That teenage emotion isn\u2019t something Aaliyah was able to express often. So much of the narrative about her at the time was how grown and mature she seemed to those around her, justified by a vocal range that suggested experience. \u201cMy mother always said that she feels like I always had sex appeal,\u201d said Aaliyah in a 2001 Vibe interview, one of the only candid quotes she ever gave about the way others perceived her. \u201cEven when I was very young, when I would take pictures, there was something sexual about me. I do feel sexy for sure. I embrace it, and I\u2019m comfortable with it. I enjoy it.\u201d She speaks like she doesn\u2019t take the idea that seriously, but it is a subtle glimpse at the way her childhood was fast-forwarded to serve the family business: The music and fame of Aaliyah.<\/p>\n
Some of the best parts of One in a Million are when she just seems like a high school student catching feelings. \u201cA Girl Like You\u201d is a lowkey swoonfest produced by Darren Lighty and Naughty By Nature\u2019s Kay Gee that could have been on the Above the Rim soundtrack, and Aaliyah sounds like she\u2019s daydreaming about some boy in class when she melts into a \u201cWhen I first saw you,\u201d even though she\u2019s going back and forth with Treach, who is almost a decade older. I get a similar feeling from \u201c4 Page Letter,\u201d where Tim\u2019s snare is as fat as some of the Marley Marl drums on Long Live the Kane as Aaliyah sends a wordy note to a boy she can\u2019t bear to face: \u201cI was too shy, so I decided to write.\u201d (Tim\u2019s outro captures the droning effect of Tribe<\/a>\u2019s Minnie Ripperton sample on \u201cLyrics to Go\u201d\u2014it rips.) And the duet \u201cNever Givin\u2019 Up,\u201d with teen wailer Tavarius Polk, has the over-the-top passion of one of those couples back in school that were always making out under the bleachers.<\/p>\n \u201cNever Givin\u2019 Up\u201d is produced by Vincent Herbert and Craig King, the first collaborators Aaliyah worked with after getting away from R. Kelly. Recording over three months in Detroit, they unlocked the gospel pupil in her. \u201cI got chills all over my body,\u201d King said of the first time he heard her sing in person. She has chemistry with them, unlike Jermaine Dupri and Carl So-Lowe on \u201cI Gotcha\u2019 Back,\u201d because it feels like they served her an Xscape leftover, and Daryl Simmons on the Diane Warren-penned power ballad \u201cThe One I Gave My Heart To,\u201d because Aaliyah is just too cool for a Diane Warren-penned power ballad. Herbert and King also hook her up with retro flips of Marvin Gaye<\/a> and the Isley Brothers that are so lighthearted and dancey that you don\u2019t care that she\u2019s keeping an emotional wall up.<\/p>\n The constant struggle with One in a Million is that I\u2019m never exactly sure what Aaliyah thinks. That\u2019s not necessarily a requirement for good music, but it is the kind of thing that makes your connection to an artist deeper. In Aaliyah\u2019s case, though, it\u2019s understandable. She was less than two years removed from having her rape turned into tabloid fodder and gossip, while her abuser got to carry on being a superstar for another 25 years. She barely even took any time off, going right into putting together the next album, wearing smiles with obvious pain behind them, and dodging questions about Kelly every time she stepped outside until her death, in a 2001 plane crash, at 22.<\/p>\n But deep down, there is something personal about One in a Million anyway. It\u2019s all in the music, especially when she\u2019s locked in with Tim and Missy. All the weight slides off her back when she\u2019s cooing over Tim\u2019s bleeps and bloops on \u201cBeats 4 Da Street\u201d or hitting jazz lounge harmonies alongside Missy\u2019s Hi-hi hee-hee-hee hi on \u201cLadies in Da House.\u201d It\u2019s bittersweet. Even when Missy\u2014as Missy does\u2014gives her a nasty bar, the point doesn\u2019t seem to be to run away from her youth, but to imagine what those adult passions and letdowns will feel like when she gets there. I thought of those life-altering scenes in The Right Stuff of the astronauts in space for the first time, realizing the unknowable is within reach. Tim and Missy bring that stargazing out of her and she brings it out of them, too. That\u2019s why there has never been another One in a Million, because it isn\u2019t just about that drum, that lyric, that melody. It\u2019s about Timbaland, Missy, and Aaliyah getting on the same wavelength at the perfect moment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"That teenage emotion isn\u2019t something Aaliyah was able to express often. 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