60 Songs That Explain the '90s - Aaliyah—“One in a Million”

Episode Date: October 6, 2021

Rob explores R&B sensation Aaliyah’s hit single “One in a Million” by discussing her meteoric rise to pop stardom at an early age, her innovative musical style, and her legacy. This episode was originally produced as a Music and Talk show available exclusively on Spotify. Find the full song on Spotify or wherever you get your music. Host: Rob Harvilla Guest: Kelefa Sanneh Producers: Isaac Lee and Justin Sayles Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The less we know, the better sometimes. It's better for us. And so let's indulge ourselves by imagining that we can see her for the first time the way Jet Lee saw her for the first time. In the movie, in the movie, Romeo Must Die. Came out in 2000, action movie. Stars Jet Lee. He doesn't die.

Spoiler alert. Sorry. That's obnoxious. I don't know why I... I'm taking my frivolity where I can get it here. Sorry, he doesn't die. 21-year-old movie. Spoiler alert.

Okay, so imagine your Jet Lee, who lives in Romeo Must Die. Action movie, Shakespearean framework two warring crime families in Fair Oakland, where we lay our scene, mostly filmed in San Francisco. Damn it. Lots of guns, lots of kicking ass.

You're Jetliu's in prison in China, and you hear that your brother got murders, do you kick a bunch of ass and break out of prison and zude out to, quote, unquote, Oakland, to seek revenge. You got this cool special effect going. where when you kick dudes asses, it zooms in on x-rays of their skeletons as you break their arms and whatnot, is pretty rad. For the year 2000, I saw this movie in the theater.

I thought it was dope. So now you're in Oakland. You hotwire a cab. You're about to go seek revenge. But before you can drive off, she hops into the backseat of the cab. Total stranger. Never seen her before. No context.

Blank slate. So, this being an action movie, you flirt with her. and she flirts with you. You must be a very dangerous man. Are you scared? I don't take this personal, but I've been around a lot more dangerous guys than you. It's Aaliyah. Aaliyah's in your cap.

Jet Lee's character isn't named Jet Lee, and Aaliyah's character isn't named Aaliyah, although there's a joke. Right at this point, Aaliyah plays Trish, the daughter of the head of one of the crime families. Delroy Lindo plays her father. They have a lovely scene together,

and she's bubbly and innocent and free spirit and dances a lot. And she runs a cafe named after an earth, wind, and fire song. That's like a combination bakery, clothing boutique, and DJ booth. It's a classic Oakland. And her father assigns her a bodyguard played by Anthony Anderson. He's a terrible bodyguard, but excellent comic relief. So she's ducked into your cab to evade Anthony Anderson.

And as he runs into the street looking for her, he says, I'm going to find your Aaliyah looking ass. This is a remarkable joke to me. The joke being that the character in the movie looks like the real world actress playing the character. It's a very sophisticated joke. It's a Julia Roberts impersonating Julia Roberts scene from Oceans 12. But that's in 2004.

There's movies ahead of its time. Movie goes on. Flirt, flirt, flirt, jokes, jokes, jokes. Asses get kicked. More people get murdered. Not you. And now you, Jet Lee and O'Lea, are in another car. Pursued by machine gun toting motorcyclist assassins.

And there's one left. And now it's a street fight. And the thing happens where the motorcyclists removes his helmet and it's a lady. I live for that shit. Like the long, luscious hair bursting out of the helmet, like a shampoo ad. Holy shit, what a surprise. That trick is in like 8 billion movies.

I love it. But Jet Lee, in the movie, won't fight a lady, won't hit a lady as like a moral code situation. So the lady motorcyclist assassin starts kicking Jetley's ass, much to Aaliyah's chagrin. Look, I don't know how it is in China, but in America, for girls kicking your ass, you do not have to be a gentleman. Excellent line delivery by Aaliyah. This is her first movie. And so then Jet Lee uses Aaliyah's body to beat up to kill, actually. Spoiler alert, the lady motorcycle assassin.

It's a three-person choreographed fight scene where Jet Lee twirls Aaliyah around semi-romantically and comedically as though they're swing dancing and he contorts her little. limbs such that Aaliyah keeps whacking the lady motorcycle assassin in the face. It's a great scene. Famous scene, best scene in the movie. No stunt double for Aaliyah. She trained for a month. The scene took three days a shoot. Looks legit.

The Crystal Method is playing on the soundtrack. Shout out the Crystal Method. And Aaliyah's kicking ass, but it looks like she's dancing, gliding, weightless, effortless, boundless. Her first movie. as a moral conundrum from Jetli's perspective, I'm not sure how hitting a lady is verboten, but hitting a lady with another lady is cool. It feels as though you've created more problems than you've solved, plus the grim optics of a man manipulating Aaliyah to do whatever he wants.

But wait, in this fantasy, you don't know anything about her. You don't have any idea how grim those optics are for Aaliyah specifically. You just met her in a cab. She's just a bubbly and innocent and free-spirited early 20-something woman who looks just like a real-world pop star and is, in fact, obviously a real-world pop star, even if you had no idea she was a pop star. As herself, or as any character she might play going forward, she just radiates tangible, visible pop-stardom. The indulgence here for us is that we have no context. We get to forget. We get to pretend we don't know what's already happened in real life to Aaliyah and what's about to happen to Aaliyah. It's just a movie.

The movie goes on. Fight, fight, fight, kill, kill. Movie ends with Jetli and Aaliyah walking off arm and arm amid a bunch of police cars with all their lights flashing. Spoiler alert, it's the same ending shot as literally every action movie ever made. Often the guy and the girl kiss at this juncture if they haven't smooched already so as to consummate all the flirting. But Aaliyah and Jetley do not.

This is a point of some contention. There are some reports that they filmed a kiss, but that version of the ending scene did not play well with urban audiences. Or maybe given what happens at the end of the movie, no spoilers. A kiss scene was deemed inappropriate at that moment for Jetley's character in particular. Or maybe it was the 16-year age difference between Aaliyah and Jet Lee, which uncomfortably echoed. But wait, you don't know about that either.

