Ahead of her time
and a young Usher. Hooking up with Aaliyah for the first time on One in a Million, the former DJ Timmy Tim had a vocalist who could float over his increasingly complex arrangements.The album begins with an alarm call. “You’ve just now entered into the next level. The new world of funk,” croons Missy on intro Beats 4 Da Streets, awaking Aaliyah from her cryostasis. This funky new sphere is a utopia built on Tim’s stuttering rhythms, pop ‘n’ click vocal percussion and thick-as-hell drums. On Hot Life Fire, Aaliyah fully emerges on the horizon, her voice cutting through the atmospherics and seeping into your ears.
The album is a space odyssey, but nods to the past are everywhere. Aaliyah’s sleek voice sounds great on a cover of Marvin Gaye’s groovy dance classic Got To Give It Up, and her take on The Isley Brothers’ Choosey Lover offers some contemporary adult sheen. Everything’s Gonna Be Alright is a more carefree anthem for the summertime block party.
But it’s Timbo’s tracks that resonate deepest. If Your Girl Only Knew sounds like the bad side of the pair’s sci-fi city. The bass-heavy beat grinds like mean-spirited machinery as Aaliyah calls out a would-be beau: “She’s crazy to put up with you/ Oh boy, I won’t be no fool,” she threatens.It’s easy to see why the title track has become Aaliyah’s signature ballad. Tim’s stuttering grooves on One in a Million decelerate into an infectious slow jam. Crushing on a guy badly, Babygirl confesses her feelings. Tender and open, it’s a song that can cut a hole in anyone who’s suffered from love sickness.
One in a Million’s influence was almost immediate. Timbaland continued to explore the sonic template, gifting hit after hit to Ginuwine, Destiny’s Child and Jay Z, among many others, and working with Missy Elliott on her own daring run. He added pop acts such as Nelly Furtado and Justin Timberlake to his client list before later styling himself as a solo star in his own right.
Post- One in a Million, Aaliyah and Tim pulled their sound into even stranger places. Tracks such as Are You That Somebody, Try Again, We Need a Resolution and More Than a Woman saw the singer skew herself into an alternate pop timeline; music on a whole other plane of existence. In 2001, Aaliyah died in a plane crash, aged 22. The world immediately became a great deal less soulful.
Her untimely end left a huge crater in the R& B landscape. Every artist working within the genre since owes Babygirl a significant debt, and many are quick to acknowledge it.
On the tenth anniversary of her death, Solange Knowles tweeted, “I’ve grown up to you, idolized you, watched others try to capture what you had to no avail. You are the one & only Aaliyah! Never forgotten.” In a letter to his idol, rappercrooner Drake wrote, “We all listen to you every day, and we remain inspired and moved by all that you’ve given the world.”
When an artist dies young they leave behind an indelible mark on their era. With Aaliyah, though, it’s not so simple. Her music sounds like it belongs not just in the 90s and opening years of the noughties, but in a future that none of us will live to see, or even dared to imagine. – The Independent