Baby Girl

by Kathy Iandoli

  On Halloween 2020, rapper Kash Doll dressed as Aaliyah for Halloween in her signature Tommy outfit, and she has replicated other styles of hers in the past. The fellow Detroit native is a die-hard Aaliyah fan who says Aaliyah influenced her whole career. “That was my idol growing up,” Kash says. “I knew that she was from Detroit, and it just made me feel like, ‘She’s so pretty and so chill with a tomboy swag.’ She was so smart and so sweet, and it made me feel like, ‘Dang, I could do it! I could do that.’ She gave me inspiration. She never really tried too hard. She was just her.” Kash even appeared in Las Vegas in 2019 for the unveiling of Aaliyah’s wax figure at Madame Tussauds, posing beside the wax figure in photos and playing games with Rashad in the museum’s Virtual Room. The figure is dressed in another iconic look of Aaliyah’s from her “Try Again” video.

  It all started with her Tommy Hilfiger campaign, where she was given the space to openly be herself stylistically and in turn created a mainstream safe space for other young girls to be themselves as well.

  “We created a new look with Aaliyah, and that look is still popular today,” Andy Hilfiger continued. “Now, I see all kinds of companies doing the whole bandeau tops with the underwire waistband, and we did that first.” And just like that, with just a few hints of authenticity and flair, her style became immortal. It came at just the right time, when her music was aligned with her fashion and both were entering the world of film. She was edging forward from the Blackground family and becoming everyone’s Aaliyah, but they had no idea just how big she was about to become.

  CHAPTER SEVEN: BABY STEPS

  Sometimes I’m goody goody. Right now I’m naughty naughty.

  —Aaliyah, “Are You That Somebody?”

  By 1997, Aaliyah was growing in popularity, yet she still craved some regularity. She attended Detroit High School for the Fine and Performing Arts when she could, only now with a bodyguard. “I’m in independent study, where I have a tutor that travels with me, so I don’t feel the pressure of having to go back home and get up at eight in the morning and go to different classes,” she told MTV. “I can go into my school from twelve to four, so I have some normalcy in my life—so I can see my friends, be in the environment—but I work at my own pace.” It was her senior year, and given that she didn’t have much of a high school experience, she wanted to get what little out of it that she could before it was gone completely. That meant showing up for events without making a scene, though how could she possibly not? Aaliyah was all over the radio, in every magazine, her music videos were played on every network, and her style was consistently imitated by her adoring fans. There was no way to escape that, even for just a night. On top of that, being known for her unbridled authenticity meant she wouldn’t just show up; she would show up on her own terms.

  Initially, Aaliyah’s plan was to wear a pair of baggy jeans for her high school prom back in Detroit. She opted at the last minute to wear a powder-blue pants suit, with a crop top. Naturally, her decision to even wear pants to the prom caused a commotion. Girls back then were not only expected but basically instructed to wear dresses to any “fancy” events. But Aaliyah was Aaliyah, and if she was going to do the prom, she was going to go all out. But no commotion that night was greater than superstar Aaliyah showing up to her high school prom while she was dominating R&B music. Aaliyah graduated from high school at the start of the summer that year with a 4.0 GPA and even had hopes to one day attend Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia. Her career had other plans for her.

  20th Century Fox was in the process of releasing the animated film Anastasia, about an eighteen-year-old orphan with amnesia, looking to put the pieces of her life and memories back together. The film has a star-studded lineup of voiceover talent, including John Cusack, Meg Ryan, Kelsey Grammer, and Kirsten Dunst, among others. In the film, the song “Journey to the Past” (written by Lynn Ahrens and composed by Stephen Flaherty) is sung by actor and recording artist Liz Callaway, though with the soundtrack release Fox Music wanted someone with a bigger name and a wider reach to sing the song. The head of Fox Music, Robert Kraft, chose Aaliyah for the job.