You don't know her. Just met her in the cab. Just fell in love with her. in all likelihood. No shame in that. Lots of people did. She's your new favorite pop star, and she walks off arm and arm with an action movie stars that credits roll on her first movie,

and the song playing now is Aaliyah's very first and last, number one hit. It's called Try Again. Try Again came out in February 2000, co-written by Static Major and Timbalin, produced by Timbalin, major empowerment anthem vibes

from Try Again, though it transcends the usual cloying and co-chaid, fight-song-ass, empowerment, anthem, cornyness, that's what Aaliyah did for a living. Transcended. That's enough indulging ourselves in all likelihood. You know at least a little bit about what Aaliyah had gone through to reach this point, and you know where she was heading, and how challenging it was until quite recently to hear some of the best music Aaliyah made, this song, for example. My name is Rob Harvilla. This is 60 songs.

that explained the 90s and this week we're talking about one in a million by a lea from her second album also called one in a million released in 1996 i love alia's music i've been psyched to do this and i've also been dreading it but this song's just too good not to talk about the song are you that somebody as well i couldn't decide between one and a million and are you that somebody they're both fantastic listen to both of them please thank you what and a million was a game time decision too good a song She's too good not to talk about. She transcends our dread and our grief and our anger and our discomfort. We'll take our frivolity where we can get it.

So let's start at the beginning, back to this song chronologically, as quickly, as efficiently as we can, shall we? Alia Dana Houghton was born in Brooklyn and Bed Stey in 1979. Her family moved to Detroit when she was five. At six years old, she had one line in a school production of Annie. the line was, you're going to get the paddle. She started 42nd Street. She started Hello Dolly. She sang at weddings and parties.

She sang a lot of Whitney Houston songs, etc. At 10 years old, she went on Star Search and lost. Has anyone of consequence ever won Star Search? Leah lost on Star Search. Leon Rhymes lost on Star Search, Beyonce, Destiny Child, Girls' Time, quite infamously lost on Star Search. Alanis, Justin Timberlake, Brittany, Sprier, Pitman. Did Pitbull lose to Nas on Star Search?

Has anyone of consequence ever won Star Search? Or when you won, did Ed McMahon lead you backstage and push you into an abyss? Billy Porter won, I guess. Focus! I will let her explain this. Here is Aaliyah, recounting her Star Search experience. To late-night host, you forgot about Craig Kilbourne. She's on Craig Kilbourne show in 2000 to promote Romeo Must Die.

First of all, she clarifies to Craig that her name really should be pronounced, Alia. I usually hear it as Aaliyah, and historically I've said it as Alia, but she says it's Alia. She tells Craig that her name means the highest, most exalted one, the best. Craig brings up Star Search. She acts embarrassed. She says, yeah,

I was on Star Search when I was 10. I sang My Funny Valentine. And Craig plays a little clip of Chet Baker's version of My Funny Valentine, and then he asks her a really excellent question. That's Chet Baker's singing. You should have my version.

My version is the best, but I lost. What did it sound like? My funny Valentine. Any question that gets her to sing is an excellent question. I just wanted you to hear her voice unadorned. So look, a young female pop star or actress or whatever being interviewed, almost invariably by a much older white guy talk show host, this almost invariably results in some creepy flirting.

you wind up somewhere in a vast and unpleasant, creepy flirting spectrum from tolerable to Jay Leno. But Craig and Alia get along pretty well, I have to say. Did you win? No, I lost. How did you lose? The other girl, she beat me. I don't know.

I thought I should have won. I thought I was hot. You know, I was a hot little dress. How old were you? I was 10, and I got three and three-quarter stars. You were hot at 10 singing my funny ball? You don't understand. I was hot.

I don't think you're supposed to be hot at 10, are you? It's worth noting that Craig Kilbourne historically is not often the voice of reason or restraint. Restraint was not his brand. Also note that Alia still remembers getting three and three quarters stars on Star Search. Every major celebrity's got their own Michael Jordan got cut from his high school varsity team moment. Focus, I'm stalling. So yeah, after Star Search, Alia's uncle, her maternal uncle, Barry Hankerson. At this point is a somewhat

enigmatic show business big shot. He's an artist manager. He produces theater. He married and divorced. Quite acrimoniously, Motown icon Gladys Knight. So Barry's in Chicago producing a play, and he stumbles across a young, fame-hungry high school dropout busker named Robert Sylvester Kelly,

a superstar in the making. Barry becomes R. Kelly's manager. R. Kelly's on his way to becoming a superstar in 1991. While R. Kelly is working on his album, Barry brings his fame-hungry superstar in the making 12-year-old niece, Aaliyah, to the studio to meet R. Kelly. As Aaliyah would explain to vibe a few years later, I sang for him, and he liked my sound. That is according to a new biography called Baby Girl, better known as Aaliyah, written by Kathy Iyndoli, came out in August 2021.

Kathy's book starts with a brief chapter in which she says that when she started writing her book, she intended to more or less write R. Kelly out of it. She didn't want to disrespect Alia's legacy. Kathy writes, I also didn't want to dignify R. Kelly with any credit for her career, despite him being one of the main reasons we learned about Alia in the first place. But the conclusion Kathy comes to, she says, Disregarding R. Kelly's chapter in Alia's life would be denying Alia another title she so greatly deserved.

