Baby Girl

by Kathy Iandoli

  But with this fandom comes great responsibility. It’s more than wearing a shirt with her face on it or putting a friend in their peer group on to her music. These fans—both new and old—are keeping her legacy alive. Through them, new fans are born, and so the movement continues. For some, it’s a whole other job. They dedicate hours of their day to working toward this cause—by either creating graphics or digging through countless magazine articles and uploading them to the web, ripping old video interviews to social media—and they’re not paid to do it. So why continue on this mission? The answer is quite simple.

  Aaliyah loved her fans. So much so that she wrote a whole song about them. Right before she passed, her fans had a real surprise when she hopped on the message boards for her website, Aaliyah2001.com. It was the first real time she came on the boards to spend significant time, and as fate would have it, was her last. She came on July 27, 2001, to tell the fans that there were some technical issues they were working through. “When I can, I’ll occasionally check in myself but I really hope you like what we’re doing here,” she wrote. “Peace & Blessings, A.”

  Aaliyah then came on again three weeks before her death, on August 2, 2001, to tell fans that she would soon be looking for message board moderators. “I’m still learning this stuff, but it’s all very exciting,” she said, before letting everyone know that she would be hanging around for a bit to answer some questions. When she was asked about her next single and video, she replied, “ ‘More than a Woman.’ We’re working out the details now.” Before she left, she told her fans that she loved them. These screenshots from her now-defunct website have filtered through fan forums and Instagram pages for two decades as cherished relics of the last real time that Aaliyah spoke directly to her fans. “It was always a shock where someone would just have a general conversation starter and she would go on there and just respond to something,” remembers Aaliyah2001.com board moderator Tonica Johnson, known online as Strawliyah. “She was just so cool and laid back, it was like she was one of us. It was always a real surprise whenever she did respond to something you were talking about, rather than a question directly to her or just in general to everyone reading it.” Johnson heard that Aaliyah signed another fan’s guest book on their fan page, which led her to build up her fan page Aaliyah Unleashed in the hopes of the same happening for her. To date, Aaliyah Unleashed is one of the longest-running Aaliyah fan sites created while she was still alive and continues on in her absence. “I felt like when she was there everybody was just trying to be as close as possible to her and connect to her, and it was like having a trophy or an award whenever she acknowledged a post you made,” Johnson continues. “After she died, I would say things did change a little bit because everyone just got a little closer and got to know each other a little bit more, and we just more so went from strangers to family.” For those who were on the boards back then, it was in real time, but even for those accessing these screenshots even years later, it’s like she was still speaking to them, showing she cared about their experience and letting them know that she loved them. Eventually, Aaliyah2001.com ceased operation and Aaliyah.com was formed. “The fact that her family set up the website was a beautiful thing for fans to take part in, and we greatly appreciated the opportunity to have a home to go to,” remembers Bashir Faddoul, whose online handle was 22Aaliyah2001. “There were so many kind, generous, and creative members who would design ‘blends’ or ‘siggies’ of different Aaliyah images, we had ‘Blend Awards’ where artistic fans created graphic images and were rewarded, fans shared poems about Aaliyah, rare pictures, and fond stories/memories of how they discovered Aaliyah. We worked together and were excited about sharing Aaliyah’s music and her legacy, and many of us worked tirelessly to keep it alive and strong.” Faddoul also ran the Aaliyah pages on both MySpace and Facebook following her passing. “Back then, we used to wish for an Aaliyah wax statue at Madame Tussauds, as well as a Hollywood Star on the Walk of Fame… and of course an Aaliyah movie for the big screen,” Faddoul continues. “I am still in contact with, and even met many fans from the message boards over the years while visiting Aaliyah’s resting place, participating in nine Revlon Run/Walks for Cancer as Aaliyah’s Cancer Awareness Angels. They are all my friends for life and we are connected by our bond that is simply being Aaliyah fans. All I’ve ever tried to do is keep Aaliyah’s legacy alive so that others can learn about her and how great of an entertainer she was.”

