Baby Girl

by Kathy Iandoli

  There really is no adequate settlement to this case. A tiny plane was overloaded, operated by an unauthorized, inexperienced pilot with cocaine and alcohol in his system, hired by a charter company known for countless ills within the aviation industry. Despite the plane’s taking flight on a clear day, the crash was a perfect storm. What remains a mystery is what was the pill that Aaliyah was given to keep her unconscious when she boarded? Was she drugged? There were rumors that the short-lived survivors on the flight mentioned Aaliyah was asleep at takeoff. Could that deep sleep have been achieved synthetically, or was she really just tired with a headache from fighting to not board the plane that she inevitably boarded? Again, what was in the pill? It could have just been an aspirin, but it could have been more, but as Kingsley Russell remarked, the goal was to find a way to get Aaliyah onto the plane when she actively did not want to board it.

  Many have later speculated that it was her uncle Barry who orchestrated this whole catastrophe. After all, she was getting bigger than Blackground and might one day leave the label. Hankerson’s track record for violence only added fuel to the fire. In 2007, Hankerson was sued for stalking his ex-girlfriend Kyme Dang, including buying (and renaming) the hair salon where she worked, spreading a rumor online that she had AIDS, and blowing up her car in front of her home. In 2012, Blackground agreed to pay Dang $4.6 million, but they never did and she sued Blackground in 2015 for the debt. It would seem highly unlikely, though, that Barry Hankerson would have his own niece killed, especially given the lengths he went to in protecting her in the past. But in the absence of facts, assumptions run wild, leaving space for mind maps that lead to nowhere.

  The truth of the matter is that no dollar amount can bring Aaliyah back, no conspiracy theory that this was all planned or determination that this was predetermined by the universe and evidenced by Aaliyah’s recurring dreams. No, this was a total nightmare, derived from a star’s story that was supposed to have a happy ending. After all that Aaliyah had endured in her twenty-two years, she at least deserved that much. The only solace is that she did leave the planet happy. She achieved everything in her career that she sought out to do, and while there was still so much more to be done, she had made her mark. It was so impactful that little did she know that she would continue to change the world, even after she departed from it.

  At the end of her MTV Diary, a month before she died, Aaliyah had this to say: “Everything is worth it. The hard work, the times where you’re tired, the times when you’re a bit sad. In the end, it’s all worth it, because it really makes me happy. And I wouldn’t trade it for anything else in the world. I’ve got good friends, and I’ve got a beautiful family, and I’ve got a career. I am truly blessed, and I thank God for His blessings every single chance I get.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN: LIFE AFTER DEATH

  I wanna be seen as an entertainer. When I’m dead and gone, I want my name to be uttered among the legends. I want to be remembered as the girl who did it all.

  —Aaliyah, Honey magazine, November 2001

  “Unfortunately, we weren’t talking when she passed. She wasn’t talking to Timbaland, I think her and Missy fell out as well, but we still had love,” Ginuwine told Premier Live TV in 2020. “It’s just the business and when you’re young, people can separate you and you don’t know how or why. You just are.”

  All wasn’t well on the home front with Blackground at the time that Aaliyah had died. It seemed as though it wasn’t specific to the people but their experiences working with the label. Artists, songwriters, producers (sometimes all of those titles were within the same person), anyone working within the Blackground family, had begun to take umbrage at the fact that they were not being paid appropriately, if at all. With Aaliyah being the niece of the label head, it made the situation all the murkier, since how do you defend the creative rights of those around you while remaining loyal to your family? Power struggles would seemingly seep in as well, since you’re now dealing with a whole team of artists, each thriving in their own ways and now being told to suck it up. Resentment is inevitable.

  It was Lauryn Hill who said, “It’s funny how money change a situation,” and she was right. What was once that “family unit,” that “crew,” that “posse,” those “Supafriendz,” was then dismantled in the absence of a paycheck. And while Aaliyah and Timbaland both willfully publicized their dissention on “We Need a Resolution,” no one really caught on that they actually were in an argument. But tensions were running high, ballooning to the point where they popped once news hit that Aaliyah had passed away. Then things changed. Resentment swiftly transformed into regret. Like most stages of grief, there’s disbelief and numbness, before reality sets in, along with inevitable guilt. If the crew was at odds when Aaliyah died, then perhaps this terrible event could bring them back together.