Survivor. Aaliyah's first album, largely written and produced by R. Kelly, comes out in 1994. She was 15 years old. It's called Age Ain't Nothing But a Number. What do we do with this record? I'm asking, I haven't the slightest idea what to do with this record. I don't know if there's a single album in pop music history more fundamentally cursed than age ain't nothing but a number. If you eliminate all context, if you know,

absolutely nothing about her in her collaborators and her situation. If she's just a random girl on the cover with a random blurry guy in the background on the cover, then this is a wonderful mid-90s R&B debut that establishes Aaliyah as a teenage superstar with a smoky and sinuous voice and a truly staggering charisma to force ratio. Maximum charisma, minimum force. She's not a volcanic belter like Whitney or Mariah or Raya or Rosh. Aretha, but her falsetto can float off into the stratosphere into deep space, and her lower register, those low notes, can drill down into the core of the earth without disturbing the ground beneath her feet. She can knock you over with a feather. More of a Janet Jackson vibe. That's about as high as my praise can get about anything, anybody. There is bearable context as mid-90s teenage R&B goes. In her book, Kathy Iandole says that Aaliyah from the onset was often described as street. but sweet. Soft when she wants to be, hard when she needs to be. And if you want, you can plot

like-minded young R&B singers from this era somewhere on that spectrum from street to sweet. It's reductive, but what isn't? So Brandy's self-titled debut album comes out in 1994. Monica's debut album, Miss Thang, comes out in 95. And Brandy's whole vibe is widely perceived as sweeter, let's say, more sitcom-friendly. And in 1998, when Brandy and Monica put out the boy is mine, that contrast, that hypothetical street versus sweet personality conflict, is one of many splendid sources of conflict. Also in 1998, Aaliyah herself sings, sometimes I'm goody, goody, right now I'm naughty, naughty. It sounds great when she says it. And the young aspiring superstars that follow and Aaliyah's wake will all navigate that goody, naughty, naughty divide in their

own ways, Maya, Amory, tweet, Ashanti, even Beyonce. But here, Now, on her debut album, Alia at 15 has nailed it. She has struck a perfect balance. She has honed a unique feather-light but indestructible physical voice that everyone, of course, will try to imitate. She is fully formed. She is destined for greatness. And on a song literally called Street Thing, where she sings with just a little more force, she is already achieving greatness. But you can hear him, right?

you don't want to. You wish you could erase him from this record, and maybe erase him from your brain. But R. Kelly produced age ain't nothing but a number and wrote every song except one, and he spent 20 plus years as a street but sweet R&B megastar himself. And as a consequence, as even a casual pop music fan, you've likely absorbed R. Kelly's specific boudoir gospel vibe and melodic sensibility, whether you wanted to or not. And you can hear him all over this record, whether you want to or not. And this is fundamental to the curse of age ain't nothing but a number, the knowledge you bring to it. I am speaking to you in early October 2021. A week ago, R. Kelly was convicted in federal court in New York on nine separate charges. CNN explains it this way. One count of racketeering with 14 underlying acts that included sexual exploitation of a child, kidnapping, bribery and sex trafficking charges, and also eight additional counts of violations of the Man Act, a sex trafficking law.

The bribery count refers to what is now his conviction in federal court for bribing a government official in 1994 to falsify Aaliyah's age on her birth certificate so that he could legally marry her, which he did. birth certificate says she was 18. She was really 15. Our Kelly at the time was 27. Our friend Danielle Smith, who hosts the tremendous podcast, Black Girl Songbook, was working at Vibe magazine in 1994 when Vibe uncovered that marriage certificate. Danielle did an Aaliyah episode of Black Girl Songbook recently. She talks a lot about it. There's a lot of really effective silence in that episode as Danielle works out how to talk about it. Please listen to that. It's brutal, but please watch. If You Haven't yet, Surviving R. Kelly, the harrowing 2019 Lifetime series, executive produced in part by rap journalist Dream Hampton,

in which a staggering number of women recount their stories of abuse at the hands of R. Kelly. Please read, if you haven't yet, the 2019 book Solis, the case against R. Kelly, written by the Chicago critic and journalist Jim DeRigatus, who has covered this story in harrowing detail for decades. I tried to be quick. I tried to be efficient. Of course I considered not saying any of that. But yeah, that's a brief summary of just the avalanche of awfulness that has now buried. Age ain't nothing but a number as a piece of music. Part of me wants to fire this record into the sun. The fact that due to her changing labels, subsequently, it was the only ALEA record available on streaming services or iTunes or whatever for more than a decade is just, the awfulest thing. But then another part of me feels like wiping this album off the face of the earth is disrespectful to Aaliyah, ultimately, to her artistry. She is the star, she is the breakout star, the imminent superstar of this record, regardless of anyone or anything else. Erasing such a vital

piece of her history is wrong, no matter how awful that history might be. But age ain't nothing but a number for all its greatness and breeziness is now, from its title to its cover to the vast majority of its lyrical content, explicit evidence of a terrible crime. So what's better? What's respectful? What's right? Filtering out this record's entire horrifying backstory and just laser focusing on Aaliyah's voice when you play it, or honoring the artist Aaliyah went on to become by burying it. The best I can do personally is just cling to those precious few moments when it's just her voice, when she achieves something like escape velocity, when she breaks above the clouds and floats there, alone, weightless, effortless, boundless,

free. At Your Best You Are Love is, of course, an Isley Brothers song. Maybe let's just replace this album with a playlist of Aaliyah's version, 13 straight times. Here's the moment on her version of At Your Best You Are Love, that to my mind points the way forward for her, and thank God for us. It's the layering, the stacking, the Voltron assemblage of Aaliyas there, the bonus multiplier effect of her backing vocals. Each isolated vocal track and individual feather on some gigantic, soaring, majestic bird.

That's the way forward. Her marriage, quote unquote, is annulled. She moves on. She changes labels. Barry Hankerson is still her manager, but at least now, she can collaborate with people who get her and respect her and to some degree can protect her and who know what to do with someone who can sing like that. Leah starts working with a singer and songwriter named Missy Elliott and a producer named Timberland, both from Virginia, both synonymous

in my mind along with the Neptunes with Virginia. You say the word Virginia to me, that's who I hear. Missy's debut solo album, Super Dupa Fly, comes out in 1997 with Timbalin producing. We've discussed the song The Rain Super Dupifly at great length on this show previously, but whenever I return to the full album, here's the single moment that hits me hardest on the song Beat Me 9-1-1, not the chorus itself, the backing vocals, the stack of missies. At the end of the song, other than Timbalin muttering, as Timbalin does, very charming, of course, those missies get the floor pretty much to themselves. That's the moment on Super Dupyfly that directly connects to Aaliyah's sense. second album, one in a million, released in 1996, backed most prominently by Missy and Timberland.

