314. Aaliyah, "One in a Million"

 


Poor Aaliyah.  Signed to a record deal at 12 years old and introduced to R. Kelly, who is pretty much the last person on Earth you want to introduce a 12-year-old to.  Sure enough, he married her at 15 (maybe - accounts vary on this, but there certainly was something going on) and produced her first album, the extremely creepily titled Age Ain't Nothing but a Number.  For this album, however, she worked with Missy Elliott, who is probably underrated as a songwriter, and Timbaland.  Then she made a couple more albums, was in some movies, then got in a plane crash and died.  

Today Aaliyah is regarded as a groundbreaking R&B artist.  I always wonder the extent to which dying helps out your artistic cred; would she still be regarded as a hugely important R&B figure if she hadn't died?  Would the Doors have been so highly regarded if Jim Morrison had lived?  No to the second one, but there's no way to run an A/B test.

Anyway, this album was of course a huge smash success and sold 8 million copies.  Me being me, this was the first time I heard it.  I didn't love it.  Once again, I am in the position of having to comment on something way outside my wheelhouse.  Sometimes that's good!  You're coming to something totally new, that you haven't already got a solidified opinion about.  The bad part is that I read that this is a majestic, important R&B album and I just have no way to evaluate that.  So, for me personally, it just didn't do anything for me.  I didn't really like any of the songs especially, except maybe "Got to Give It Up," which is basically a reworking of the Marvin Gaye classic with some remixing and new vocals.  Aaliyah has a beautiful voice, I can appreciate that, but this is just not my jam.

Does this album deserve to be in the Top 500? If you say so.

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