Baby Girl

by Kathy Iandoli

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  For Aaliyah, who changed music as we know it.

  Tell my mother I love her.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  When I first began working on Baby Girl, I decided not to write about the circumstances surrounding Aaliyah’s involvement with R. Kelly and how it unfolded over time. Considering word had finally gotten out about his predatory and criminal behavior with minors, mentioning him within Aaliyah’s life story cheapened the narrative, in my opinion. As someone who loved Aaliyah dearly from afar, I felt I was disrespecting her legacy by spreading this part of her life on Front Street when her family never had. I also didn’t want to dignify R. Kelly with any credit for her career, despite him being one of the main reasons we learned about Aaliyah in the first place. His crimes have left most with a pit in their stomachs, anguished at the thought of once supporting him and his music.

  I will never forget the day I interviewed a then-teenage Ciara for her 2004 debut album, Goodies. On the album is a cut called “Next to You,” featuring R. Kelly, which he also wrote and produced. The lyrics place Ciara in the position of coaxing R. Kelly into letting her stay the night, with R. Kelly being blissfully down for whatever. I noted in my feature how R. Kelly’s lyrics written for a teenager were inappropriate, as two years prior his child pornography tape had surfaced. It boggled my mind how he could continue writing songs like this for young women and be so well compensated to do so.

  Members of Ciara’s team contacted both my editor and me. They threatened me with slander (in reality they meant “libel”).

  “She’s not Aaliyah,” was their pointed, succinct rebuttal. But Ciara could have been. My remarks weren’t even against Ciara; she is incredibly talented and one of the torchbearers of Aaliyah’s legacy. But the mention of Aaliyah by her team, as if it were a mark of shame, felt so wrong since the blame was again placed upon the teenage girl and not the predator. Again, this was 2004, and while no one really understood what had happened between him and Aaliyah back then, I still felt it was an unfair burden to place on someone who was no longer alive to defend herself. Ciara never knew this exchange existed, I’m sure. She has always held Aaliyah’s name in the highest regard, considering Ciara and many artists who followed were undoubtedly inspired by Aaliyah’s work. This wasn’t the first time that Ciara would be compared to Aaliyah in some way, and years after that magazine article (in 2019) Ciara pulled her R. Kelly collaborations from streaming services. I call that a tiny (albeit delayed) victory.

  I watched Lifetime’s Surviving R. Kelly (parts one and two) series with unease, a decade and a half following my article, wondering how his predilection for young girls had fallen under the radar for so long. I grimaced as young girls were held hostage, their families telling horror stories of their daughters still being in his clutches, while others who managed to escape revealed what they endured, with disturbing detail. You could see the torture on many of the girls’ faces, and in others’ you could see blankness and reprogramming. As a viewer, there’s an inherent fear for what their post-traumatic futures will look like once they’ve inevitably realized they’re in an abusive holding pattern. Like everyone else, however, I too was separating Aaliyah from R. Kelly’s victims. I was categorizing her the way the media (and the music industry) had done so often in the past, by viewing their relationship as a mutually loving one, not one rooted in grooming and latent sexual violence. Abusive patterns don’t discriminate. Prey is prey, and Aaliyah had fallen prey to R. Kelly. He was just as damaging a force in Aaliyah’s life as he was to the other very young women he violated. Theirs wasn’t a love story that defied age; it was a tragedy that Aaliyah endured and somehow moved past to become an icon in her own right without him. That is the only reason why R. Kelly is discussed in this book. It was only in watching this docuseries and dissecting newfound evidence did I realize that disregarding R. Kelly’s chapter in Aaliyah’s life would be denying Aaliyah another title she so greatly deserved: “survivor.”

  INTRODUCTION: GOOD-BYE, SUMMER

  August 25, 2001

  Where were you when you heard that Aaliyah died?

  Generational celebrity deaths are such an interesting part of popular culture, aren’t they?