  Kraft connected with producer Guy Roche to work with her again and change the shape of the song to fit a broader audience, while also remaining true to Aaliyah’s R&B sound. “Although she came from a hip-hop background musically, her character, smile, and looks exuded something very, very sweet and gentle, very kind and peaceful,” Roche told VICE’s Broadly in 2017. “Not to mention the tone of her voice was perfect for the song.” Ahrens and Flaherty returned to the song to change up some lyrics and the composition to tailor it for Aaliyah. “After seeing the movie, I was very excited,” Aaliyah said in an interview during the recording process of the song. “I mean, it’s a great opportunity for me as an artist. Even when it was first brought to my attention before I even saw the movie, I was familiar with the story.” She said the team wanted to change it up a little bit, while preserving the “magic” of the song that was reflected in the film.

  In August 1997, Aaliyah was bound for Toronto to meet with Roche and record the song. “Her career was on the up,” Roche told Broadly. “It felt like, every time we met she had just gotten off a plane, [gone] straight into the studio, got right into work mode, and delivered the song beautifully, between interruptions for interviews. Then [it was] on to the next plane.”

  In the music video, Aaliyah travels through various past and present cityscapes, while also being inserted into animated moments from the film, which takes place in both Russia and France in the mid-1900s. Through this single and its visuals, Aaliyah once again was connecting two different audiences together. The video found significant airplay in network rotation, from BET to VH1. It was a genius move on behalf of Fox to make her the face of the soundtrack. Aaliyah was a star, but more important she was beloved, which gave the song wings to fly from the Disney-style dedicated crowd to R&B lovers who adored their princess. The result was a win-win.

  The song was nominated for an Oscar and a Golden Globe that following year, for Best Original Song, losing to the soundtrack giant “My Heart Will Go On” from the film Titanic. Still, Aaliyah made history at nineteen as the youngest artist to ever perform at the Oscars. She also wore a dress, which alone had fans shocked. Her date for the Academy Awards was her brother, Rashad.

  This wasn’t her first appearance on a soundtrack, but it was a springboard for what was to come. Within a few short months, a new opportunity appeared that not only took Aaliyah to the next level but also proved that when talent comes together to make magic there’s no time stamp on their genius.

  It was the baby coo heard round the world, and its birth happened in less than a day of labor.

  In June 1998, Eddie Murphy starred in a reboot of Doctor Dolittle, the 1967 cult classic film about a doctor with an innate capability to speak to animals and understand their responses. The film boasted a star-studded cast of animal voiceovers, including Ellen DeGeneres, Chris Rock, and John Leguizamo. As part of the film’s release, a soundtrack arrived in tandem, released through Atlantic Records. But it needed a hit, and the way to get there was to hit the hit makers.

  Timbaland and the gang were fresh off the stage one night when he got a call from Barry Hankerson. Atlantic wanted Timbaland to produce the lead single off the Doctor Dolittle soundtrack; Aaliyah would perform it. Hankerson already told the label that they had a song ready, so by the time he called Timbaland the deal was “etched in stone,” per Tim. This was 4:00 AM in New York, but the team was out in Los Angeles, making it 1:00 AM there. The track had to be delivered by 11:00 the following morning. Naturally, despite Hankerson’s grandiose gesture to the label that landed them this coveted soundtrack slot, there was no song recorded. Timbaland immediately pushed back, but the hefty price tag of over $400,000 for the track (to be split between Aaliyah and Timbaland) was enough to get them into the studio to create something. Anything. So they headed to the Village Studios on the west side of Los Angeles to begin working on a s
ong that—unbeknownst to them—would propel Aaliyah into soundtrack royalty.

  By this point, Aaliyah was working with another songwriter in the crew, Stephen Ellis Garrett, better known as the late Static Major. While Static was also a graduate of the Swing Mob, he and his group Playa were fresh off the release of their debut album Cheers 2 U that March. Static’s singing and songwriting came into focus when he co-wrote Ginuwine’s “Pony” in 1996 (with Ginuwine and Timbaland), while also singing background vocals on the hit single. He and Aaliyah were already putting some songwriting concepts together for what would become her final album, just a few short years later. Since he was already actively penning songs with Aaliyah, he took the songwriting reins on this fast-turnaround track.

  Static, Timbaland, Aaliyah, and engineer Jimmy Douglass were all in the studio that late evening, figuring out how to flip this song in record time. Just a few hours earlier, they had no idea this song was even supposed to exist, yet here they were, attempting to develop some quick concepts.

