The Princess of R&B once said, “It’s hard to say what I want my legacy to be when I’m long gone.” Little did anyone know that, in a mad turn of fateful irony, the very songs she was recording at 22 would form the platinum keepsakes to enshrine her in memory of fans and musicians everywhere.
Aaliyah Dana Haughton’s tragic death by plane crash over The Bahamas’ Abaco Islands just over eleven years ago, has broken as many hearts as her records have feverishly sold, before, during and afterwards. Her memory is brought up again and again in the relentless waves of nostalgic creativity that the prodigal late singer Aaliyah has inspired in her ever-growing legacy.
The next big break of this nostalgia is starting to wash up all over Twitter yesterday, as @BarryHankerson pushed rumours about the new developments of the latest posthumous Aaliyah project, composed of unreleased demo vocals, originally thought to be produced by Canadian Young Money artist Drake. Barry Hankerson is Aaliyah’s uncle and former producer at his own Blackground Records, and his son Jomo Hankerson has confirmed the album to be in the works with their label, which has so far been released Noah 40' Shebib's Aaliyah posthumous track, "Enough Said", featuring Drake. But fans have responded with doubt about the Barry Hankerson Tweeter’s dish about a 2013 release, and his posting of its alleged cover art, provided below.
Within one day, on August 30th, the self-declared Mr. Hankerson posted 22 almost identical tweets reading “Aaliyah posthumous 2013 16 unreleased tracks produced by @Drake @OVO40 “Enough said” #TeamAaliyah RT/.” These were addressed to several accounts, among them @tyrabanks, @NICKIMINAJ, @frank_ocean, @Drizzy_Drake and @JordinSparks, and were closed with the tweet, “Be #Positive the music is coming.” It seems that people either doubt the true identity of the twitter account holder, or they have somehow been offended by the cover art, because the next few tweets indicate @Barry as the victim of some serious Twitter-hate, which he’s been resolutely blocking.
While we all wait for confirmation, check out the art yourself. Haunting that it is, but it also marks the miraculously ever-changing vision of an artist long past the grave. Bottom line, given only the most open-ended last wishes to work with, it's questionable whether any candle-bearer need be bringing in the hate, credible or otherwise.