  You remember every detail: where you were, what you were doing, who you were with. You might even hold on to these fragments of memories tighter than you would over the passing of your own distant relatives. That’s because those who touch the world on a grander scale—for better or worse—have the potential to reach more people, and yet affect every single one of them individually and uniquely. JFK, MLK, Kurt Cobain, Tupac Shakur, The Notorious B.I.G., Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston, Prince, Kobe Bryant—the list goes on and on. Through the duration of their lives—no matter how long or short they may be—these humans become our superheroes. Their mortality, however, is our brutal reminder of the former. Their deaths become historical events in and of themselves, usually involving some anniversary people grimly commemorate. Since the advent of social media, that now includes a picture posted with some warm words, a vague memory associated with the dearly departed person, and a quote honoring their lives. Certain calendars even regard these deaths as international holidays, again showing the correlation between a celebrity’s death and their impact on the world. Many, many people have only a rudimentary understanding of world history and key dates, yet they can tell you the exact date that their favorite singer died.

  With the passing of Aaliyah, it was a double whammy of devastation, where there was little time to process her death before a global crisis hit.

  Just two and a half weeks following Aaliyah Haughton’s death, on September 11, 2001, the United States was thrust into a world-changing tragedy.

  The news of the destruction of the Twin Towers overshadowed her passing, with fans left wondering what even happened, considering the details of her plane crash appeared so vague and before we even knew it two more plane crashes arguably eclipsed hers. Once award show season rolled around, Aaliyah was honored during artist memorial segments and through posthumous accolades. Still, her death left fans bewildered with little time to manage their grief; so even now when you scan the comments of her videos on YouTube, the responses almost always include a dismal “I still can’t believe that she’s gone.”

  Before I continue, let me answer my own question: Where was I when I heard that Aaliyah died?

  I was four months out of college and still hanging out at the local diner. It was around 11:30 PM when New York City’s HOT 97 was reporting the news. I was standing in the diner’s parking lot with my friend exchanging our good-byes after a late dinner. He had an Acura Integra with a custom-designed sound system, so every time he turned on his car the radio would shake the pavement beneath the vehicle, as if it were directed to on command. This time, when he turned on his car the first thing blaring out of the radio speakers and shaking the pavement was famed radio personality and the Voice of New York Angie Martinez saying Aaliyah’s name on New York’s HOT 97. Her wildly bold voice was breaking as she spoke in her thick, immediately recognizable Brooklyn accent. That should have been my first clue, but I continued walking to my car. After all, it was not unusual to hear Aaliyah’s name all over the radio airwaves, with her songs following in tandem. It was 2001, and Aaliyah had the world in her palm. Her eponymous album had b
een released a month prior and Queen of the Damned was being filmed, so Aaliyah was everywhere. Still, Angie’s voice aroused my suspicions, especially since this wasn’t her usual time slot, so my brisk pace downgraded itself to a tiptoe, as my body involuntarily timed its own movements to the stillness of her tone.

  “Hey, I think Aaliyah was killed in a plane crash,” my friend called to me. I came to a full stop. You know that feeling like the sound is sucked out of a room and you suddenly can’t hear a thing but the warbles of airflow? Well, imagine it being sucked out of the planet, because I was standing outside.

  I ran back over to his car, listening in disbelief. The news was being reported as information filtered through the pipeline in real time from the Bahamas, where she was killed. The crash happened hours before, though by midnight it was confirmed that she was gone, which explains why most online news articles show a published date of August 26, 2001, at the tops of their reported stories. (This predates the TMZ era, where it now literally takes five minutes to confirm or deny any piece of information.) Back then, there was an unspoken respect for families’ finding out first, albeit their window was small. But as the evening came to a close, it was confirmed that so had Aaliyah’s life.

  I drove home crying that night. And not like a single glistening tear in memoriam, but full-on weeping as Aaliyah’s songs filled my car from various radio stations blaring her hit after hit. It was like a continuous bout of punches to the gut, every time another song played. I had experienced the losses of the aforementioned Tupac, Biggie, and Kurt Cobain, but this one felt so different. It was Aaliyah. Baby Girl. She wasn’t supposed to die yet. How could this have happened? These were all of the thoughts swirling in my mind as I drove home in a fog.