Together, these three people helped Alia gather an army of her and set the course for R&B and pop for the next 20 plus years. The best parts of this record for me are maximum swagger in delirious slow motion. It's maximalism disguised as minimalism, turning less into more and more into the most. You could hear the future in 1998 on an absurdly luscious slow jam called If Your Girl Only New. And you can hear the best possible version of the future in this song now. Same deal with four-page letter, a slow jam luscious enough that I feel compelled to say the words luscious slow jam repeatedly out loud. It's challenging by design, but try and take in all three dimensions of this song, all 12 dimensions. Best part of this whole song is the least

prominent vocal hook. Oh, sorry, sorry. I just wanted to make sure you heard it. Alia works with a bunch of different people on one in a million. You got Jermaine Dupree, you got Dark Child, you got naughty by nature. You got a Diane Warren power ballad. Diane Warren, the queen of Oscar-nominated, if not yet Oscar-winning power ballads. The song, the one I gave my heart to wasn't nominated for anything, but probably should have been. In fact, I'm nominating this song for best final eight seconds of any power ballad released in 1996. Less is more. Less is the most. The little who at the end gets you every time. But Alia's at her best with Missy and Timbaland. There's a kinship. There's an understanding. There's an immaculate harmony in multiple senses.

My personal favorite song in this record is called Heartbroken, because now it's Missy Elliott, I hear. through Aaliyah alongside Aaliyah, floating with Aaliyah in the stratosphere. You gotta dig the la-l-l-l-l-l-as here. Best moment on the whole album. I won't sing them if you promise to pay close attention to them. You're welcome. Thank you. Please.

Best moment on the whole record. Heartbroken. Hear me now and believe me later. But yeah, one in a million, the song is the one people reach for the most. when this record finally officially hit streaming services, which it did in August of 2021. This is the first song a lot of people reached for. For comfort, yes, okay,

though it is important to clarify that the chaos, the controversy, the slow motion tragedy swirling around Aaliyah, animates this song and this whole album as well. And certainly animated the conversation about this album, then and now. When Vibe magazine reviewed the one-and-a-million record on release in 1990, in 96, Dreamhampton wrote the review, actually, and talked about Alia as a potential successor to Janet Jackson.

Alia was applying for the position as her generation's Janet Jackson. And Dreamhampton writes quite a startling line, quote, Alia, now 17, is definitely sexy enough for the position. Men generally think so, too, though it's still illegal to act on the thought. End quote, that'll wake you up. Enjoy the album, fellas.

more recently to celebrate the release of 1 in a million to streaming services in August, the critic Aisha Harris wrote a great piece for NPR with the headline, What Made Aaliyah so special is more complicated than it seems. She talked about how one in a million the song sounded like the future back then and still does. She talked about how Aaliyah set herself apart from Whitney and Mariah and Envogue by not belting. Quote, she seemed in command without needing to do too much. Her theatrics were subdued and contained. more slinky and less in your face.

But Aisha also writes about the tragedy of Aaliyah, at only 17, already branded as mature, already singing alarmingly grown-up love songs. Even if you never think about her first album again, it framed the way most people still think of her. Aisha writes about what she calls the tension and looming sadness over the thought that the singer was forced to grow up too soon. There is, to put it mildly, a colossal. amount of several different types of tension on the song, One in a Million, the good kinds of tension, most of them, let's say.

But that looming sadness tension is in there too. And if that ever gets to be too much, just focus on the crickets. This is one of the best openings to a song in the 90s where nothing much happens, subdued and contained. Gotta love those crickets. One in a million was written by Missyelli and Timbaland. Timbalin produced it. Let's not understate the Timbalind of it all, either. the delectable weirdness of a top shelf timbulin beat.

Now his beats arguably got weirder as they got slower. This beat is a whole swamp, a whole ecosystem, a whole planet. The squiggles, the airplane whooshes, the beat that's staggering around, like a drum and bass track, stuck in quicksand. A lesser singer would be overwhelmed, would be drowned out, would be just engulfed by all of this. A lesser singer would try to do too much with it. A lea, by contrast, just lets it wash it. her. The harmonies do the heavy lifting, an army of her. Personality, everything you do, makes me love, everything about you do.

Part of the enduring appeal here might be that this song is so slow and sumptuous that it feels like it stops time, like time starts flowing backward. One in a million is in constant danger of collapsing, of dissolving. During the bridge it basically does. It's the raddest thing, or it's the radest thing, or it's a At least Aaliyah makes it the raddest thing. These three people should have made music together for the next 20-plus years. They should have a new album out this week. That's the future we all deserved, and that Aaliyah deserved most of all. All of that, and I still could have spent this whole time talking about, Are You That Somebody instead?

That one's from 1998, from the Dr. Doolittle soundtrack, Eddie Murphy's Dr. Doolittle. Are You That Somebody who was once again produced by Timbalin, who co-wrote it with Static Major, who also, as it turned out, worked exceedingly well with Aaliyah, though Timbalin takes the forefront here on account of, you know, the baby. Her line delivery of I'm talking about nobody, though Aaliyah is never not the star of the show, no matter how many baby gurgles you throw at her. Are You That Somebody is also the goody, goody, naughty song. It sounds better when she says it, but then again, what doesn't?

My feeling going into this was we could either spend a little, time unpacking the tragedy of the way Aaliyah's career began or the way Aaliyah's career ended, but not both. Both is too much. So let's not linger on what happens from here. Romeo must die in 2000. That happens first, rad movie, the start of a long and distinguished film career. Aaliyah was supposed to be in the two Matrix sequels. Maybe those would have been good if she'd been in them. In 2001 comes Aaliyah's third and best album, the self-titled album, the red cover, is their best album. Get me in the right mood and I'll swear to you that I care. for you, numeral four, capital letter U, is the best Missy Timbalind-A-Lea collaboration.

