The singular genius of Aaliyah

Oh, hello again, Steve Patterson, host of the debaters here, Canada's comedy competition judged by live audience applause. We bring comics together to battle it out over the world's silliest topics. Like are you one of the last people you know who still uses a landline phone? This week we're asking if every home should have a landline and I promise we will not be phoning it in. Listen to the debaters wherever you get your podcasts. This is a CBC podcast. So when it comes to the great female R&B artists of the 90s, there are a few names that always get mentioned. There's Brandi and Monica, Beyonce, Mary J. Blige, and of course Alia. She was one of the most influential artists of her time and this week marks 25 years since her tragic death. Today on the show, we mark her legacy. I'm Amelia Zee sitting in for Elimin Abdel Mahmoud. This is Commotion, Professor Mark Anthony Neal, DJ Lynne Denise, and Huda Hassan are here. Welcome back to commotion. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. So today, we are looking back at the ways that Alia shaped the sound of R&B and pop in what better place to start than right here. From 1996, that's 1 in a million. The title track off Alia's sophomore album, Mark, I mean, we were all dancing along, but how significant was this song and moment for the sound of R&B? It was absolutely disruptive. 90s R&B had a kind of groove to it that you could measure how the groove was going to go. You could flow into it easily. What we got from this album is this kind of staccato rhythm that disrupted what the sound of R&B could be. It was futuristic. It was imagining the future world of what R&B could be, and part of it was, you know, she was working with these new young innovators, and Missy Elliott, and, wow, careful. Timberland. Timberland. Timberland, right, that changed the sound of not just R&B, not just hip hop, but really changed the sound of pop music for the next decade. Lina, I see you nodding along your longtime DJ. What do you remember thinking when you first heard this song? I love the idea of it being disruptive. I was generally unmoved by US R&B at that time. Just like Escape and TLC and Black Street and 112 in Drew Hill. I was on a Black College campus in HBCU at the time, and so I think my tolerance was shifting because this was like the sort of most embraced sound, and I was looking for more. For so many reasons, I felt like people started to get lazy with how they sampled. And so there was like these massive samples of entire songs. I think Puffy is largely responsible for that and that production team. But I did listen to, and I did love, like, Joe Desi and Mary J. Blodges' first two albums in particular. But during that time, I was listening to a lot of drum and bass and UK soul and acid jazz, because I wanted something that kind of represented more of an integration of live musicians and sort of beat machines. And the studio board musicianship that was taking place in the UK, which I felt like was directly related to Jamaican sound system culture, and so I felt like I was able to listen to Alia with a kind of global diasporic ear, and it made sense to me. But what about you? I mean, to build off of both Mark and Linda Lane, I think that this album obviously was very much reinventive and imaginative and very forward and experimental and completely reshape the future of R&B, but it's really the results and the collaboration of three young people. We have Missy, we have Tim Beland, and we have Alia, but they were all part of this collective called the super friends. And they were informal collective in the 1990s and included a lot of the people. We've seen collaborating from that time, including Jenny Wine, Tank, Tweet, and others. So I think that's pretty interesting that one in a million is revered and should be definitive of pop culture, considering that these three kids who are kind of unknown at the time were completely revamping the game. Okay, so one in a million was a big deal, but it wasn't the only collab Alia did with Tim Beland that shook up pop music in that era. Just two years later, she released this. It's always nice to be on a show where you can just like listen to music that you genuinely love and can dance along. From the soundtrack to the 1998 Eddie Murphy film, Dr. Dulittle, that is Alia featuring Tim Beland with Are You That Somebody, Mark, talk to me about the role this track played in shifting sounds, because I remember it just being such a big deal and it being everywhere. Well, I mean, first off, you think about just two years later, you also hear growth in the production style of your growth and who Alia is, right? You wanted a whole album of that song, even as you loved one in a million that came out two years earlier. But when we see who Beyonce becomes, who Destiny Child becomes, none of that happens without this introduction of this sound, right? It's that bounce sound in pop music, you know, as we've talked about, but you could also trace that to that triplet style that we get in Southern rap that comes a decade later, right? It becomes a signature that people can recognize because they recognized it earlier from the introduction of it to the work that Tim Beland and Miss Alia were doing with Alia. And Mark, we should say, you know, radio wasn't exactly receptive to these songs. Even though it felt like it was everywhere, it was also sort of like not played on some of the more popular radio channels, is that right? That's absolutely the case, folks didn't know