  “What touched my heart one time is Missy called me and she said she had a dream and she said she woke up crying,” Ginuwine reflected. “I was like what happened? She was like, ‘It was about Baby Girl and she told me to tell you that she’s not mad at you and that she forgives you.’ Dude, we bawled crying, because I always had that empty space in my heart. Do you understand what it feels like to have someone that you love and get caught and they were in a plane accident? Dude, that is horrible. And you are at odds? And you can’t fix it now? Man, that hurt me to death…. My heart was just broken.”

  While everyone was hit hard in their own way, it seemed that Timbaland was hit the hardest.

  “Well, Tim… it devastated him,” Jimmy Douglass says. “He kind of lost it for a while. He kind of just removed himself for a minute. Of course he and Missy were devastated. Static was devastated.” Douglass recalls working with Timbaland in the studio during 9/11, which was just a few short weeks after Aaliyah’s passing, and it seemed like the magnitude of that event barely moved Timbaland given the grief he was going through. “[Aaliyah] was like… if you were to look at it like a chessboard, she was one of his most important pieces that he had.”

  There was a magic to Timbaland and Aaliyah working together, yet its potency wasn’t fully realized until after she passed away. In her absence, it was clear just how vital she was to the equation. Her career was never viewed by the sum of its parts; rather, it was defined by whom she was working with and how that respective collaboration manifested in her output. It was always this game of chicken versus egg: Was Aaliyah the main ingredient or the producers/songwriters she was working with? Taking Aaliyah out of the equation, the answer became glaringly apparent, for Timbaland. It’s not to say that Timbaland didn’t move on to become one of the most legendary super-producers that hip-hop, R&B, electronic, and pop music has ever known. However, he continuously lacked that one-on-one kinetic frequency that he plugged into the moment Aaliyah entered his world. We watched his attempts with other artists in earnest. It could be argued that Tweet was the first, despite her arriving earlier than Aaliyah under the Swing Mob umbrella. Then there was Justin Timberlake, whom Timbaland first mentored on his solo debut album, Justified, in 2002. By 2006’s FutureSex/LoveSounds, the two were exclusively working together on the project (with Timbaland’s production protégé Nate “Danjahandz” Hills), but it still didn’t fully feel like he found his new Aaliyah. He tried it again, working with Nelly Furtado on 2006’s Loose, as well as cultivating younger talent from Ms. Jade to Tink. And while all of his collaborative projects were groundbreaking in their own ways, they still didn’t match what he created with Aaliyah.

  Timbaland fell into a deep depression for nearly a decade, fueled by the loss of his muse but also the loss of who many have surmised to be the woman he was truly in love with and lost while they were at odds. He expressed the depths of his grief on the song “Hold On” with Magoo featuring Wyclef (off 2003’s Under Construction, Part II), where he discusses his pain: “I go through a lot, since my Baby Girl’s not here,” he says on the track, as Wyclef urges him to “hold on.”

  Missy also mourned through her music. On h
er 2002 album, Under Construction, she is joined by TLC, as they both grieve their respective losses (Aaliyah and Left Eye) on the song “Can U Hear Me?” The song opens with a voicemail from Aaliyah’s mother, Diane, about where Missy can send flowers, as Missy later sings about checking in on Aaliyah’s family. “Aaliyah, can you hear me?” she sings on the track. “I hope that you’re proud of me.”

  Static Major recorded an unreleased song called “Aaliyah, Aaliyah,” featuring vocals from Aaliyah herself, but the song was pulled from the internet. On it, he sings, “Aaliyah, Aaliyah. Said I miss you, baby. It ain’t the same without you, Aaliyah.” The devastation was layered, especially as more content was rolled out that Aaliyah had been preparing prior to her death.

  On February 22, 2002, Queen of the Damned was at long last released into theaters in the United States, six months after Aaliyah’s death. Directed by Michael Rymer, the movie lived at the intersection of music and vampire films and was theoretically perfect for Aaliyah’s first major role for a number of different reasons. There’s of course the plot line: loosely based on Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles series (it borrows pieces of her novel The Vampire Lestat and of course The Queen of the Damned). The vampire Lestat (played by Stuart Townsend) is asleep for years and years, before suddenly being woken up by the loud guitars of a rock band. He then goes on to become the band’s lead singer, writing songs that are drenched in darkness but almost leave bread crumbs of clues as to who he really is.

