Aaliyah dies in a plane crash in the Bahamas

Why it matters

Aaliyah Dana Haughton, the singer and actress, died on August 25, 2001, in a Cessna 402 plane crash on takeoff from Marsh Harbour Airport in the Bahamas. She was 22. She had been in the Bahamas filming the music video for "Rock the Boat," the third single from her self-titled third album. Eight other people on the plane also died. Aaliyah is not exactly a rapper, but the rap conversation cannot be told without her. She was the central female vocal voice on Timbaland's production through the late 1990s; her 1996 LP One in a Million is one of the foundational documents of the entire late-90s and early-2000s sound that Timbaland, Missy Elliott, and Ginuwine would dominate. Her 2001 self-titled album had come out fifty-eight days before she died. The single "Rock the Boat," "Try Again," "More Than a Woman." The pilot of the Cessna, it was later determined, had been unqualified to fly the aircraft type and had had cocaine and alcohol in his system. She was 22. The R&B-and-rap production language she was building with Timbaland was about to keep going for at least another decade. It went on without her. You can hear the gap on every record made in that space afterwards.