Inside Aaliyah's Rapid Rise to Fame and Tragic Death

Aaliyah 's story had barely begun before it was out of her hands. But on what would have been her 47th birthday Jan. 16 if she hadn't died in a plane crash at the age of 22 , there's still so much to unpack with regard to her influence on pop culture . "Sometimes, when it's just my mom and me kicking it, I say, 'I'm 22, and I've accomplished so much,'" she told E! News just months before her death on Aug. 25, 2001. "I just know I have to appreciate every moment." Aaliyah's debut studio album, 1994's Age Ain't Nothing but a Number , has sold more than 6 million copies worldwide and was certified double platinum, buoyed by top-10 singles "Back & Forth" and "At Your Best (You Are Love)." The Brooklyn-born, Detroit-bred teen was a show business veteran already, singing at weddings at 8, performing on Star Search alongside Gladys Knight -who was briefly married to Aaliyah's uncle, record producer Barry Hankerson , in the 1970s-at 10 and taking the stage in Las Vegas at 11. "I'm still in high school," Aaliyah noted in a New York morning show interview to promote her first-ever performance at the legendary Apollo Theater, while also beaming about her straight-A report card. She wanted to go to college to major in music history and minor in engineering, she said, "but I do want to stay in this business as long as possible, 'cause I love it." The artist, born Aaliyah Dana Haughton , called her brother and frequent writing partner Rashad her "best friend." But most origin stories, no matter how inspiring, have their tragic chapters. Another early influence on Aaliyah's sound was R. Kelly , who produced Age Ain't Nothing But a Number. The 59-year-old-who's serving a combined 31-year federal prison sentence for illegal sex with minors, producing child pornography and related crimes-was charged in December 2019 with bribing a government employee in order to obtain the fake ID that led to him marrying Aaliyah when she was only 15. Kelly was 27 when he took the singer-whose ersatz ID said she was 18-to a hotel in Rosemont, Ill., to marry her on Aug. 31, 1994. The union was annulled in February 1995 at her parents' behest. On Good Morning America in 2019, Kelly's attorney said the singer had claimed he had "no idea" that she was so young at the time. When the bribery charge was tacked on as part of a broader racketeering case, the disgraced R&B singer was already facing multiple counts in multiple jurisdictions of sexual exploitation and abuse, the criminal charges coming in the wake of the 2019 docuseries Surviving R. Kelly. Kelly's former tour manager testified during the singer's years-in-the-making sex crimes trial in Brooklyn that the "I Believe I Can Fly" singer gave a staffer at a Chicago-area welfare office $500 to help him obtain the bogus ID card. Prosecutors alleged that Kelly wanted to marry Aaliyah so that she'd be unable...

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