This beat is its own solar system. Seems like you need the loving. Best Portishead song of the 21st century. Put it that way. Where I'd love to freeze Aaliyah is at this precise moment in the song, We Need a Resolution. First single, first track on the album, Timbalin and Static Major again. Whole song is incredible, but this is the moment. Aaliyah singing, You'll Let Me Know in this hypnotic echoing loop.

Forgive me if I just hang out there most of the time. Aaliyah died in a plane crash on August 25, 2001 in the Bahamas, where she'd been shooting a hype Williams video for the Aaliyah album track, Rock the Boat. Also an incredible song, when I hear it, I managed not to think about the history behind it. Most of the time, Alia was 22. And from there, for pretty much 20 years straight, there transpired a baffling and maddening scarcity of access to Aaliyah's music. Only age ain't nothing but a number on streaming services. Are you that somebody on streaming services somehow?

But no one in a million, and no third album until 2021. The logic behind this, or the incompetence, the outright malevolence behind this is tough to puzzle out even now. Barry Hankerson, Aaliyah's uncle and former manager and labelhead who controls Aaliyah's catalog, told Billboard in August in a fairly rare interview that he'd been holding back those other two albums out of respect for Aaliyah's mother, his sister. He said, There was a conversation we had that she didn't want the music out,

and whatever my sister told me, I tried to do because she wanted me to do. As a parent, I would understand if she did not want the music out, because who wants to hear the voice of your daughter, who's gone. And this is a heartbreaking, just a crushing notion of a grieving family who can't bear to hear their daughters, their sisters, their niece's voice in public

via her best-loved songs, so they severely limit the public's access to those songs for two decades following her death. But Barry Hankerson and the rest of Aaliyah's family do not get along and have traded cryptic warring statements even since these old records officially resurfaced. The truth of all that,

I don't think we'll ever get in full, and undoubtedly it's more about money and power than anyone will ever admit. It's a mess. It's a fiasco. It was an outright tragedy up until like a month ago. And it's still a tragedy even now that you can hear one in a million, and are you that somebody, and I care for you and rock the boat the way you hear pretty much anything else. We haven't even gotten to the issue of any unreleased ALEA music yet, because we haven't heard any yet. and nobody wants a 50 posthumous albums Tupac situation, but nothing isn't much better as legacy management goes. Also, R. Kelly got convicted last week

when by all accounts you should have gone to jail, let's say 25 to 30 years ago. You and me and the rest of the world listening to one in a million. Whether it's for the first time or the millionth time, that's not a happy ending. Except it is a happy ending somehow for the length of the song itself. The way this song fades out is pretty cool, too. Ends the same way it starts, which is great, because that way, if you put it on repeat,

it never has to end at all. We are thrilled this week to talk to Kelif Asana, staff writer at the New Yorker, former pop critic for the New York Times, an author of the fantastic new book, Major Labels, A History of Popular Music and Seven Genres. Kay, thanks so much for being here. Thanks for having me, Rob. It's fun to get to talk to you, and I'm, I'm excited that you have read and claimed to enjoy my book.

I am sincere. I loved your book. Absolutely. Either you love the book or you like me enough to lie to me. Either way, I'll take it. It might be both. You never know. I guess you'll never know.

R&B is the second genre of the seven that you write about extensively. And you write, it might be hard to convey now just how startling it was to hear a record, like Alias, are you that somebody on the radio? in 1998? What made that song and Aaliyah's best work so startling to you? Like, what did it have

in 1998 that nothing else on the radio had? Well, I should say I had not been paying close attention to R&B music at that time.

I was coming into hearing R&B, I mean, I was a punk. That's what I loved. That's what I'd been obsessed with. I was living in Boston when that record came out.

I was sort of deeply immersed in the punk and hardcore scene, and then I'd kind of gotten into hip hop and some dance music and some dance hall reggae. But basically, in my mind, I was on the search for music that sounded weird, fresh, new, innovative, unexpected. And so I didn't think of R&B as that genre, right? By the time you get to the late 90s, R&B had kind of become the other black music, right? For so much of its history, R&B is the primary black music. And that's the primary black music. And

And that's how it's defined. In the early 80s, Billboard actually renames its R&B chart black music, black singles. So it had that identity. And then sometime in the 90s, it kind of gets pushed off its perch a little bit by hip hop, which is gathering force during these years and so obviously interesting, so obviously fresh, so obviously black, so obviously awesome, that now all of a sudden there's this question of like, well, if hip hop is on the rise, like, what is R&B supposed to do? And we had a station Jamin 94-5, which was the local R&B station, though sometimes they would play some hip-hop,

but they seem to prefer R&B to hip-hop. They seem to prefer the version of the track that didn't have the rap after the second chorus rather than the version that did. And so I thought of that that is like maybe not that hip. And then this song comes on the radio that just doesn't sound like anything. I mean, one of the things people talk about is the baby, right? Of course. As a way to get you into the chorus, there's a sample of a gurgling baby. And, you know, this is at the time when, you know, there's plenty of sample-based music, but often people are sampling instruments. Or if they're sampling sound effects and other things, they're doing it in the context of rave culture or something else. It's not happening in pop songs, at least

not this way. And then the other thing is, it has this oddly kind of double syncopated rhythm, where it sounds as if it's drawing from what's happening in the UK with jungle music, which I think by this point had been renamed Drum and Bass, but which was all about these hyper-syncopated dance music tracks. For a couple years, it seemed to me like the most exciting, most futuristic music in the world. So the idea that this relatively stage genre of R&B, right, the genre that is defined by its conservatism, because it's defined by being the black music that isn't hip-hop, that somehow it's racing ahead into the future with gurgling babies and stuttering rhythms, and that there's this singer who sounds so, like, glassy and serene

while all this stuff is happening. In other words, it sounds like she's not jumping up and down and telling you, me and Timbalin just made something crazy. It sounds like she's just telling you, like, no, it's cool, this is what's happening. I'm totally comfortable and at ease with this musical future that I'm bringing into being. Not only did it sound exciting to me, but it gave me one of my favorite feelings that music gives to me sometimes, which is the feeling that I don't know anything, that I'm missing out. That something is going on, and I don't really understand what it is and how it happened without me knowing about it. Did you find from there, did she get you back into R&B or into R&B for the first time? Did you find more people in R&B who gave you that feeling,

or was Alia pretty singular in that sense? Well, it's both, right? I mean, what you've realized, when you start from a song like, Are You That Somebody, and then you explore outward, you discover a couple things. One is that Alia and Timbalin,

the producer she was working with, were totally unique. Like, there's no one like Timbalin. There's no one who was making the records that had the kind of impact that those Alia records did. There's other people in that universe, right, Timbalin had worked closely with Missy Elliott.