  And then there’s Akasha, played by Aaliyah. In vampiric history, Akasha is the first vampire ever to be born. She’s from Uruk, which in modern times is now Iraq, and her husband was Enkil—the King of Kemet. Kemet eventually became Egypt. In the film, Akasha was also asleep and in the same way Lestat was awoken so was she. Only it was Lestat’s music that woke her up.

  Considering Akasha became queen of what was later known as Egypt, there was a connection for Aaliyah that she was drawn to, given her aforementioned Egyptian fascination. That and the musical theme that is threaded throughout the movie is another tie that made this film make so much sense for her. The underlying hard-rock theme was new territory, and she doesn’t even appear on the soundtrack. But songs like “I Can Be” off the Red Album and her growing love of motorcycles and leather also in a way pulled this all together.

  The film received lukewarm reviews but was met with decent box office success, given the budget to make it. Queen of the Damned carried a $35 million budget, with nearly $45.5 million in box office sales (around $30.3 million domestically, $15.1 million internationally). Many vampire film fans held it to the standard of 1994’s Interview with the Vampire, which was a box office smash—taking in $223.7 million in combined box office sales. It was one of the major breakout roles for Tom Cruise, and many had hoped the same would happen for Aaliyah. There was room to accomplish that, but her time on-screen was limited. Aaliyah had technically finished the film, though her scenes were more minimal than anticipated. In fact, she doesn’t even appear until much later in the film, and again her time is brief. Her brother, Rashad, had to go back in after her passing to speak over some lines for some scenes. Akasha spoke in a thick Egyptian accent, and at times Aaliyah was difficult to understand. Since Rashad had a similar-sounding voice, he was able to repeat the lines, and their two voices were merged together.

  Critics’ reviews about Aaliyah’s portrayal of Akasha reflected what many already knew: that she would have made a perfect Hollywood starlet in her ability to become the role. In her first scene in Queen of the Damned, Akasha enters the nightclub called the Admiral’s Arms and annihilates everyone in her path. Her entry, the way she slithered through the room, was one of the most anticipated scenes in the entire film—enhanced by the unfortunate circumstances that happened months before. The magic, however, that Aaliyah revealed in that character was something to behold. She knew how to elegantly combine being a horrific queen vampire with still remaining sexy. While Akasha is supposed to be this dominating intoxicating force, having Aaliyah in the role only made that magnetism greater. “She was spot-on perfect as the Queen of the Damned,” one film blogger wrote in 2002 for Ain’t It Cool News, as the blogger had never even heard of Aaliyah until the film. “Her initial scene in which Akasha enters a vampire bar and kills everyone in her path was visually stunning and drew raucous applause. She clearly cared a great deal about doing a good job with this role and it shows. She seems to move in slow motion, catlike. She is mysterious, electric.”

  Robert Gonsalves from eFilmCritic.com wrote: “Whatever life there is to the movie is what she brings to it; she had star presence, and her eagerness to play a glamorous villain in a big-budget horror movie gives her scenes a lift the film sorely needs.” Andrew Manning of Radio Free Entertainment agreed, writing: “Aaliyah steals the show as a villainous vampiric vixen in an otherwise ludicrous waste of a story.”

  Aaliyah was regarded as the best part of the movie, just like with Romeo Must Die, only here it was a greater shift from the world she had known. Her previous role was a little closer to who she was, though in this role it was a little closer to what she ended up being, which was immortal.

  Vampire film and book fans are a tough crowd by design. They hold their transformative works to a standard, an incredibly high one in fact, where the demand is that the fictional element still somehow feel non-fictional. Not to mention, there is an onus placed on accuracy, where the books must match the films and any other adaptations. There can’t be gaps in the narrative (which was a huge gripe with Queen of the Damned versus Anne Rice’s The Queen of the Damned). At the same time, the viewers want to be taken away, brought to another dimension where the paranormal is the norm, simultaneously transfixed by what the underworld has to offer. Without knowing them or the depths of their commands, Aaliyah spoke to them.

