Creeping Through The Fog, Who Dat Y’all?
If you’re like me and you stayed up last Friday morning August 20, 2021 to hear the One In A Million album hit streaming services, you know that the only acceptable answer is, ‘A-A-L-I-Y-A-H’. Missy Elliott posed this question on Aaliyah’s sophomore album One In A Million before she uttered her first vocal on the track “Beats 4 Da Streets (Intro)”. To answer Missy’s question in call-and-response fashion, Aaliyah spells her name melodically in her signature way of introducing herself on a record. Sliding onto the track with rapper bravado that was not nearly as common as is now for a singer, she confidently assumes her position as someone about to dominate the industry with a new sound and upgraded look that would influence a whole new generation of artists (SZA, Ella Mai, Summer Walker, and so on). She woke up out of her personal and professional “fog” that eluded us until more recently.
I have to admit it felt like a slight kick in the gut when prior to this exchange, Missy uttered the first words on the album itself, “Aaliyah, Aaliyah… wake up.” As I write this, we are approaching the 20 year anniversary of the date that she woke up for the last time. At the time of recording, the word choice was meant to introduce Aaliyah in her newly re-branded state. She had distanced herself from R. Kelly and from the painful, abusive past that the public would not give our full attention to until the release of the Surviving R. Kelly documentary in January of 2019. Aaliyah had linked up with then-budding producers Missy Elliott and Timbaland who with the launch of this project set them on the path to be among the most accomplished and prolific in their industry almost 24 years later.
I, like many who grew up listening to her music, stayed up late to listen to One In A Million as it launched on streaming services for the first time after a long, confusing period for the fans who still do not fully understand why Aaliyah’s estate and her former label Blackground records had not been able to get her music to the public for so long. Prior to midnight August 20, 2021, none of her later music had ever been available on streaming platforms or available for purchase in almost 20 years. Through the fog of the past year and a half with the multiple crises of the never-ending Covid-19 pandemic, racial injustice, political unrest, and the near-collapse of American democracy — Aaliyah crept through once again for us even when so many details about her legacy remain unclear.
I am not alone in my frustration for years because of not having access to her full discography. I have a CD copy of this album from when it was first released; however, it’s so scratched up that the listening experience is completely unenjoyable. One In A Million was released about 5 days from my 15th birthday. I wish I remember if I had asked for it as a present or if I bought it at my local Sam Goody. Listening to it as a now almost 39-year-old, I remember why I scratched it up so badly. Aaliyah helped me process my first heartbreak from my high school freshman year. All of OIAM’s songs about heartbreak and overcoming hurt and, of course, the ones about infatuation and longing lived on repeat in my CD player. I was in my own personal fog at the time, trying to process a heartbreak with humiliation without the rewards of what a fully realized experience of young love was “supposed” to look like, or so I thought. I was writing a “4 Page Letter”, crying about “The One I Gave My Heart To” and shakily telling myself “Everything’s Gonna Be Alright”.
The song I really got stuck on was “Never Coming Back”, so I put it on repeat as I had many years prior as she proceeded to break up with her partner by telling him she would no longer tolerate his lying and game-playing. (Sidenote: the experience of listening to the canned applause to simulate a live audience when it was clearly a studio recording was a little cringe in 2021. But other than that, the song still holds up.)
It’s funny how music transports us back into the frame of mind that we were in when we first heard it. For me, it was a great way to remember the ways that I’ve moved through uncertainty, heartbreak, and fear at different stages in my life. This experience is prompting me to think about the ways that we, as a collective, are struggling to find our way forward. The world has always contained darkness. However, the past year and a half has revealed so much that our society has kept hidden in the name of maintaining decency, civility, and decorum. The way that we express certain hard truths is to examine them and to bring them to light, that is out of the fog.
It is not lost on me that two days before OIAM hit streaming, R. Kelly went on trial for racketeering based on the sexual exploitation of children, kidnapping and forced labor, and eight counts of violating the Mann Act, prohibiting the transportation of anyone across state lines for prostitution. The documents that were forged to allow Kelly to marry Aaliyah when she was 15-years-old and he was 27 were recently introduced as a part of that case.
This is not a space to go into the shared details of Aaliyah’s pain and trauma with Kelly’s other victims. I bring this up because when I was listening to OIAM for the first time, all I remember about that story was that 3 years earlier I had heard on the radio that Kelly had married Aaliyah. At 11 years old, I was confused about how a grown man could marry a young girl not much older than me. But then after what seemed like only a few days, that story just went away. There was no explanation, or Twitter to keep the story alive, so it just disappeared. Aaliyah and R. Kelly’s music kept playing on the radio like nothing ever happened and then three years later, she emerged with a new album, new producers, and on the then-new label that just re-released her music in a manner that still leaves many with questions about the tensions between the label and family/late singer’s estate.
Our obsession with pop culture gives us a window into what we really care about as humans. It gives us a chance to ask ourselves, how are we really caring for the people we love and the values we say we hold dear? My hope is that this moment causes us to confront the ways that society failed Aaliyah and so many other young women and girls. I hope we can also confront how we have allowed R. Kelly’s abuse to continue despite the years of allegations and rumors about his behavior toward victims that are still living. But it is my biggest hope, that all the girls hearing Aaliyah’s music for the first time will be able to grow into a world where this type of behavior is no longer tolerated and that their broken hearts are ones that come from normal teenage heartbreak and not violent trauma and its aftermath. Perhaps in this way, we can clear the fog Aaliyah was leading us through when she was in the midst of her. Hopefully, starting at this 20th anniversary of her death she can begin to finally rest and we can echo Missy’s final words on the intro track as she wishes her “good night” in a sweet tone.
Rest well, Baby Girl. You cleared the way, we’ll take it from here.