Those records were incredible, although they were sort of defined like a little more as hip hop. One of the, I mean, one of the brilliant things Missy Elliott did was kind of sort of make fun of the tension between hip hop and R&B, and she would kind of be bowed. The videos, right, right.

Yeah, and she's kind of winking at the rappers. She's kind of like laughing at R&B convention. Really incredible records as well. But in terms of the R&B world, yes, there was a sense that Alia stood alone. She brought something out of Timbalin who seemed to pride himself on saving extra good or extra weird beats for her. Obviously, even these years later, there's still kind of no one like Timbalin. So in that sense, this is a really singular world that a record like,

are you that somebody opens up. On the other hand, one of the things it taught me was to be interested in R&B. And, you know, whether that meant TLC, Mary J. Blige, whether that just meant being interested in mainstream R&B so that it's not that you're necessarily listening to the music to see, oh, what's the weird thing, what's the thing that doesn't sound like R&B, so that you're able, at least I was able to appreciate that tradition of quote-unquote mainstream R&B. Now, in the mainstream of any music, there's going to be tons of idiosyncrasy and strangeness and innovation, right? You listen to the five classic Stevie Wonder records from the 70s, and it's incredible. Even the records

that Marvin Gay was doing and some of the experiments that he was doing with rhythm and with arrangement. But then at a certain point, I started to get interested in some of the R&B records that weren't about necessarily idiosyncrasy

and weirdness, right? To be able to hear the Luther Vandross records and Anita Baker, and to be able to hear records that are not brilliantly weird necessarily, but brilliantly smooth. that have a sort of an aching emotional core in these kind of glassy and slightly propulsive tracks.

So, yeah, in that sense, you know, someone like Alia helped me hear the whole of R&B as a genre. It's also funny to realize that in the late 90s, when this record comes out, there is this split within R&B, right? This is the same time that you have the emergence of the so-called Neo-Sol movement. Neosol, Erica. Yeah. Erica Badu, Maxwell, DeAngelo.

And the whole idea of Neo Soul is like, there's something wrong with R&B. Like R&B took a wrong turn somehow. We're going to save it, right? Yeah, it got too something. It got too hip-hop. It got too money-oriented. It got too electronic. And we're going to bring it back to a more socially conscious 70s, organic instrument kind of feel.

And you look back, and I love it. a bunch of those records. And obviously, someone like Erica Badu turns out to be totally impossible to classify. She's made all kinds of music. Absolutely. But you look back and you can understand why there was this reformational movement within R&B, right? The idea that these people, these people are singing about sex in the club and we're going to sing about, you know, relationships and lifelong relationships, and it's going to be a little more grown up and a little more old-fashioned. But at the same time, when I listen now to the R&B records that are on the radio in the late 1990s, and you're listening to people like Joe to see and all sorts of figures,

like those records are great too. And that's something I've seen again and again in the history of music. Often when there's a music, like a movement like that and someone's reacting against someone else, often you go back and it's easier to appreciate both the rebels and the mainstream that they found themselves. Yes. And, and, and, you go back and. And it's easier to appreciate both the rebels and And especially in pop music, where the foundation of the mainstream often ends up being fairly rebellious in its own right. Yeah. Your book in large part is about the importance of genres and the idea that maybe we overvalue music that crosses over from R&B to pop, say. Like, to me, your argument is that there's nothing wrong with just being R&B necessarily.

Did Alia's music in real time sound to you like R&B or like pop? Did you see her as trying to cross over? No. I mean, this is one of the things about Alia. I mean, she was such a sphinx-like character, and Timbalin was not generally expansive in interviews, right? So they're making this music that, to me, it's revolutionary, right? The way that Timbalin hears rhythms and programs rhythms,

and the way in which he hears hip-hop as this thing that's capable, not just of bringing in influences and bits and pieces from all over the place, but of making those things sound strange and of insisting that a certain strangeness is going to be inherent to the musical signature of hip hop and R&B, it really is unusual. So you have them doing all that,

but they're not talking about it. Like Timberlin is not giving interviews saying, I'm going to change the face of R&B. I've got a new movement. It's called X. It's called Timberlandism. And now that we're doing Timbalandism, all that old stuff, we're off that,

and everything's going to be Timbalandist. And similarly, you know, it's not like Ali is saying, like, oh, I've made this album. It's called one in a million. It's going to change everything. And you guys better sit back because all these other R&B singers are doing this. And I'm going to set myself apart and do that.

Right. Like they didn't talk about themselves as part of a movement. Even now they don't talk about themselves that. I talked to Timbalin a few months ago. And I asked him, because how could I not, about are you that somebody and sampling the baby? And even then, he was talking as if it was like no big deal. Right? You ask Timble and he's like, yeah, I just, I heard the rhythm. I heard that sample of the baby and I heard rhythm in it because I hear rhythm in everything. Okay, fair enough. And he's like, and I just knew that was a great beat. It was going to make Alia happy and that's what I wanted to do. I wanted to make her happy. Right. So, and I think that because this was a world in which people tended not to think of themselves as, you know, sonic revolutionaries and tended not to present themselves that way, often they weren't received that way. Right. Like when Brian Eno does. ambient music for airports.

He's got a manifesto on the inside cover. And so everyone can think like, oh, Brian Eno has invented a new form of music and treat him as the pioneer that he is. And so at the time, you know, there were people certainly celebrating Timbaland and Alia, but I'm not sure that they were thought of as the kinds of musical pioneers they were, and they weren't really crossing over that much. Like these were songs that lived in the ecosystem of the R&B hip-hop world. These weren't necessarily songs, I didn't get the sense, that were, like, crossing over to the world of, like, punk and indie rock and rock music.

