Image Source: Last.fm, Shutterstock
Aaliyah Dana Haughton who was popularly known as Aaliyah was an American singer, actress, dancer, and model who tragically passed away on August 25th, 2001 at the age of 22 in an airplane accident in the Bahamas after filming the music video for her song ‘Rock the Boat’. As Aaliyah would have turned 43 on 16th January 2022, her family and friends remembered her and the legacy she has left behind.
Aaliyah was known for redefining contemporary R&B, pop, and hip hop, and after a lot of hard work and dedication, and love from fans and critics she earned nicknames such as ‘Princess of R&B’, and ‘Queen of Urban Pop’. The family of the late singer-actress shared a video of a floral arrangement and candles around an unreleased track of her singing ‘Ave Maria’ on her social media for the fans to remember her soft angelic voice.
The family captioned the video, "To You Our Love Flowers From Above Candles From The World We Will See You Again Bask In The Day God Sent You We Will See You And Your Comrades Again Not Yet, Not Yet. Mom, Dad, Ra, All Who Truly Loved You and Love You Still. Forever More." The family later shared a picture of Aaliyah and wrote, "Happy Birthday, baby girl! Today, we celebrate your life, legacy, and beautiful soul. You brought so much light and passion to everyone you met and everything you did. You remain forever in our hearts and minds.”
Singer Missy Elliott also paid tribute to her late friend by posting a picture of her and a heartfelt caption that read, "Babygirl even though you are not here in the physical form your SPIRIT still lives on! Your IMPACT is FOREVER! You are still (TIMELESS) Your work & STYLE still INFLUENCING a new generation. Happy Born Day Aaliyah You are Loved & missed by many. Love you."
Missy Elliott also shared, "Fun fact when I was in the booth singing this my engineer had the music too low so I was telling him to turn it up but Aaliyah thought I meant to do it so she sung it like I did on the demo but it was a mistake but she loved it so we kept it like that.” Missy Elliott began working with Aaliyah on her sophomore album ‘One In a Million' and remained an integral part of the late singer’s crew and career until her tragic passing away.
After 20 years of Aaliyah’s passing away, her fans can listen to her songs on the streaming platform as up until 2021, her music was only available to those who had physical copies of her albums or via YouTube. Barry Hankerson, her record label owner, and uncle shared with Rickey Smiley in an interview that he had delayed the process of releasing her music on a streaming platform for better financial profits for artists.
Barry said, “It’s my belief that music is one of the few natural resources that black people have to generate any type of revenue. Over the years, which I’ve been in the music business for a long time, I’ve watched the other folks, the Warner Bros. kind of folks; constantly try to create ways of getting our music. Either with tricky contracts, distribution deals that didn’t work out for the black artist or the black entrepreneur, and it just got worse and worse. So we pulled our music back. So one way was to obviously create a demand but we had no idea that pulling our music back would create such a demand that the systems were willing to do deals that were much better for us than it would have normally been.”
Aaliyah is known for her soft angelic voice, iconic style, and stunning dance routines along with her impeccable acting chops. The late singer’s much-awaited posthumous record ‘Unstoppable’ is set to release but her fans are not happy about the lineup of the album as it includes Chris Brown, Snoop Dogg, Drake, Ne-Yo, Future, and The Weeknd. A fan commented on Twitter, “Imagine having the opportunity to create a new Aaliyah album with an entire generation of women that were directly influenced (Ciara, Teyana, Tinashe, Normani, Jhene, CxH, H.E.R., Sevyn, etc.) but instead, we get Snoop Dogg, Ne-yo, Future, [Chris Brown] a weird The Weeknd song … yikes.”
Another fan wrote, “Like no females at all??!! Its mind boggling. Like I wanna listen cause it’s Aaliyah but majority of me really don’t wanna hear it.” Another fan jabbed, “Instead of featuring any of the Black female artists who were influenced by Aaliyah they featured … a bunch of predators and abusers? So disgusting considering what she went through.”
Barry Hankerson spoke about the upcoming album to Billboard and shared, “The body of work is pure hip-hop and R&B. I think it’s going to be big with urban and R&B stations. Some of the people that Aaliyah liked are on the album. She loved Snoop Dogg, who’s done a great record in collaboration with Future. They’re going in now to refresh their vocals. Ne-Yo gave us an excellent song; also Drake.” The record label owner and uncle of the late singer also shared that he was not in contact with Aaliyah’s estate and added, “We hope they’re happy. Our door and our phone is always available if there are any comments they’d like to make about anything. I just hope that out of the very terrible thing that happened to my niece that people can heal.”
