Aaliyah

CTL-E-5339 · Person · musician · 1979–2001

VERIFIED evidence grade of this record

Aaliyah (born Aaliyah Dana Haughton on January 16, 1979, in Brooklyn, New York, and raised in Detroit, Michigan; died August 25, 2001) was an American singer and actress whose cool, understated delivery reshaped contemporary R&B. She released her debut album, Age Ain't Nothing but a Number, in 1994 at age fifteen, then remade her sound with producers Timbaland and Missy Elliott on One in a Million (1996), a record whose futuristic rhythms pointed R&B toward the next decade. She starred opposite Jet Li in Romeo Must Die (2000), and her single from its soundtrack became the first song to top the Billboard Hot 100 based solely on radio airplay. Her third album, Aaliyah (2001), reached No. 1 on the Billboard 200. She died at twenty-two in a plane crash in the Bahamas after filming a music video, leaving a brief catalog whose influence has only grown.

The record

• Also known as: Aaliyah Dana Haughton

Notes

Statistics: 5 No. 1 hits on Billboard's Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart — 'Back & Forth' (1994), 'If Your Girl Only Knew,' 'One in a Million,' 'Are You That Somebody?' and the posthumous 'Miss You' (Billboard, May 2023) · 'Try Again' was the first song to reach No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 based solely on airplay, in June 2000 (Billboard chart history, as documented by Stereogum's Number Ones column, checked 2026-10-15) · Inducted into the National Rhythm & Blues Hall of Fame in September 2023 (Billboard, May 2023) · Album sales figures for One in a Million (commonly reported as 3 million U.S. / 8 million worldwide) circulate widely but rest on secondary reporting rather than a current RIAA or label count, so they are NOT asserted in the description · Curator's Judgment: DRAFT — for founder review: Aaliyah got her flowers late from an industry that kept her catalog locked away for two decades, so CultureTechLens gives them plainly: in seven years she changed the temperature of R&B — quieter, stranger, more futuristic — and artists are still living in the weather she made. Gone at twenty-two, she remains the standard for effortless cool, and this record honors her as a pioneer, not a tragedy. · Photo slot: CLEARED CANDIDATE — Wikimedia Commons File:Aaliyah-02.jpg, mika-photography.com, CC BY-SA 3.0, license verified from Commons API metadata on 2026-10-15; direct URL https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/14/Aaliyah-02.jpg; not downloaded — visual pass follows merge per standing pattern.

Referenced by

• Missy Elliott — collaborated with → this record
• Timbaland — collaborated with → this record

Sources

• Billboard, "Aaliyah, New Edition & More Headed for National Rhythm & Blues Hall of Fame" (Billboard, syndicated) — https://radiox.cms.socastsrm.com/2023/05/19/aaliyah-new-edition-more-headed-for-national-rhythm-blues-hall-of-fame/ (primary source)
• Stereogum, "The Number Ones: Aaliyah's 'Try Again'" — https://www.stereogum.com/2195882/the-number-ones-aaliyahs-try-again/columns/the-number-ones/
• AURN News, "Remembering Aaliyah's Legacy" (with Associated Press photography) — https://aurn.com/on-this-day-2001-aaliyah-dies-bahamas-plane-crash/

Record CTL-E-5339 · CultureTechLens Knowledge Graph · evidence grade: VERIFIED · 3 sources (1 primary) · 2 mapped relationships · CTL research: PPL-001.
Directory: all entity records · the knowledge graph

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