And, you know, you have this kind of electronica movement that's big at this point in the late 90s. I think did, was that show AMP maybe on MTV? Wasn't that they're like show? I had the amp compilation. That's right. The orbital crystal method. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, chemical brothers and all this stuff.

But it's not like those people, it's not like that world of so-called, Electronica, it's not like Alia is thought of as part of that world at that time. There were in the UK where R&B was a little more of an underground genre than it was in the U.S., you did see, like, white label remixes of Timbalin productions, and you did get the sense that maybe some of those producers were hearing him as a kindred spirit, right? And, you know, they had the tradition at that point of garage and speed garage and taking American records and speeding them up. So there was dialogue between R&B and electronic music in the UK, certainly.

But in America, yeah, I don't think that, you know, the music that Alia and Timbaland were making, I don't think it was widely perceived as somehow crossing over out of the world of R&B. Because it presented itself as like, these are records. You know, you can dance them in the clubs. They're kind of smooth the way we expect R&B records to be. And so part of the thrill for me was that these records weren't coming to find me, where I lived, like these records were me jumping into the world of Jammin 94-5 and jumping into the world of R&B. That was the excitement. It's been my experience, like the weirdest, most

innovative artists usually don't walk around going, I'm weird and I'm innovative. Like they just, like, like you say, Tim Vlin's like, yeah, I just sampled a baby. I heard a baby, I sampled a baby. Like, what's the big deal? Like, it's just so natural to them. It doesn't register them as weird or revolutionary, and that's the weirdest and most revolutionary stuff to us. Well, I think that, It's two things. One, one is that weird tends to be actually hard to define when you drill down, right? Weird is a relative term. Weird compared to what, right?

Weird compared to the fundamentals maybe of R&B, but as we see, sometimes a track that goes against some of its genre's values or traditions ends up being more accessible to a different audience. So that's one thing. But the other thing is that, as you know from decades of talking to music, musicians, and I know too, musicians don't always have great perspective on what they're doing and why it's interesting and why it's great, right? That's part of the reason why, thankfully, people sometimes call on folks like you and me to add some of that perspective. Yeah, to add some

of that perspective. And it's not that we're hearing the musicians better than they are, but it's the fact that because we're coming from the outside, we have a different account, a different story of what makes that song interesting to us, which is a different story than the story. story of what makes it interesting to Timbalins. So yes, he didn't, they didn't, they didn't talk that way and they didn't necessarily hear it that way. And it really wasn't until years later and certainly until years after Alia's death, that she started to be widely celebrated beyond the world of R&B. Does that surprise you? Does it surprise you? Part of that is the function of mourning, but like, did, did you think that her vision of the future was going to become

the actual future, that she would be this revered artist that she is in 2021? Well, again, revered is a complicated term, right? Because when Alia died and had that beautiful funeral in New York, you could see how revered she was already. And you could see how much she resonated and how much people loved her. If you'd ask me whether I thought, like, indie rock fans would come around to Alia, You know, especially in those days, I probably would have told you who cares. Yeah, I think still who cares.

And if people are missing it, no big deal. What I wouldn't have expected, really, was that a generation of people sort of more closely aligned to the indie rock world or with one foot in that world, that there would be so much fusion between indie and R&B. And that you have artists like Grimes, like FCA Twigs, who are drawing from R&B. and with kind of an indie sensibility and sometimes working with labels or musicians from the indie world and having that kind of success. So, yes, if you'd ask me when Alia died,

would there be a singer on 4A.D? Who, you know, for a time is, you know, romantically paired with the richest man in the world. This is getting very elaborate, yeah. And who's a worldwide celebrity and whose music owes a lot to Alia. Well, that's a very specific kind of crossover, and that's certainly not one that I would have seen coming. Sure.

You said recently in an interview, like fundamentally you like it when people disagree about stuff. And it occurs to me that everyone agrees about Aaliyah now. Was there – did you feel like there was a faction in 1998, a faction of critics or listeners who were actively opposed to her vision of the future of R&B? Like her critical standing, you know? I think in the late 90s there was a faction of critics, maybe the majority of professional music critics, who were dismissive of mainstream R&B in general and dismissive of it for its sort of smoothness and shininess and proximity to club culture, and who might have unthinkingly lumped Alia in with that group. So it's not like people would have, I don't think anyone necessarily would have singled her.

out and said like, this is bad. But again, she's someone that doesn't have a super strong, what we would call soulful voice. She doesn't sing with a lot of grit and power. And so I think there probably were a lot of people, including a lot of people who got paid to write about music, who probably didn't pay that much attention to her because they thought of her as a lightweight and maybe as someone who was part of an R&B tradition that was in itself lightweight. And I think one thing that's changed is that, you know, with the way that so-called electronic music has spread and electronic production techniques have spread, I think people have, in a wide range of musical worlds, it's gotten easier for people to hear how brilliant Alia was at navigating those beats. And it's something, it reminds me a little bit of Diana Ross on the Diana record, where it's the height of club culture and she's working, you know, height of this disco movement, or, you know, or actually just after it,

and she's working with Nile Rogers and Bernard Edwards from Sheik, and they're giving her these incredible grooves, and she's singing them in this way that feels a little kind of elegant and icy and sort of holding them at arm's length a little bit. She's not leaning into it and working up a sweat. And in some ways, you can see some of those Aaliyah records

as being in that tradition. And likewise, Diana Ross was criticized for not being a sort of grittier singer, not being a kind of a soul singer, as it were. And you see some of that with Alia, and what people realized is that, you know, more and more the musical moment we live in, a lot of it is about people figuring out

how to take these big, sometimes kind of spiky electronic productions, and how do you slide a voice in there? How do you sneak a voice in there? And that was something that she was just brilliant at. Yeah, it seems like the way to handle a Timberlin beat is like he's doing so much that you do. less. You know, you don't meet him in the middle, but yeah, you lay back. And Timbalin took pride in that, right? Like, he took pride in the fact that he made beats that were hard to rap over

