That teenage emotion isn’t one thing Aaliyah was in a position to specific usually. A lot of the narrative about her on the time was how grown and mature she appeared to these round her, justified by a vocal vary that prompt expertise. “My mom at all times stated that she looks like I at all times had intercourse attraction,” stated Aaliyah in a 2001 Vibe interview, one of many solely candid quotes she ever gave about the best way others perceived her. “Even once I was very younger, once I would take footage, there was one thing sexual about me. I do really feel attractive for positive. I embrace it, and I’m snug with it. I get pleasure from it.” She speaks like she doesn’t take the concept that severely, however it’s a refined glimpse on the means her childhood was fast-forwarded to serve the household enterprise: The music and fame of Aaliyah.
Among the greatest elements of One in a Million are when she simply looks as if a highschool scholar catching emotions. “A Lady Like You” is a lowkey swoonfest produced by Darren Lighty and Naughty By Nature’s Kay Gee that would have been on the Above the Rim soundtrack, and Aaliyah feels like she’s daydreaming about some boy in school when she melts right into a “Once I first noticed you,” regardless that she’s going backwards and forwards with Treach, who is sort of a decade older. I get the same feeling from “4 Web page Letter,” the place Tim’s snare is as fats as a number of the Marley Marl drums on Lengthy Dwell the Kane as Aaliyah sends a wordy be aware to a boy she will be able to’t bear to face: “I used to be too shy, so I made a decision to put in writing.” (Tim’s outro captures the droning impact of Tribe’s Minnie Ripperton pattern on “Lyrics to Go”—it rips.) And the duet “By no means Givin’ Up,” with teen wailer Tavarius Polk, has the over-the-top ardour of a kind of {couples} again in class that have been at all times making out beneath the bleachers.
“By no means Givin’ Up” is produced by Vincent Herbert and Craig King, the primary collaborators Aaliyah labored with after getting away from R. Kelly. Recording over three months in Detroit, they unlocked the gospel pupil in her. “I acquired chills throughout my physique,” King stated of the primary time he heard her sing in particular person. She has chemistry with them, in contrast to Jermaine Dupri and Carl So-Lowe on “I Gotcha’ Again,” as a result of it looks like they served her an Xscape leftover, and Daryl Simmons on the Diane Warren-penned energy ballad “The One I Gave My Coronary heart To,” as a result of Aaliyah is simply too cool for a Diane Warren-penned energy ballad. Herbert and King additionally hook her up with retro flips of Marvin Gaye and the Isley Brothers which can be so lighthearted and dancey that you just don’t care that she’s conserving an emotional wall up.
The fixed wrestle with One in a Million is that I’m by no means precisely positive what Aaliyah thinks. That’s not essentially a requirement for good music, however it’s the sort of factor that makes your connection to an artist deeper. In Aaliyah’s case, although, it’s comprehensible. She was lower than two years faraway from having her rape became tabloid fodder and gossip, whereas her abuser acquired to hold on being a celebrity for one more 25 years. She barely even took any break day, going proper into placing collectively the following album, sporting smiles with apparent ache behind them, and dodging questions on Kelly each time she stepped outdoors till her dying, in a 2001 aircraft crash, at 22.
However deep down, there’s something private about One in a Million anyway. It’s all within the music, particularly when she’s locked in with Tim and Missy. All the burden slides off her again when she’s cooing over Tim’s bleeps and bloops on “Beats 4 Da Avenue” or hitting jazz lounge harmonies alongside Missy’s Hello-hi hee-hee-hee hello on “Girls in Da Home.” It’s bittersweet. Even when Missy—as Missy does—provides her a nasty bar, the purpose doesn’t appear to be to run away from her youth, however to think about what these grownup passions and letdowns will really feel like when she will get there. I considered these life-altering scenes in The Proper Stuff of the astronauts in area for the primary time, realizing the unknowable is inside attain. Tim and Missy convey that stargazing out of her and he or she brings it out of them, too. That’s why there has by no means been one other One in a Million, as a result of it isn’t nearly that drum, that lyric, that melody. It’s about Timbaland, Missy, and Aaliyah getting on the identical wavelength on the excellent second.