  Over the years, the fandom has only grown, and it varies in levels of both affection and intensity. Some outlier fans will simply pen fan fiction about her, while others take it to another level and state that they are the love children of Aaliyah’s, suggesting she carried a baby to term in secrecy. Some fans act as mediums, holding seances on Instagram Live where they claim to be speaking to Aaliyah from the dead and request that viewers ask questions, which have included “Were you murdered?” and “Was Damon Dash the love of your life?” Others will play her music backwards, alleging that they hear messages of help or, even further, that she is addressing the Illuminati. Then of course there are the fans who will travel across social media, policing any mentions of Aaliyah’s name and correcting any revisionists on historical facts, which even include knowing the exact person who gifted her every ring on her finger in photos. These fans vary in age, from as young as twelve and thirteen to as old as even fifty-plus, and they are from all corners of the world.

  When they mobilize, amazing things have happened.

  In July 2015, two fans named Regina Allen and Traesha Burke tweeted to Rashad Haughton about pushing to have an Aaliyah cosmetics line for MAC. What followed was a petition with twenty-six thousand signatures, requesting that MAC create the line. In June 2018, MAC announced the release of MAC x Aaliyah, featuring makeup that referenced her hit singles, with a replica of her autograph on the packaging. Eric Ferrell was the creative lead. Washington Football Team cheerleader Ashley Dickens was one of the fans who helped push the petition forward and was recognized for it. Dickens became popular with other fans, where every Halloween she would replicate various Aaliyah looks, starting with “Rock the Boat.” When Dickens saw the petition for MAC, she felt it was a no-brainer to support it. “I was sending the petition to people, getting them to sign it when it came out,” Dickens remembers. “I was in line at the store like seven AM. I was the first in line, then I immediately put out a review for the makeup line on YouTube and Rashad happened to see it, and he loved it.” From that point on, Dickens served as one of the fans assisting with some promotional materials and providing feedback, including on the Aaliyah app. She was also invited to Las Vegas in 2019 for Aaliyah’s wax figure unveiling at Madame Tussauds. Again, that figure happened after years of fans pushing for it.

  The fans have also been instrumental in assisting the estate with their official releases, including the aforementioned Aaliyah app, and the Aaliyah fragrance developed with her family and Austin-based perfumery Xyrena back in 2015. It’s also backfired, when fans expected music in 2020 and instead were met with an Aaliyah jigsaw puzzle, which led to a tsunami of backlash on social media.

  Younger fans had enough and wanted to voice their frustration publicly. The fan-derived #FreeAaliyahMusic hashtag was also met with a petition to release her music, and an Instagram account that facilitated the petition. “I was frustrated that her first album is the only one available for streaming,” says Nathan Hamlet, the fan who started @FreeAaliyahMusic. “I was so confused; where’s the rest of her catalog? So we all came together and we set up this page to continue the legacy as she wants to be remembered: an entertainer. But we also want to let the world know that her music is missing for quite a few years now.” Hamlet is eighteen, a younger fan who first learned about Aaliyah from his mother. Twenty-year-old Terrell Benson echoes a similar sentiment. “There are certain people that you just connect to and you’re like, ‘Wait a minute, now I have to protect this person, and I have to help this person’s legacy,’ ” he says of Aal
iyah. He first formed the Instagram page @AaliyahMemes but later formed @AaliyahsHistory, which included facts about the singer and new information as it surfaced. “It was about spreading positivity,” he adds.