  When I walked into my house, my eyes were so swollen that my mother thought I had gotten into an argument with my friend. This may sound dramatic to some, but to others it makes perfect sense. I felt this stranger’s death on a deeply personal level. Aaliyah was born just a month before me, so she was almost exactly my age. I was a newly minted college graduate and my life was just beginning, while hers had just ended. I didn’t just look up to her; I stood beside her. She felt like my very best friend, the cooler one of the duo where you oftentimes wonder why she chose you to be her partner in crime. That’s how close my imaginary friendship was with Aaliyah, much like so many other people I know. I mean, she died on my friend Christina’s birthday, and the next day she cut off all of her hair because she grew it long to be like Aaliyah’s signature long tresses, even covering her one eye with half of her hair like Aaliyah had. For many Halloweens thereafter, friends wore Aaliyah “costumes” before it became a vintage homage to her on prime-time TV series like Grown-ish or Halloween pics by celebrities like Kim Kardashian and Kash Doll posted across Instagram. When I interviewed Quincy Jones in 2007, he asked me if I was Aaliyah’s friend since we shared a similar “vibe,” as he punned (he founded Vibe magazine in 1993). I still haven’t completely recovered from that compliment and I still wear it like a badge of honor.

  It became clear to me just how powerful Aaliyah truly was when I covered the two-year anniversary of her passing at Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York, on August 25, 2003. To say there was a crowd gathered would be an understatement. Aaliyah had been put to rest in the cemetery’s marbled mausoleum, and fans congregated, leaving balloons and flowers, cards, poems, photos with her, and her albums at the foot of the wall bearing her name. (Her father now rests right above her, as he died on November 8, 2012.) My best friend, Maryum, and I stood there in awe at the number of kids around our age (some younger, some older) who stood at that mausoleum wall and publicly mourned Aaliyah. TV camera crews were present, documenting the phenomenon. I remember I scribbled in my little reporter notebook: “Girls dressed just like Aaliyah are sobbing, boys crying because their crush is gone” (gender normativity notwithstanding; it was a different time, and now I’ve seen such an even split between men and women being inspired by Aaliyah and applying her tenets to their own lives). Regardless of their reasons for attending, it was all so intense, and when you bring Aaliyah’s death up even two decades later the reaction is still intense. Whenever I watch her “Rock the Boat” video, I feel that intensity knowing it was that very music video shoot that ultimately took her life—a life that ended abruptly at the age of twenty-two.

  Aaliyah was described by music industry people as “cool,” with a subtle air of mystery, yet she lit up any room when she entered. She was known as LiLi by her team and those closest to her, the goal was to protect her and shield her from the chaos in which she entered into the business. Her final year of life was an important one, where Aaliyah inadvertently made every moment count. She was coming off five years of redevelopment. Like her mentor Missy Elliott’s 2002 album title, Aaliyah was under construction. She sacrificed a fraction of her teenage self to the abusive hands of R. Kelly, where she was sketched like a neophyte with raging hormones and a taste for older men on her debut album, 1994’s Age Ain’t Nothing but a Number. Her recovery time in the media post-controversy was impressively swift, though the healing of her internal trauma seemingly wasn’t. She found ways to piece her old self together with her new self on 1996’s One in a Million, as Timbaland and Missy allowed Aaliyah’s airy vocals to be a musicology experiment in their tempering of time-honored R&B music with fragments of electronic music, which in turn elevated the entire genre. Her 1996 Tommy Hilfiger campaign proved she could model, and 2000’s Romeo Must Die proved she could act. She even dominated soundtracks thanks to songs like “Are You That Somebody?” and “Try Again.” So in the last year of her life, she had finally found herself. Her final album was aptly titled by her mononym, Aaliyah, and she was more hands-on than ever, working with the late producer and songwriter Static Major. Her lyrics were more personal, displaying a maturity into young adulthood while still remaining young, wild, and free. Her starring role in Queen of the Damned was setting the stage for her Matrix Reloaded role, which would later lead to The Matrix Revolutions. Aaliyah was the Phoenix, who rose from the ashes, yet returned to them just as she reached full form.

  It felt so unfair.