and hard to sing over, right? He had this idea that, like, no, you've got to really come with your A game as a singer or a rapper if you're going to successfully navigate one of my beats. Because his beats would be just, like, so dominant. And sometimes you hear his tracks, even Timbalin tracks that I love, and it sounds like people are struggling to keep up with his beats, right? And so he liked that idea that it was a challenge. Yeah. So we've got one in a million and a self-titled on streaming services now. And one idea is that in, yeah, finally. And like, the one idea is that a new audience, a younger audience will discover her. But like, given that she's been so influential on R&B and pop for 20 years, like, will she sound less startling to young people

now? Well, was part of the thrill in 1998, how futuristic she sounded, like, as part of that lost, because she won, in a sense? I mean, that's interesting, right? It's always, it's always interesting to go back and listen to earlier genres that seemed futuristic then and try to figure it out. I always think about this with, um, yes and the Velvet Underground, right? These were two visions for the future of rock and roll. And the Velvet Underground vision was triumphant and dominant. And you listen to those Velvet Underground records now, and it could be some kids in Brooklyn.

Like, it's so insanely familiar, that Velvet Underground sound. It's amazing. Whereas the Yes Records are amazing in different ways, because you're like, oh, that didn't turn out to be the path that most bands took in rock and roll. And the 70s vision of progressive rock sounds super alien now, because you're like, that's not what bands are doing. That's not what they're going for.

You know, Alia is somewhere in between because in some ways, you know, her use of electronics and stuff is did become a more popular way to work, and you do hear bits and pieces of it recycled, and there have been records that have come out in the last few years that sound like they could almost be Alia tribute records, right? It's almost become a cliche if you're a vocalist

working in this sort of indie electronic space and you're listing your influences, right? Like, Alia is like maybe one of the most obvious ones. And Drake and so forth, yeah. Yes, exactly. And that said, if you go back and listen to those albums now, And I think this is something that with the songs not being available on streaming,

you could always find ways on YouTube or wherever to hear the hits. But I think maybe people are more likely now and it's certainly a lot easier to sit down and listen to the records front to back. There is still something really singular and really specific about that sound. I agree.

Even now, Timbalin never stopped. And even now, when you hear a Timbalin track on the radio, it doesn't sound like the other tracks on the radio. And you can tell pretty much immediately like that is a timbulin track. And so the fact that their signature, their sonic signature was so specific means that I think anyone who sits down

with those Aaliyah records will still even now be a little bit startled. They might understand a little better like what she's doing and where it's coming from, but I think they'll still have that feeling that this doesn't sound like other things. Yeah. I hate to bring this up. You write a little bit about R. Kelly,

about covering him as a critic, really loving his music. and I think any critic now wishes they'd handled him differently back then. Where does that leave age ain't nothing but a number? Is there any way to enjoy that record as an Alia record as her debut record? Or is it just sort of inextricable and we're sort of better off just letting it fade away? Well, I mean, the thing about music, right, is that there's no hard and fast rules for this. One way to respect Alia's memory, right, would be to say, look, her career starts over.

with one in a million. And that work is so significant that we can kind of treat that as her career without having to link her memory to the person who abused her. That said, one of the many reasons why we might wish she were still here today

is so that she could tell us how she thinks about that record. She didn't give a lot of interviews and it's really hard to know and hard to speculate whether she would have been able to take some satisfaction from what she did on the age ain't nothing but a number album or whether that was something that she kind of put out of her mind.

And if we knew that, then we might have at least more of a sense of what she would want, and that would probably change the way some of her fans listened or didn't listen to those records. That said, the thing about music is it exists, right? It's a, you know, listening to age ain't nothing but a number. You know, that's a really, really dark experience. That's a really, you know, that's a really, in some ways, a really grim album, hearing it now and knowing what we know now.

That said, if people want to listen to it in musical terms, right, the record comes out in 1994. And among other things, it's a pretty amazing example and fairly early example of an R&B singer figuring out how to navigate around hip-hop beats, right? And this becomes one of the major stories of music in the next decade or two. So people who do want to listen to that album might be able to hear that in it. Here, here Alia's role in being really at the forefront of a generation of R&B singers learning how to navigate hip-hop beats and electronic beats. Yeah. I have to say, I really like the part of your book where you talk about the infamous headline,

the solo Beyonce, she's no Ashanti. I think you did a really great job, honestly, explaining how critics often get it wrong, like trying to predict the future. In terms of that era of 90s R&B or 90s music in general, I guess that was early 2000, but in that era, was there anything or anyone that you thought was going to be Beyonce level huge, but wasn't?

And anybody who did get huge that really shocked you at the time, like, is there any other prediction on that level that just didn't get that headline? I tried not to make predictions, because I felt like I wasn't that good at it. I feel like any music critics who's really good at predicting hits should go work for a label and make a lot of money. Go be Clive Davis, right.

Exactly. So I tried to be, I tried to stay focused on what music was giving me pleasure, making me happy and why. And so there were certainly records that I praised that other people didn't seem to love as much. There were careers. I remember when the Keisha Cole record came out, the first Keisha Cole record. Yeah. Just it blew my mind. And to me, I was like, oh, well, this is like the next major R&B singer. And she didn't, you know, the follow-up wasn't as popular, and, you know, she didn't really have sustained success after that first album. And she had to spend some time on reality TV. She's, her career kept going.

Sure. But it wasn't the kind of dominant R&B career that I might have, that I, that I would have expected. I don't think I predicted in print like, she's going to be with us for a long, long time. I wasn't writing that. All I was writing was what I felt, which I still feel now is that that first Keisha Cole album is a monster. Yeah. This has been wonderful. Thank you so much, Kay. The book's great. We really appreciate you talking. Thanks, Rob. This has been so much fun.

Thanks very much to our guests this week, Kellefessane. Thanks very much to our producers, Isaac Lee and Justin Sales. And thanks very much to you for listening. And now, without further ado, here's Aaliyah with one in a million. We'll see you next week.