  “The younger fans didn’t get to have the same experience older fans had with her music,” says Aali Cortes, a thirty-year-old graphic designer who services multimedia to fan pages. “We have CDs and I still even have an iPod with her music somewhere, so these younger fans are really just fighting for their own experience with her music like we had.” Cortes is a longtime Aaliyah fan, who even had his name legally changed to Aali and has dedicated the greater part of his graphics career to assist in her visual legacy. “I learned how to draw when I was thirteen, because I wanted to draw her,” he expresses of Aaliyah. “And that was my first inclination that there was something within me that I wanted to express when it came to her, whether it was for her or for her to other people. So I learned how to draw and quickly found Photoshop after that, and the rest as they say is history. I think I provide a different kind of artwork, very much entrenched in emotion and legacy and wanting people to think of Aaliyah in the bigger picture.”

  International accounts like @WeLoveAaliyahHaughton, @Aaliyah_Spain, and @AaliyahAlways have become global hubs, where fans from across the world connect. “The interesting part is, you can be friends with an eighteen-year-old, because you share this commonality, and there’s nothing weird about it, because it’s a shared community,” says Frances Kondis, who manages the Australian-based account @AaliyahAlways. “You’re all exchanging information and having conversations about this core subject, which is something that in modern society doesn’t really exist.” Kondis also had a limited-run Aaliyah merch line, which she coordinated with the estate. She is now a director of sorts for other fan sites to refer to for fact-checking and exclusive content. “She continues to inspire me daily, in the way she treated people and the way she lived her life,” Kondis says of Aaliyah. “I try to always keep that in mind often. What would Aaliyah do? I try to hold myself to that same standard, even now at thirty-six years old. I still look to her like she was way older than me.”

  Erica Dove manages the widely popular @AaliyahHaughton Instagram account, and while the mononym @Aaliyah page exists, it’s Dove’s that has become a destination. “Aaliyah worked so hard, and just seeing other artists’ legacies—like Michael Jackson’s and even Selena’s—I just feel like it’s an obligation to help Aaliyah’s,” Dove explains. “Aaliyah was so much more than an entertainer for us, so I try to do my part.” That includes not only sharing Aaliyah news and posting exclusive photos of Aaliyah but also sharing fan contributions and their own re-creations of Aaliyah’s looks. It’s as if she’s taken the lead and continued celebrating fan participation in a way that the official account should have done. “It just breaks my heart that her music is just collecting dust,” the twenty-five-year-old continues, though she’s amassed an extensive collection of original vinyl, CDs, and cassettes through online digging and visiting various record stores with her father throughout Houston.

  And then there is UK-based @AaliyahArchives. The page, run by graphic designer Sandhya Nandra, feeds into her site AaliyahArchives.com, which has become a music industry standard for all things Aaliyah. The site functions as a timeline of Aaliyah’s history, where fans can find rare Aaliyah articles, photos, videos, information, and interviews. The site relaunched on January 16, 2021, complete with a message board that was a callback to Aaliyah’s original site. As news about Aaliyah continues to circulate, Nandra keeps the Archives running. As a fan since childhood, thirty-two-year-old Nandra recognized that so much of Aaliyah’s content was missing from the internet, leaving newer fans especially unaware of the singer’s deep history. “Back in 2013, I wasn’t seeing anything as a fan in terms of archiving Aaliyah’s legacy and also keeping fans up to date on what’s been going on,” Nandra expresses. “I wanted to create a place where fans can come together and have a source of information—finding information that they normally wouldn’t find elsewhere. I wanted to do justice by Baby Girl, which in my opinion is what her estate should be doing.”

  Over the years, Aaliyah’s fan base has formed a sense of community unlike no other. While Beyoncé’s Beyhive or Nicki Minaj’s Barbz will often scour social media in an effort to challenge the latest bit of information that has trickled in from their favorite artist’s news cycle, Aaliyah’s fans are fighting for her survival, since she’s no longer here to fight for it herself.