  Regardless of what you believe or who you believe in, seeing someone die so young makes you question everything. There was so much more to be done, and now we were left with unfinished business in this story we watched unfold right before our eyes. Would Aaliyah have married Damon Dash and started a family? How many films could she have starred in? What about all of the albums left to record? Would so many of the R&B and hip-hop artists who followed ever have gotten their shot had Aaliyah remained here? There were so many possibilities for what could have become her life, but none of that happened. Aaliyah was just getting warmed up and it felt like she was taken away. Yet through the duration of her physical absence, she’s evolved into this mythical creature. A goddess, whose art transformed into this fantastical silhouette that hangs over music. You feel Aaliyah in the songs of today; you see her spirit in the artists who arrived after her. The “Princess of R&B” is an understatement; Aaliyah is at the crown of music royalty.

  While she wasn’t particularly known as some resounding balladeer, Aaliyah musically possessed a skill set that dubbed her a chameleon. Her voice was a flexible instrument; it could recline on any sound bed and elicit a dreaminess that most couldn’t touch and still can’t. And, of course, her style—where baggy pants and midriffs were the uniform—is still omnipresent. No comeback needed; the Aaliyah swag is always here in full effect. Designers still replicate the looks she pioneered, through working with either them or her fashion choices outside of them.

  Hearing Aaliyah speak about her passion for music in interviews or watching her move fluidly through her music videos, it’s apparent she was otherworldly, even when she walked this earth. She possessed a different kind of aura, where her magnetic personality came through in her music. She was something special, very special, and fans still mourn the loss of their hero and that intangibl
e something she emitted. Those who knew her even expressed to me through conversations that in her presence they felt like she was nothing short of angelic. In fact, the word “angel” was used to describe her by so many people throughout my writing of this book.

  And perhaps that’s the most magical part of Aaliyah: she felt abstract and yet tangible at the same time. Her story is one of the last of its kind, where when she walked into a room she exuded stardom, and her charisma disarmed anyone who encountered her. While she had family in the music industry, she wasn’t an industry plant. She really wanted to be a star. She loved every moment on that stage and loved every fan and every chapter of her story—both good and bad.

  While her impact is palpable and her influence is so easy to spot, we have ultimately forgotten that she was a human being who once walked this earth. She was someone’s daughter, sister, girlfriend, best friend. Sometimes it’s as if Aaliyah were conjured up within our own imaginations, where we can pull from very little to create a real-life picture. Unlike other tragic deaths of young stars, like Selena, we haven’t been given a clear, linear story about who Aaliyah was, what she endured, and why she was so special. That is what I have attempted to do with Baby Girl: Better Known as Aaliyah: provide those who loved her from afar some semblance of what her real life was like, while providing a small amount of closure in knowing that she made the most out of her twenty-two short years. We can always honor her as an angel, but it’s time to pay homage to the beautiful Black woman who kept her inner strength tucked away and persevered through an unforgiving music industry in the name of her love of her craft.

  Over the course of twenty years, the life of Aaliyah Haughton has transformed from fact to fan fiction. We have pieced together this super-icon of sorts, based upon the parts of what we knew about her during her short time here, mixed with what we hoped she’d become had she not died at the age of twenty-two. Since Aaliyah was always wrapped in this air of mystery, it’s easy now to idealize every aspect of her. She didn’t provide ample information about herself while on earth, so we know about as much in the afterlife as we did back then. It’s only now that we are starting to learn more about her, both good and bad. And there’s nothing to balance these revelations, especially without her music, since at the time this book was written Aaliyah’s catalog still sat in streaming platform purgatory, despite the teasing of talks with record labels about finally distributing her music to a whole new audience. That lever is waiting to be pulled by her uncle, Barry Hankerson, who has been holding these songs for what feels like an eternity. It was rumored that the music would be released on what would have been her forty-first birthday, January 16, 2020, but that day came and went, and by August 25, 2020, there was the promise that talks had finally begun. By January 16, 2021, we were still left waiting. So what we’re left with now is just a trickle of new information about Aaliyah’s life, without music readily available to temper it.