"SUMMER'S SWEETEST SECRET"
Aaliyah, the coy songbird behind three of Spring's most seductive hits "If Your Girl Only Knew", "One In A Million" and "Four Page Letter", Aaliyah, unscarred survivor of the soap opera "marriage" to sex-meister "R.Kelly" and now, the recent Tommy Hilfiger campaign icon: is lounging on the grass of a well pedicured lawn in the Southhamptons. As the sun crawls to the edges of the summer sky and veils her eighteen year old face with long trails of golden light you wonder what R&B's sweet-but-street darling could possibly be thinking.Is she basking in the glow of her recently acquired street credibility (genius producer Timbaland's backbeat to "One In a Million" was the first commercial success of the drum n bass sound in America). Or is she simply savoring the freedom of finally graduating Detroit's Performing Arts High School(as a dance major).As the late afternoon sunlight settles into the warm pools of her eyes, setting the pupils afire, Aaliyah sighs deeply and says "Damn, this grass is c-c-cold."Isn't it always like that. Things are never as comfortable as they seem in this business. Aaliyah has learnt, through a baptism of fire that celebrity and its constant attention is not all that it was rumored to be. In fact the grass on the other side, she has seen for herself, is not as green or warm or inviting, as myth would have it.As she dutifully lies back on the green lawn and glances up at Jayson Keeling's lens' the mixture of girl child clashing with business woman leaks from her gaze. As a fourteen year old, she was thrown into the raging vortex of publicity with the release of her debut CD "Age Ain't Nothing But A Number", "I still remember how nervous I was right before "Back & Forth" came out ," recalls Aaliyah, "It was my first single, and I kept wondering if people would accept it. When it went gold , I had my answer, and it was just such an incredibly satisfying feeling." Aaliyah clearly did not anticipate the controversy a fourteen year old referencing the glories of "a little bump and grind" would provokeand for all that album's success, she found herself thrown in the bind where discussions about Aaliyah's invariably focused on the issue of Aaliyah's talent. "Just another weave wearing, pretty faced can't-singer being manipulated by male producers" raged the discussion groups on the internet. "Looks like Aaliyah's been doing too much back and forth" snickered Vibe in a paparazzi picture that depicted a clearly exhausted young girl.Which is why "One In A Million's" spectacular success is all that much of a sweet revenge. The delicious taunts in her breath, the precisely timed rise and fall of her phrasing and the quiet yet assured sensuality of her tone meshed with a new breed of high tech funk to create songs brilliant more for their languidness that their mania . It stood out in the hip-hop fest that is urban radio and made her critics fall silent Early on she knew she had scored something of a triumph "I was listening back to the tracks thinking, 'Wow, that's really me. This is how I am and how I sound" The female point-of-view provided in the songs written by Missy Elliot, an adept rapper/singer in her own right, certainly gave Aaliyah an honest emotional center that links "One In A Million" with the soulful ancestrage of the Motown girl groups. That link , of course was the last thing on the young songbird's mind. "When we were working on the album we decided that we just wanted to do stuff that had a nice laid back groove to it. Stuff with a bounce, stuff that kids nowadays would relate to."That is the ultimate secret of her success. Everything Aaliyah gives to the audience is attainable. Everything about Aaliyah is attainable,. The songs are constructed so you the average listener can sing along with them without falling off too badly. The melodies linger like a sweet and familiar perfume. The girl singing them is the ultimate girl next door, the girl who sat next to you in high school and smiled ever so platonically your way in the lunch room. Aaliyah is the girl who makes the cheerleader squad without even trying. The lawn that bedecks NYW's current cover, why that could be your front lawn that she is sprawled on in all her wholesome Tommy Hilfiger freshness. Aaliyah's freshly showered spirit haunts the shopping malls, the VW Golfs, the postered bedrooms of the Great Suburbia.It was John Taylor of legendary 80's popband, Duran Duran's who in the face of critical hostility to his group , once declared "But the little girls understand." Aaliyah is a little girl who grew up and she brings with her the wise and lucrative understanding of how intense teenaged emotions concerning love letters, first kisses, stolen boyfriends and late night phone calls can be. As long as there are teenagers, as long as these experiences are encountered for the first time, they'll always be a singer to chronicle it all. And it will sound absolutely sweet to the ear.Daylight is near gone. Aaliyah sits up, staring at the orange red sun as it creeps into the last margins of the sky. She sits still for a long time before finally turning to all the people clustered around her, the photographer and stylist and editors, her father, her friends, her driver. "Isn't it funny, she muses. "That at the end of the day, everywhere feels the same." It is indeed funny and that dear Aaliyah is the secret to mass appeal.
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