what to do with it. You know, is it a club's club song, is it a stepper set song, right? It is it like one in a million, is it, you know, a quiet storm song? It just changed stuff how we heard things, right? And it created a world I think where you could hear multiple signatures in R&B music at the same time. And it took radio a long time to catch up. And some ways radio never did, right? Streaming services solved that for us. Well, now, I want to quickly get your opinion here just because you're nodding along. And as a DJ, like these two songs sort of had similar tempos, but very, very different vibes, obviously. So I want to get your quick take on that. Oh, I love that you went straight to Temple. I was listening to a lot of New York House at that time. A lot of masters at work, a lot of music from like house music, labels like Strictly Rhythm and Nervous Records. And so I was living my listening life between like 120 beats per minute, but then also listening to drum and bass. And so that was like 160 to 180 per minute, beats per minute. And what I discovered is that I could mix are you that, you know, are you that somebody with with house music and or with drum and bass. And I think the Timberlin was tapped into a kind of different BPM than what we have become accustomed to outside of house, very specifically a different BPM for RMB, which I, you know, which I think explains some of what Mark is talking about radio didn't know what to do with it. I think that had a lot to do with the beats per minute and the kind of sonic structure that took us beyond what we had been kind of program to consume and understand as contemporary RMB. So yeah, I was able to kind of to mix her into different genres and different geographies. I love that. But I know we've been talking a lot about the sound of Aliyah, but I also remember being just enamored with her look, you know, the deep part over that one eye, I'm always trying to copy that and never being able to, so talk to me about, you know, the, the, the very specific ways in which her look also defined her. Absolutely. I mean, I think she, I think Aliyah was really influential aesthetically in as much as she was culturally in the ways that she merges different worlds that might have seemed distinct to the popular cultural industry in many ways, but if we think about her her femtomboesthetic, which very much defined the 90s in many ways, but then also her experimental video production with this really innovative and cool and, you know, adorable and also sexy choreography, all through this seductive whisper, whether it's, you know, soft valid or a really poppy song. Alia's can't be. I think she's she's can't be in the 90s. She's still can't be today. This is why the girls are still influenced by her. This is why she's a major citation. And I think that she's also the first reference point in many ways for this emergence between the R&B pop girly world alongside with the rap world. Alia was hanging and kicking and collaborating with the rappers as well too. Like if we think about tracks like Up Jump Jump's The Boogie, and this kind of directly influences Mariah Carey, Beyonce, JALO, and so much of what's normalized today. So I think there's just so many ways if we look at it from so many optics, Alia was singular. And I think that that's why she's just the ultimate campy cool girl. Yes, when you when you talk about that that duality, I always think about that line, you know, I got a jazz personality and a G mentality. And I just like it stuck in my brain about these two different worlds that she was able to occupy at once. Mark, we started this convo with Alia's second album, One in a Million. And that was really because her first album, talking about that that song, AJ, nothing but a number was written and produced almost entirely by R Kelly. And as we know, R Kelly is currently serving a 30 year prison sentence for crimes that include sex trafficking and producing child abuse images. Alia was just in her early teens when she started working with R Kelly. And this is about the same time that questions about his sexual misconduct began. So Mark, just talked to us a little bit about how they started working together in the first place. Alia's uncle was a record-exept type, Barry Hankerson, who was also married to Gladyside at the time. She was part of his label and their signed a distribution deal with Jive Records. Jive, of course, is also the home of R Kelly. And you know, folks forget when we think back on the impact that R Kelly had on '90s R&D. I mean, if we treat R&D, you know, the two most influential people were really, you know, R Kelly on the one hand and Diddy on the other problematic in all kinds of ways for who we know they are now. And so it was a natural fit, I think, at this time when R Kelly was also producing for acts like Sparkle. He was also producing for changing faces. He was getting a reputation for being able to put together the quality album product and singles, you know, that would fit right in the mainstream of R&D. So that's how they began to work. I think it's also so interesting that, you know, when everything blows up and she's thinking about that second album that the next person that they went to was Diddy to produce her. And though it never happened, it gives you a sense of who her handlers thought Alia was, which was really different than what Alia thought she should be. Yes, yes, that is such a, yeah, such an interesting picture of the landscape of the time as well. You know, I don't want to dwell too