  It was exactly what Aaliyah would have hoped for; having those unaware of who she was see that film and say, “Whoa, who is that?” It’s the same reaction most had and still have when they first experience her music, being totally taken, shocked, and awestruck. Her ability to captivate had officially jumped from the CD to the silver screen. The hope for what was to come would include her Matrix franchise role as Zee (her scenes were later refilmed with Nona Gaye), keeping her in a somewhat similar lane before diversifying. In 2011 the late Whitney Houston revealed that she wanted Aaliyah to star in the remake of the film Sparkle about the Supremes. “This was [Aaliyah’s] movie,” Houston told Access Hollywood. “When we brought it to her, she was so enthusiastic about it and she wanted it, to do it so badly. She was our Sparkle.” Her passing caused Houston to shelve the project.

  “Unfortunately… it just didn’t go that way,” Houston added. “I put it down. I said, ‘My Sparkle has gone to a better place’; then we just left it alone.” The film eventually was released in 2012, starring Jordin Sparks. There were so many more films for Aaliyah to appear in, so many more characters for her to portray. The real tragedy is that for those who experienced Aaliyah for the first time through Queen of the Damned, it was inevitably their last.

  Fans, new and old, started demanding more.

  As everyone knew full and well that there was plenty of extra music that could be released in the wake of her passing, the hum on the streets was “Where was it all?” Much like Tupac Shakur, Aaliyah was a studio fixture, constantly cutting tracks, which at this point would be cherished by her fans, even if they were the roughest of demos. To sate fans, the I Care 4 U compilation album was released on December 10, 2002. The project featured most of Aaliyah’s hits—spanning from Age Ain’t Nothing but a Number tracks like “Back & Forth” all the way through to her soundtrack work. Songs like “All I Need,” “Come Over” (with Tank as a guest feature), and Aaliyah digital bonus track “Erica Kane” were added for good measure, as well as “Miss You” and some behind-the-scenes footage and digital extras. The project reached the Number Three spot on the Billboard 200, along with topping the US Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart, while hitting
the Top Five on various charts across Europe. It became Certified Platinum in the United States and Gold across Europe. I Care 4 U was just the right amount of promise, where fans could embrace it as a “greatest hits” album, yet feel confident that more music would come.

  On May 10, 2005, the second (and final) compilation album, Ultimate Aaliyah, was released in the UK, Australia, and Japan. Like I Care 4 U, the project was a double disc, with the first disc being again a rehashing of the greatest-hits track list (titled as such) and the second disc (titled “Are You Feelin’ Me?”) adding some more soundtrack B sides, like “Are You Feelin’ Me?” from Romeo Must Die. Songs like “Messed Up” (a hidden track on the US Aaliyah release) were also added, along with some of Aaliyah’s guest features like “Man Undercover,” “John Blaze,” and “I Am Music.” Timbaland’s dedication to Aaliyah, “Hold On,” closes the project. The project didn’t chart incredibly high, especially when most of the songs were already released on I Care 4 U and the myriad of projects that featured the other songs. As any Aaliyah fan can attest, there was no need for a second housing for any of the songs, since most fans already had the entire catalog.

  It was during this time period that promoting Aaliyah’s legacy first came into question. Aaliyah was only growing in popularity, even in her absence. New fans started sprouting up, searching for more ways to continue their fandom. However, they were in store for a moratorium that would feel like it would last forever.

  CHAPTER TWELVE: PLEASE DON’T STOP THE MUSIC

  It ain’t gonna work because Aaliyah music only works with her soul mate, which is me.

  —Timbaland, REVOLT interview, 2013

  On December 8, 2009, Blackground Records released the final project under its record label: Timbaland’s third album, Shock Value II, the follow-up to 2007’s Shock Value. What followed was a moratorium on all releases that subsequently found the label defunct yet not formally bankrupt. There’s been speculation that if Hankerson filed for bankruptcy he would then surrender ownership of his Blackground catalog, which is why he has yet to do it. However, given his absence from the music business for years, he also lacked the financial stability (and willingness) to pay to have his artists’ catalogs uploaded to streaming platforms. It’s become a sore spot for every artist involved and the fans who love them. For Aaliyah, Hankerson had multiple roles. Not only was he her record label head, but he executive produced all three of her albums; he was responsible for handling her royalties and her publishing. He was also the man holding on to her masters, as during her transition from Jive to Atlantic, Barry was able to gingerly claim ownership of her work thereafter.