Aaliyah Dana Houghton was the brightest type of light, strong and unwavering, and when she first began releasing music at the astonishing age at 14, she was already her own distinct woman. We completely fell in love with the breathiness and clarity in her voice, the sweetness and the shy attitude. As she grew older, she became even more mesmerizing: the sensual mystique; the attraction to darkness; the slithery shimmy of her choreography.
She transformed Tommy baggies and boxers into a look so feminine it was almost preternatural, and when she sang about desire, it was so knowing you knew she was one-upping her subject. Her presence in music was so earth-shattering that nearly every R&B singer today is stamped with at least a little Aaliyah swag—The-Dream (who covered “One in a Million”—breathily), Ciara (who, clearly, cites her as her biggest influence), Frank Ocean (whose minor-key compositions echo her entire estilo). Last year Drake, in an interview with Soul Culture, said it best: “I wanna be like that.”
She was always game to take her music further left. Her adventurousness extended from her beat choices, snakes, motorcycles, black cloaks and lipgloss, leather, all of that.
And every day, something else pops up to prove that Aaliyah was the matrix before The Matrix even dropped—which is why her music has been consistently looked to, sampled, covered, remixed, and screwed-down for the past ten years. She still sounds more visionary than most vocalists today (you can imagine her laughing in the face of Auto-Tune). That’s signature Aaliyah Houghton, who didn’t need to hide her face to create mystery. She threw on the Locs and gave just enough. We never won’t want more.
R.I.P Aaliyah (January 16, 1979 – August 25, 2001)
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