Heartbeats, Front & Center

Dear My Gorgeous Pretties,

There have been a handful of artist’s death that have physically brought me to tears. Go on head and add Dolly’s name to the list. Never mind I was already in a funk over Michael Wright’s passing just a few days ago. And the one year anniversary of my mawmee’s death tomorrow has been looming over me. I can’t believe it’s been a year already. Like, how is she really dead? And then to have it happen on the 25th anniversary of Aaliyah’s death was just all a lot for my sensitive soul to take in.

Actually she was the first artist death I cried over. Yes, partly because we share the same name, but mostly because, at the time, Aaliyah wasn’t as popular a name as it is now—only popularized by her death, sadly, but Allah alim—so the only Aaliyah people in my town knew was me—a lot of the people I hung with didn’t even know her music—so when word got out that “Aaliyah died,” everyone thought it was me so my home phone was blowing up with everyone calling to find out what happened. This was 2001 so cellphones weren’t a thing just yet. We were still using dial up internet! As you can image, this was all a bit traumatic for a 16 year old to compute. And being a fan of her work—you know she had da beats fa da streets—it was doubly sad.