  Call them what you want: Aaliyah Army, Team Aaliyah, Aaliyah’s Angels, Young Nation, Down with the Clique, or even, as Diane Haughton affectionately calls them, Special Ones: these fan hives are responsible for keeping Aaliyah at the forefront of everyone’s minds. They’re the ones who have maintained her legacy—from YouTube to the MAC counter. They fight for her memory and their right to preserve it. They now refer to themselves as Aaliyah’s Estate and in a way they’re right, because they are the true gatekeepers to demystifying Aaliyah while simultaneously still protecting her. The only thing that’s been missing is her music, which for them is really the only gift they want in return. Hopefully it won’t last forever, this inconclusive, open-ended legacy. It’s the words of young Nathan Hamlet that really sum it all up: “I don’t feel like Aaliyah will be completely at rest until her music is back out in the world,” he says. “Her music was her life, and she wanted us to hear it.”

  It’s the next generation who feel it the most, especially when they discover her and then learn that she’s gone. It’s like they’ve just met her and now lost her; a different kind of grief.

  In a strangely unique way, this is their answer to the question: Where were you when you heard that Aaliyah died?

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN: 4-PAGE LETTERS

  Fans from all around the world have written letters, either to Aaliyah or about Aaliyah, to show their appreciation for her.

  In one of her last interviews, Aaliyah said something that resonates with me during hard times in my life. She had just released her self-titled album on July 7, 2001, and flew to Paris, France, for promotional work. Resting on the couch, visibly jet lagged but still her classy and good-natured self, Aaliyah said referring to her career as a singer: “Rejection is painful, but I felt deep in my heart and in my soul that I had it and that I would do it and that I could do it. And I honestly believed that, no matter what anybody said. And I continued and I said ‘fine, you don’t want me, somebody else will. And I will prove it; I will get out there and I will be a star.’ And I really meant it. And you have to have that frame of mind, you have to have that kind of confidence to make it in this industry or you won’t make it. So I did it and I’m very proud of the fact that I did.”

  Aaliyah’s story is full of rejection—from her losing on Star Search as a ten-year-old to being turned down by countless record labels who did not believe in her. Then, during her 1994 debut, she faced unfair ridicule and sexism following the marriage scandal. Even today, years after her passing, naysayers continue to deny her talent and question her everlasting legacy. Despite these almost career-ending struggles, Aaliyah remained as resilient and radiant as a diamond under thousands of years of pressure. She never lost her grace, like a ballerina with painful blisters on her feet. No matter what happened, her faith never waned and she worked tirelessly for everything she wanted. By 2001, she achieved all her dreams—from releasing platinum hits to starring in blockbuster movies. Aaliyah became a model, actress, singer, entertainer, and role model for young people around the world.

  I always aspire to be like Aaliyah—to weather the storms with no hair out of place, always poised and lovely, and with my confidence intact. As I go through the rejections of life—those painful job interviews, when no one believes in me or my dreams, and when others try to put me down—I remind myself that Aaliyah faced similar hurdles, picked herself up when she fell, tried again, and never gave up. Even as a young girl, her brother, Rashad, recalled her staying behind after losin
g on Star Search, drying her tears and watching the rest of the show. She pursued her dreams at full speed with no brakes, knowing that, with her hard work and the support of God and her loved ones, she would make it. And she did it.

  Aaliyah taught me that you can achieve your goals and all your dreams can come true with hard work and strong faith. When you feel your hope fading and your dreams are billions of miles away, remember her beautiful advice: “Keep working hard and you can get anything that you want. If God gave you the talent, you should go for it. But don’t think it’s going to be easy. It’s hard!”

  Yordel Jackson

  Age 24

  Toronto, Ontario

  Dear Aaliyah,

  When I hear your name, there’s always one memory that instantly comes to mind and fills me with happiness. I think of the night you performed “Journey To The Past” during the Oscars in 1998. I was so thrilled to see you share your magic on such a huge night, and I made my mother sit on the couch with me and watch your big moment. You looked beautiful as always, and I beamed at the sight of you in a beautiful gown. Your fans had only seen you in your cool baggy jeans aesthetic. It’s just one of the lasting impressions you’ve left on my life.