten.