It is not her 'importance' for which Aaliyah's fans remember her: it is for how she could so effortlessly tap into the human condition
She would have been 32 this year, but you can't quite imagine Aaliyah Haughton at that age. Her death in a plane crash, 10 years ago this week, was cruelly premature ? but she'd already been in the entertainment business for seven years by that point, and it is her youth, frozen in time, that defines her legacy.
Aaliyah's signature look was the swoop of hair that hid one eye while the other fixed the camera with a steely gaze: a combination of unnerving emotional honesty with a sense of mystique ? or caution, the knowledge not to give too much of yourself away ? that carried over to her music. Even in her earliest material, she casually mixed insouciance with a gravitas unusual for a teenage pop star: on 1994's Age Ain't Nothing But a Number, she sounded like she was expressing a deep love ? and gently imparting some wisdom, too ? rather than a giddy crush; the song easily transcended the icky gossip about the relationship between Aaliyah and its writer, R Kelly. She sounded so sure of herself from the start, singing about her "jazz personality, G mentality" on her debut single ? and this sense of self, as untouchable or relatable as you needed her to be, is the reason she continues to be revered by R&B fans.
Aaliyah's music has often been spoken of in terms of its producers and songwriters first: as Timbaland's "baby girl" muse, she was part of the vanguard that transformed R&B around the turn of the century. It would be a mistake, though, to reduce the singer to what the critic Simon Reynolds called an "exquisite cipher". Should genius be conceptualised only as the grunt work of sitting down and penning music ? or is a necessary part of it also the ability to bring the best out of songwriters, to catalyse them to transcend themselves, as Aaliyah undoubtedly did? In an excellent retrospective of her last album on the blog You Know I Got Soul, its producers revealed just how much Aaliyah dictated how the finished product would sound. Aaliyah never pretended her skill lay in composition, but as a performer she had a rare gift for subtly drawing every emotional nuance out of her songs.
Take the devastating I Care 4 U, in which Aaliyah comforts a broken-hearted friend with unconditional tenderness even as her own unrequited love for him tears her apart: twin heartaches, orbiting each other futilely. Both impatience and menace underpin If Your Girl Only Knew (along with a bassline I'd be happy to listen to forever). On It's Whatever, she flirts with the dual interpretations of the title: what seems like an offhand shrug ends up invested with limitless possibilities. Aaliyah's blank, numbed delivery on I Can Be makes being the other woman seem like an emotionally masochistic form of self-medication. She could use the slight air of detachment in her voice as a warning to keep your distance, as on Extra Smooth ? or to magnify intimacy, as though you and she were detached from the rest of the world (the sensuality of Rock the Boat, the pledge of eternal friendship on I Gotcha Back).
Tracing Aaliyah's influence since her death offers few clues as to what might have been. Though various elements of her aesthetic have cropped up ? the dreamy timbre of Ciara's voice, the lush clarity of Teedra Moses's "champagne soul" ? direct comparisons would do a disservice to the individuality of each artist. By her last album, she had deliberately begun to use fewer Timbaland productions, as well as diversifying into a nascent acting career; few of the R&B trends that dominated the last decade seem like a natural fit for her, though perhaps, had she lived, those trends would have ended up following her rather than vice versa. But it is not the pompous concept of "importance" for which Aaliyah's fans remember her: it is for how she could so effortlessly tap into the human condition when she sang. On her 1994 cover of the Isley Brothers' At Your Best (You Are Love), she pleaded in a clear, unguarded voice, "Stay at your best, baby." She ended up doing just that.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2011/aug/25/aaliyahs-legacy
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