long in this chapter of her legacy. But I remember being in middle school and seeing that, you know, the poster agent, nothing but a number in, in my friends lockers. I remember hearing rumors about them dating though she was 15 and he was 27 and having it feel almost normalized in the culture, what was your biggest takeaway from that part of her life? Yeah, I mean, when when Davey Elwin came out, I was even one in a million, I think I was about six or seven years old. So it took Alia as a big formative, I know, she's a big formative part of her life. Okay, yes, that's fine. We would totally accept that. I don't know, I don't know music or life, if you will, without Alia being present. But I, my understanding of Alias and so much part of my experience of understanding her in the 90s and the early arts was around the conversation. Outside of her music and her aesthetic and her being that girl was around the conversation of the rumor mill and whether or not she was associated with archaea in this very particular way. And just to be clear, you know, Alia's arrival into the limelight and the music industry, of course, is purely based off of her merit and her talent as Mark brought up. She is part of this musical family, right? She had this access to the industry. So I think we would have always, always arrived to her work, but unfortunately, a big part of that arrival into the industry was surrounded by this rumor mill, right? And so early on in her career, we were hearing, pondering, and now understanding that Alia was being groomed by a major older artist. And rightfully so many had questions about it from, from back then. But at the same time, Alia was also entering into the industry and the sad point is here really is that that experience is unfortunately far too familiar and common with a lot of little girls and young people who access the music industry and then also Hollywood at large. So Alia kind of is, unfortunately, one of millions in that sense. Lene, you know, I know we're in an era right now where listening to some of your favorite songs from the 90s, from the early 2000s can be a little tricky because of what we now know about some of these artists. And I imagine there are some fans who might grapple with listening to that first album because of our Kelly's connection. Where do you land on, on, on that conversation? I feel like I lucked out because I always felt like he was producing generic music, like a generic black R&B sound. That doesn't mean that he wasn't good at what he did, which was producing, to me, what sounded like underwhelming, sort of just like basic black R&B that one can kind of buy stems for today and recreate. Like I wasn't like, "Oh, this is an innovative." Tell us how you really feel today. It's really, really cool. I lucked out. There was no emotional connection. But what I will say as a person who was a biographer, you know, is that I have to actively figure out how I'm going to hold the complexity of people like Prince Michael Jackson, Marvin Gaye, Rick James, or Rita Franklin, right? Not just men, right? But when you get into those details and also those details are directly linked to the afterlife of slavery, right? Like we are talking about like centuries of violence that also live in the body of Marvin Gaye, you know, like who was also, you know, there are questions, right? There's a whole story around Marvin Gaye, but all these men who I'm referencing and people who I'm referencing. And so I landed in the place of like, as I said, lucky now that I didn't have that, that sort of I'm tension of like, "Oh, I can't listen to him anymore." To me, I was like, first of all, I love the pivot she made from the Midwest to the Black South, right? And thinking about the role of Virginia and the shaping of that next album, and actually the next two albums, my favorite album is her last one. Because she really evolved. In fact, I think the R. Kelly album is useful for learning how she evolves. And so yeah, that's where I land. We're actually going to talk about that final album in a minute, but first this. In a world where the news feels bigger, louder, and harder to make sense of, Canadians need more than headlines. Hi, I'm Karen C. Olin, news reporter and host of The Big Story Podcast. From world shaping events to the everyday stories that spark debate, my team and I will explain what matters and why it matters to you. We're here to help you make sense of the news and give you the context you need for those kitchen table conversations, trusted, Canadian focused, curious. Listen to The Big Story, wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Emil Niazi sitting in for Elimin Abdel Mahmoud. This is commotion. We're looking back at the legacy of the late pop artist Aliyah and this week marks the 25th anniversary of her death. So let's move on to that final album that Aliyah made right before her death. The album was called Aliyah and it gave us memorable hits like this. So right there you heard a bit of more than a woman and rocked the boat and we kicked it off with try again. The album is Aliyah's biggest selling album and part thanks to that song Try Again which was her biggest hit to date. What else made this period of her career so important. I think this part of her career is incredibly beautiful, but also incredibly depressing because Alia's last album really came out when she was in the midst of tapping into a level of success and breakthrough that a lot of her peers could not, to be frank. She was really tapping into global revere, so