  Timbaland nailed the beat on the second try.

  It all came down to the drums. While Timbaland introduced a keyboard note and manipulated guitar sounds to guide Static’s writing (like a songwriter creating a song with his acoustic guitar), it was the thuds of the ricocheting bass line that made the beat come alive. On top of the bass line were blips and beatboxing; Timbaland later returned to the beat to give it layers once the song was written.

  The concept of the song wasn’t hard for Static Major to write at all.

  “Are You That Somebody?” is a song about love that is cautiously optimistic, yet it’s hidden from the rest of the world. The song places Aaliyah in the position of spotting the object of her affection but preferring to keep it a secret and wondering if the other person is down for the same. There’s even a part where she’s asking him to come through on a late-night creep but still keep it between the two of them.

  Static Major’s vocals can be heard singing on the hook with Aaliyah. His falsetto fits hers like a glove, and with good reason:

  You can’t tell nobody

  I’m talkin’ ’bout nobody

  In this case, art imitated life.

  “You’re dealing with Barry’s niece,” says Static’s former manager Tim Barnett. “And it was like, man, you know, don’t tell nobody.”

  Static’s mother, Edith Garrett Raymond, confirmed to Vibe in 2008 that Aaliyah and her late son were dating. They started around 1997 and continued into 1998. “They were definitely an item,” she said. “Aaliyah was crazy about him.” And while the song cloaks their romance in secrecy, they were pretty open to Static’s mom and apparently Aaliyah’s own parents.

  “He brought Aaliyah to my wedding,” Edith continued. “That was a big deal because [her parents] didn’t let her go places.”

  While Static laid down the lyrics in the studio that evening, the song had been brewing. He originally wrote it to Aaliyah: “Girl, I’ve been watching you like a hawk in the sky….” And since their relationship was hidden from her uncle (and seemingly everyone else in the camp but their parents), the “hush-hush” nature of asking if she was down was a sly way of asking her out.

  It was cutesy, but endearing.

  Aaliyah wasn’t a fan of the song on the first listen, despite the autobiographical undertone. Still, she recorded it, and of course it was perfect. “Now, her voice was the icing on the cake,” Timbaland said in his MasterClass segment on creating the track. Considering the slim turnaround, the song had to be written, produced, recorded, mixed, and mastered all in the same night. Once Aaliyah’s vocals were laid down (along with Timbaland’s and Static’s), Timbaland came back to put on the finishing touches, which were some more beat layers and his now-infamous “Dirty South” intro. Then came a last-minute addition.

  After re-listening to the hook, Timbaland paused and headed to his CD collection.

  “Literally we were done and about to print the mix and [Tim] said, ‘Wait, one more thing,’ ” Jimmy Douglass remembers, “and out comes this baby sound. Everybody else was gone; just me and Tim were left when he did that.”

  The sound was of a satisfied baby, not quite laughing but showing emotion. Many believed it was actually clipped from a home movie of Aaliyah as a baby, but it wasn’t. It was later revealed that it’s a sample from a sound called “Happy Baby” off a 1964 album called Authentic Sound Effects, volume 8. How and why did Timbaland even choose that for the song?

  “Because he’s Tim?” Douglass says with a laugh. It was unorthodox and a little weird, but something only Timbaland could pull off. It strangely worked. Aaliyah thought the sound was “so cute.” It was also the first time she was referred to as “Baby Girl” on record, thereby birthing that term of endearment to be used by the rest of the world, all from a track with a baby sample.

  “Many times during the record-making process, the creators do things that ain’t as big a deal as the public perceives it,” Douglass continues. “That was one of those moments. We had a morning deadline and had to finish and suddenly a baby appears. And the rest, well, is history.”

  The song was a hit, though its success was contingent upon factors that set it apart from other popular songs that arrived during that time. For one, “Are You That Somebody?” wasn’t initially released as a single to record stores. In the late nineties, retail singles were the norm, especially when dictating a song’s success. “Are You That Somebody?” was only available on the Doctor Dolittle soundtrack, meaning fans had to buy an entire album in order to grab that one song. It leaned heavily upon the radio for its push, though moving units were historically the driving force behind charting on Billboard. However, concurrently, the Billboard charts decidedly altered their charting practices to allow for those songs with only radio airplay to hit the Hot 100. The perfect timing of this switch allowed the song to chart when it previously couldn’t have.

