She kind of related to the regular chicks but at the same time she had a sex appeal to her, so I think it translated. She was like that round the way girl, cause at that time, you had a lot of females dressing in baggy clothes. I think people started to feel like they knew her.Įven though she had the big baggy pants on, there was still like a sex appeal. I think once she took the sunglasses off and got into her girl clothes, it was like, Wow, she’s grown. Your eyes tell a lot, and by her covering them, they really never knew what her personality was.
I mean, she was always a star, but when people can’t see your eyes, they really don’t know how you looking. With the sunglasses, I think it was just persona. She was always sweet and caring and compassionate. But us, we was like, Nah, man, that One in a Million album was a classic! But she was like, I’m just happy to be nominated. We was so mad cause we felt like she’s gonna win, and she didn’t get anything! And she was like, It’s cool. I ain’t dressed like somebody else since junior high school, but we all got these Pony burgundy outfits. I remember one time at an awards show, me and her and Tim went and got these outfits. How do you know if people are gonna like it or not if you don’t at least try it? We always said we don’t want somebody else to do it before we do it, so let’s just take it there. I know that she would be somewhere in outerspace at this moment, because she grabbed onto the same mentality that we had: be risky. Sometimes when I’m talking to Ciara, we’ll bring Aaliyah into the conversation. And this was in the middle of him playing, like, Biggie records and Tupac records, and here goes “One in a Million” in the middle of all this street rap! That’s when I said, OK, this is something different-we are going somewhere else, we are kind of switching the sound. I was in a club one night, the DJ took it back TEN TIMES, no lie. But then when “One in a Million” came out, the beat and the melody were so different from anything. I think when “If Your Girl Only Knew” first came out, people kinda said, Oh, she got a new sound. We felt like we was gonna always be family. We was gonna change music every chance that we got.
And we became the Supafriends! We felt like we was gonna save the world. She was my little sister and Tim was my brother.
She was an artist that got it.Īfter that, we became family. We didn’t have to convince her, she was like, I’m telling you, this is hot. But the weird thing was, as soon as we did “One in a Million,” she immediately thought it was a hit. They liked it, but they didn’t know if they really liked it, because it was so different from everything else on the radio. Me and Tim, our sound was so far left that it was kinda hard for people. Even coming off a big album, she never once treated us like we were beneath her. She was always very sweet, always smiling and she made us feel like we was big producers when we didn’t have no record out. We was kinda nervous because we hadn’t done records for any artists of that caliber, but when we first met her, she treated us like she knew us for years, like we grew up with her. They was testing us out to see if we could make a hit record for Aaliyah, because she was coming off the project for R Kelly and I guess they wanted to try some new producers. She was as enigmatic and cutting edge as R&B, pop and the rest of the music world may ever see. Baby Girl, better known as Aaliyah, conjured the future between the beats.