CLEVELAND - I remember vividly the first time I fell in love with Aaliyah's voice. It was the summer of 1994 and her single "At Your Best" was always on the radio, much to my delight.And she was just 15 years old.
Today marks the 8th anniversary of that horrible plane crash in the Bahamas that led to her stunning and violent death. At the time, Aaliyah was just 22 years old and poised for a major career upswing. She'd just released her third album five weeks earlier and it had been well received. The whole reason she was even in the Bahamas in the final week of August was to film a video for her new song, "Rock the Boat."
The shoot went well, but tragedy followed.
I don't want to go into too many details about that well documented plane crash because it still stings. Aaliyah wasn't supposed to die then. She was far too young, beautiful, talented and kind. It was too sudden and it continued the eerie trend of young, highly talented major figure in hip-hop/R&B dying suddenly. Since 2Pac's 1996 murder at age 25, his rival the Notorious B.I.G. was killed at 24, Big Pun died in 2000 at 28, Aaliyah in '01, Lisa "Left Eye" Lopes eight months later in 2002 and Jam Master Jay in the fall of 2002. Six young greats gone in just six years and four of them in just two years.
Of course, the music industry was stunned and saddened. Aaliyah's closest friends paid tribute to her often; her boyfriend at the time, music mogul Damon Dash was understandably heartbroken and nearly catatonic for a time afterwards. Rap legend Jay-Z and Aaliyah's friend Missy Elliot issued major tribute songs in her honor.
A little more than two weeks later, the epic terrorists attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon changed the United States' perspective on life as we knew it and made Aaliyah's demise seem comparatively small. Whatever the case was, she was a shining star that graced our world.
That should never be forgotten.
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