Album Review by EDF
A collection of hits and unreleased tracks, which is probably the last bit of music we will hear from Aaliyah who died in a plane crash at the young age of 22 by which time, she had been recording for seven years. Aaliyah started performing at the age of eleven and four years later with R. Kelly in the driving seat, scored her first US hit singles with BACK AND FORTH and AT YOUR BEST. Even though her first album AGE AIN’T NOTHING BUT A NUMBER had R. Kelly all over it, there was no sign of him on her second album released two years later. ONE IN A MILLION and a cover of Marvin Gaye’s GOT TO GIVE IT UP represent that album here. This also brought out a more noticeable mature sound that got Aaliyah some recognition.
1998 saw Aaliyah supplying the hit song ARE YOU THAT SOMEBODY? for and a cameo in the Eddie Murphy movie DR. DOLITTLE. The following year was a bit quite for Aaliyah and it become obvious in 2000 what she was up to, supplying tracks, TRY AGAIN, which is the only one represented here, for and starring in ROMEO MUST DIE. She ended the year with a couple of MTV awards. 2001 was set to be a busy year where Aaliyah had finished the shoot for the movie QUEEN OF THE DAMNED and was getting ready to star in the sequel to THE MATRIX. Having just released her AALIYAH album, tragedy struck when her plane, which was returning from a video shoot for ROCK THE BOAT, crashed.
If the tracks were arranged in chronological order, then it would have been noticeable how Aaliyah had been slowly maturing into one of the top R&B artists. She had her own style as she delivers a dream-like vocal on most of the tracks, DON’T KNOW WHAT TO TELL YA being the best one here to showcase this. You get a feeling though that if Aaliyah was still around, she might not have been too happy with some of the tracks on this compilation, which for some reason leaves out some of her US singles.
