Man, I remember exactly where I was when I got the news that Aaliyah died. I was laying on the couch in my mother’s house and my two way pager (yes, the Motorola two-way, which I guess was the original text messaging) went off. I was getting a news alert about Aaliyah. The message said that the young singer was involved in a plane crash. I was shocked. I immediately turned to MTV (back when MTV actually talked about music more regularly) and surely they were reporting her tragic death. I flipped over to BET and watched AJ and Free (yep, back when 106 & Park was decent) talk about Aaliyah, with different people calling in to talk about how they felt. It was sad. She has another young artist cut down during a rise. At the time I was publishing a small entertainment newsletter, so I started working on a piece, as my phone and pager went off for the next few hours with people calling to ask me if I had heard the news.
I still can’t believe it eight years later. We’ll never really know her full potential as an artist or what her overall contribution to music would have been. Over the last few weeks I’ve discussed with folks online what things would be like in music had Aaliyah not died in that plane crash. I don’t necessarily think that the landscape of female artists would have changed much, but perhaps Aaliyah would have just been a dominating force on the scene. What do you think?
I still can’t believe it eight years later. We’ll never really know her full potential as an artist or what her overall contribution to music would have been. Over the last few weeks I’ve discussed with folks online what things would be like in music had Aaliyah not died in that plane crash. I don’t necessarily think that the landscape of female artists would have changed much, but perhaps Aaliyah would have just been a dominating force on the scene. What do you think?
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