Aaliyah's life was tragically cut short at the height of her career yet her music and influence continues to thrive among fans to this day.
On August 25, 2001, Aaliyah Haughton died in a plane crash while traveling from the Abaco Islands in the Bahamas to Miami after she finished filming her final music video for "Rock The Boat." At the time, the Grammy-nominated singer and her team were doing everything they could to return to the U.S. after the video shoot wrapped up earlier than expected. They decided to ditch their scheduled flight for the following day in lieu of another flight that was flying out that evening.
According to The Indepedent, Aaliyah's camp boarded a twin-engine Cessna 402, which was smaller than the Cessna 404 they arrived in. A witness overheard her team get into an argument with the pilot about the amount of luggage and equipment they brought on the plane. The pilot warned them that the plane was too full for a "safe flight." Moments after take-off, one of the engines failed and the plane crashed. Aaliyah, the pilot Luis Morales III, family friend Keith Wallace, Anthony Dodd, security guard Scott Gallin, her hair stylist Eric Forman, make-up stylist Christopher Maldonado, and Blackground Records employees Douglas Kratz and Gina Smith all passed away in the crash.
The 22-year-old singer released three major albums before her death: Age Ain't Nothing but a Number (1994), One in a Million (1996) and Aaliyah (2001). She also worked closely with Timbaland, Missy Elliott and the Superfriends on numerous collaborations. In the streaming era, her music was nowhere to be found until 2021 when her uncle Barry Hankerson's label Blackground Records teamed up with Empire to release her albums digitally alongside other bodies of work from Tank, Toni Braxton and more.
There's also a posthumous album from Aaliyah in the works. Blackground released the album's first single "Poison" with The Weeknd in December 2021 but hasn't released another update on the project since then. Outside of music, Aaliyah also starred in several films including Romeo Must Die (2000) and Queen of the Damned (2002). She was set to appear in the second and third installments of The Matrix franchise with Keanu Reeves before her death.
Rest in peace, Aaliyah.