she was making the jump specifically from music to film. As we know, are you that somebody was part of the Mr. Doodle soundtrack, but by this point, she's in Romeo Must Die with Jet Leigh and Dia Max and all these other big figures, right? She produced or she's part of the vampire flick Queen of the Damned, which was one of my faves as a younging. And then she had begun filming for The Matrix Reloaded, which we now know 25 years later, how significant that whole entire series was. So when Alia died, she quite literally was in the midst of breakthrough. And I remember as a preteen, as we were at the time that all of us were grieving Alia's passing, which was August 2001, as we all know shortly before 9/11. I just remember watching I miss you video and just watching that on repeat for months, it felt like, and thinking about how significant she was, even as a younging, like understanding the significance and weight of this loss, just because of the amount of actors, comedians, hosts, artists, producers, people all across Black cultural production, which was my entire world at the time. So there was an understanding that a princess was lost. And to think she was only 22, and she had had that much impact and significance in all of these different worlds is really just astounding. Linae, as Huda mentioned, Alia died on August 25, 2001, in a plane crash along with the pilot and members of her entourage. It shook the R&B world, the pop world, the film world. What do you remember about that moment? You know, it's a bit scary for me because I have this feeling that Alia and I were in the air at the same time because I was flying from California to South Africa for the first time, to the continent for the first time. And when I landed, I saw all over South African newspapers, Johannes Durbin, Durbin newspapers, Alia died in a plane crash, right? And clearly she wasn't dead before I got on the plane. And so two things happened for me is just like I too have a deep fear of flying. And it was deep that she had all this like these dreams and this kind of fear. And I think people know. But then also the other thing is like learning to Huda's point that she had become a global figure because Durbin was mourning. Yeah. People were grieving. Yeah. And I was like, oh, so you know, it was one of those times I was like, oh, this is a diasporic connection. This woman made an impact. So that's what came up for me. Mark, before we go, I know it's so difficult to considering everything that we've talked about. But if you had to sum up her legacy, what would you say? She would have been our multi-hyphenate. The first of her generation really to achieve that. You often wonder when people die prematurely, the opportunities they allow. So does Jay-Z become Jay-Z of two-packing big years still walking the earth? And does Beyonce achieve the level of success that she has if a Leah is still walking the earth and doing everything creatively that she did? You know, it's one of those questions that will remain unanswered. And the fact that we can go back and look at just three albums and a couple of album soundtracks and think about definitively the way that she impacted not just black culture but American pop culture and increasingly global pop culture. It's about all that we need to say about why Leah is important and why we need to have this conversation today. Yes, I really love that. Huda, 30 seconds to you. Where do you see her influence showing up in pop music today? She's everywhere. Again, she's the citation in so many ways. Beyonce, and Destiny's Childs were, you know, quite literally part of that legacy. But the weekend, Kiki Palmer, Tinashege, Naiko Sid, even Drake, even Drake who's taken way too far by, you know, wanting to have her face and body tattooed on him, which is Drake, you know, he's, you know, he's a little bit goofy. But it makes you think about the fact that so many revered artists who became, there's so many artists who just continue to become even more popular posts on humously. And Alia is really in that category with so many other 90s artists like Kirk Cobain, Tupac, and Biggie, right? Essence Fest just recently did a massive tribute to Alia in collaboration with Missy Elliott that included a lot of the younger Gurlies who again, we can see that thread and that connection directly back to the legacy of Alia, including Normani, Chloe Bailey, Ryan Destiny, and so many others. So Alia's always, she's always still in the charts and in popular culture, even though she's not here with us. A 100%. I still appreciate all of you being here and having this conversation with us. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Mark Anthony Neal is the James B. Duke Distinguished Professor of African and African American Studies at Duke University. Lynne Denise is an acclaimed DJ and PhD candidate at Goldsmith University of London in the Department of Visual Culture. She joined us from Amsterdam, and Huda Hassan is a writer and culture critic from Toronto now based in New York City. And that's it for the show today. This week, promotion was produced by Stuart Berman, Thai calendar, Nathan Chisholm, Jean Kim, and Jess Lowe. Our digital producers are Dylan Dubeau, Amelia Eckball, and Ray Mona. Our engineer is Sam Hoshamy. Our director is Jane Van Cooverdon. Danielle Grogan is the senior producer. Our executive producer is Beza Saifa. I'm Ameliazi, sitting in for Elimine Abdelmachmoud. Elimine will be back on Monday. In the meantime, it's been an absolute pleasure. Thanks for listening.