Today, August 25, 2011, marks the 10th year anniversary of Aaliyah's death. Aaliyah Dana Haughton was a popular R&B singer breaking through on the charts with her hit singles, albums and movies. She lived a very short life, and even so, she had a huge impact on mine. I looked up to her like a big sister. I remember when I was about 10/11 years old, I got her second album from my older male cousin. I begged and begged, and probably annoyed the crap out of my cousin for hours to borrow her album from him. He finally relented and even let me keep it. "One In A Million," yes she was. Aaliyah's Tom-boy style, mixed with belly tops and long black hair with the "side swoop", became embraced by so many girls idolizing her... even still today. She was soft-spoken, down-to-earth, "jazz-personality, G-Mentality," sexy, a great singer and dancer. She was one of the first female R&B singers you saw riding a motorcycle. She transitioned and matured gracefully, as was seen through each of her albums. Her debut album "Age Ain't Nothing But a Number" with hits like "Back and Forth" and Age Ain't Nothing But a Number," showed her as sweet, fun-natured, naive, and humble... even as a scandal broke that the well known singer and producer R.Kelly was having a relationship with the underage singer, 15 at the time. It was also rumored that they got married and it was soon annulled.
She was still admired by many, along with myself. If she would still be here today, I can only imagine how HUGE she would have become. Right before her tragic death, she had just released her third album, self-named title Aaliyah. On this album, she portrayed a much sexier appearance with more tight fitting clothes and heels. Songs like "Rock The Boat" and "Resolution", matched her gracefulness. Unfortunately, Rock The Boat" would also be the reason for her demise in the Bahamas, where she shot the video.
I have just about every single magazine with Aaliyah on the cover, from Honey magazine to Vibe. I watched just about every interview that she did. I learned every single dance that Aaliyah performed in her videos, from "Are you that Somebody" to "More than a Woman." I can vividly remember my younger cousin and I rewinding a recorded VHS over and over again to learn each move. I watched and learned several lines of her movies, including her debut movie Romeo Must Die and her last movie which came out several months after her death, Queen of the Damned, simply amazing! Although her role was short in that film, it was great. One could only fathom how many movie roles would have come after.
My childhood bedroom was filled with pictures of her, and to my family it eerily became a shrine of her after her death. I honestly loved Aaliyah, I didn't want to become a singer like her or do the things that she had done exactly. I indeed had my own different goals and a different path that i wanted to take. However, she was just so much of a great role-model that I saw as a person, she just seemed to be a great young woman.
The night of her crash, upon learning of her death, I cried and cried like a baby. I really felt like I lost a sister. When the video and clips from the making of Rock the Boat came out it was so surreal that those were actually her last moments before her death in a plane crash. She was truly an angel, baby girl as they called her, one in a million. She was in a category all on her own. After her, came others, such as Ashanti, Amerie, and Tweet... but neither would match her success as an artist.
R.I.P. Aaliyah Dana Haughton
January 16, 1979-August 25, 2001
