Aaliyah
By Rob P James.
Aaliyah Haughton was an icon American rhythm-and-blues singer, model, actress and dancer. She is best recognized for the many hit albums she recorded, her modeling work with Tommy Hilfiger, and for her starring roles in the movies ‘Romeo Must Die’ (2000), and ‘Queen of the Damned’ (2001). She died in a terrible plane accident on August 25th of 2001.
Aaliyah Dana Haughton was born in Brooklyn on January 16th, 1979, to parents Michael and Diane Haughton. She spent most of her early days growing up in Detroit, Michigan, and attended drama arts schools at a youthful age. In 1993, she signed on with her uncle, Barry Hankerson’s label and released her first album, ‘Age Ain’t Nothing but a Number’. To date, her first album has sold two million copies in the United States, and five million worldwide.
In somewhat of a tabloid gossip, it was leaked to the media in 1994 that Aaliyah and R. Kelly, who had co-produced her first album, had been married. Aaliyah was 15 at the time, and seemingly claimed to be 18 so that the marriage could begin lawfully. Neither Aaliyah or R. Kelly ever confirmed that they had indeed been wedded, and any marriage they did have was promptly annulled.
Aaliyah released her second album in 1996, ‘One in a Million’, which went double platinum in sales inside its first year. The album was mainy written and produced by Missy Elliot and Tim Mosley.
With the interest she gathered from the major achievement of her second album, Aaliyah caught the attention of Tommy Hilfiger, and was signed on as a model. Over the following few years she would do a series of modeling campaigns and advertisements with Hilfiger, and made some guest appearances on the albums of other singing performers such as Missy Elliot and Timbaland (Tim Mosely).
In 1997 Aaliyah appeared on the recording for the Disney remake of Anastasia, and performed the song in the Oscars that year having been designated for an award. She too appeared on the Doctor Doolittle recording of 1998, her song from that film becoming a large triumph. In 2000 she began her acting career starring beside Jet Li in ‘Romeo Must Die’, and followed it up with Stuart Townsend in 2001’s ‘Queen of the Damned’.
When working on the production of ‘Queen of the Damned’, Aaliyah recorded her third album, self-titled ‘Aaliyah’. When it was released in July of 2001 and went gold inside a month.
After filming a music video in the Bahamas, Aaliyah boarded a small Cessna airplane with the target of Miami. Sadly, the plane crashed into a dense woodland soon after taking off and everybody on board was killed. It was later exposed that the plane was seriously overloaded and the pilot had drugs and alcohol in his system. It was too reported that the pilot had faked his flying hours in order to obtain his license.
Though sadly no longer with us, Aaliyah made a remarkable impact of the R&B world, and her music is still very popular around the globe today.