Aaliyah Dana Haughton was born in Brooklyn on January 16th, 1979, to parents Michael and Diane Haughton. She spent most of her childhood growing up in Detroit, Michigan, and attended performing arts schools at a young age.
In 1993, she signed on with her uncle, Barry Hankerson’s label and released her first album, 'Age Ain’t Nothing but a Number'. To date, her first album has sold two million copies in the United States, and five million worldwide.
In something of a tabloid scandal, it was leaked to the press in 1994 that Aaliyah and R. Kelly, who had co-produced her first album, had been married. Aaliyah was 15 at the time, and had apparently claimed to be 18 so that the marriage could commence legally. Neither Aaliyah or R. Kelly ever confirmed that they had indeed been married, and any marriage they did have was promptly annulled.
Aaliyah released a second album in 1996, ‘One in a Million' which went double platinum in sales within its first year. The album was mostly written and produced by Missy Elliot and Tim Mosley.
With the attention she gathered from the major success of her second album, Aaliyah caught the eye of Tommy Hilfiger, and was signed on as a model. Over the next few years she would do a series of modeling campaigns and advertisements with Hilfiger, and made several guest appearances on the albums of other singers such as Missy Elliot and Timbaland (Tim Mosely).
In 1997 Aaliyah appeared on the soundtrack for the Disney remake of Anastasia, and performed the song in the Oscars that year having been nominated for an award. She also appeared on the Doctor Doolittle soundtrack of 1998, her song from that movie becoming a large success.
In 2000 she began her acting career starring along side Jet Li in 'Romeo Must Die' and followed it up with Stuart Townsend in 2001’s 'Queen of the Damned' While working on the production of 'Queen of the Damned'. Aaliyah recorded her third album, self-titled 'Aaliyah'. When it was released in July of 2001 and went gold within a month.
After filming a music video in the Bahamas, Aaliyah boarded a small Cessna airplane with the destination of Miami. Unfortunately, the plane crashed into a dense forest shortly after taking off and everyone on board was killed. It was later revealed that the plane was dangerously overloaded and the pilot had drugs and alcohol in his system. It was also reported that the pilot had faked his flying hours in order to get his license.
Though no longer with us, Aaliyah made a tremendous impact of the R&B world, and her albums are still popular around the world today.
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