  The song pushed through the charts, cracking the Top 25 on the Billboard Hot 100 (at Number Twenty-One), while hitting the Top 10 of the US Mainstream Top 40 (at Number Six) and topping both the US R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay and US Rhythmic charts. It also charted around the world, reaching Number One in New Zealand, while hitting the Top 10 in the UK Dance and R&B charts, as well as Canada and the Netherlands. The song also earned Aaliyah her first Grammy nomination for Best Female R&B Vocal Performance at the 41st Grammy Awards. In the May 30 issue of Billboard magazine that year, Larry Flick wrote in his “Singles” column that “Aaliyah is on the road to becoming the new queen of soundtrack hits.” His words foreshadowed where Aaliyah would later go with other songs, like “Try Again” off Romeo Must Die.

  “Where most divas insist on being the center of the song, she knew how to disappear into the music, how to match her voice to the bass line—it was sometimes difficult to tell one from the other,” Kelefa Sanneh wrote in 2001 for the New York Times. “This new approach helped change the way popular music sounds; the twitchy, beat-driven songs of Destiny’s Child owe a clear debt to ‘Are You That Somebody?’ ” Music critic Simon Reynolds called “Are You That Somebody?” “the most radical pop single” of 1998.

  A remix was later released, featuring various members of Tha Supafriendz crew, including rappers Lonnie B, Danja Mowf, and Mad Skillz. There was something endearing about Aaliyah always willing to put lesser-known talent on, the way others had done for her.

  The music video was another vital piece to the equation. Directed by Mark Gerard, the video takes place in a cave in Los Angeles’s Griffith Park. The video opens at dusk, with a motorcycle gang of guys entering the secret cave through a magical force field, as Aaliyah and her girls are waiting for them to arrive. Aaliyah has a hawk perched on her forearm (like the “hawk in the sky”) as scenes alternate between dance sequences directed by Aaliyah’s famed choreographer, Fatima Robinson.

  During Timbaland’s rap, he’s flanked by the members of Playa, which included Static Major, who played the back despite being the lyrical mastermind behind the
song.

  Toward the end of the video, Aaliyah’s whole style switches up. Throughout the video, she’s in her usual casual garb, with cutesy pigtails that layer the top of her crown. But then all of a sudden, she flips it over to a flamenco dance sequence in a dress with high slits on either side and heels. It was almost like there was a visual switch from young girl to young lady all within the dance and outfits of this one video. It was a bit of a hard sell for Aaliyah, though.

  “The only time that I’d say she needed some convincing on was in the video for ‘Are You That Somebody?’ ” stylist Derek Lee recalled to Vibe in 2016. “That is where we did the skirt and the heels for the end of that video. I had all that stuff made, and I brought it because she was still kind of [iffy] on it, but Fatima [Robinson, choreographer] was like, ‘No, you need to do that; you got to do it.’ And she was like, ‘Okay, if you think this is the right time then let it be the right time,’ so that was the only time that she was [iffy] on something.” Lee had the outfit custom designed for her in that scene, as well as another where she’s wearing a red Gucci bathing suit top adorned with red Swarovski crystals. Everything was very specific and very intentional—every dance move, every stitch of fabric that she wore, including the skirt.

  While wearing a skirt was simply not her thing, she had done it for the Oscars this same year. Though there it felt more like “get dressed up; you’re at the Academy Awards!” like a child dressing up for a wedding. With “Are You That Somebody?” a pivotal scene in the video couldn’t have been accomplished in baggy pants and sneakers or else the moment would have been lost. The flamenco dance routine called for it, and so Aaliyah did it. The result was a game changer. Not only did fans recognize there were different dimensions to Aaliyah’s style, but this was something of a turning point for her. She was no longer the young girl in categorically “boys’ ” clothing. She was coming into her own and growing up.