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Mark Ronson and Aaliyah


Guest bostonGUY

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Guest bostonGUY

Fun fact! Mark Ronson modeled with Aaliyah in the 90s for Tommy Hilfiger, and was even in her music video "More Than A Woman"!

"We hung out quite a bit—we used to go to Cheetah, this big club on Monday nights, that even Jay-Z rhymed about [in “So Ghetto”]. Aaliyah was the absolute superstar, but I just knew her as my girlfriend’s sister’s friend. She would roll into Cheetah and everyone would be going nuts. One time she came in with Mase, I think they were on a date, and I was like, Holy ****. There was just something about seeing them walk into a club together. I guess it would be like seeing Chris Brown and Rihanna, but amplified by five thousand.
She had this amazing girlish energy. You know when someone can tell if you’re not in a good mood and they put their arm around you, almost a grandmotherly grace. She was extremely aware of other people’s emotions and it always seemed like she was there to make everybody feel all right on a spiritual level.
I still remember, and I said this in my speech out of guilt for beating Timbaland for the Producer of the Year Award [at the 2008 Grammys], getting the “One in a Million” 12-inch, putting it on my turntable, and playing it over and over even though I didn’t quite know what to make of it. Aaliyah sounded like a fairy whispering over this insane hi-hat pattern. There were no other slow-tempo records then, there was just Ginuwine’s “Pony” and “One in a Million,” so if you were gonna play them in a hip-hop club you were making an event of it.
I remember I was DJing something really weird, like someone’s office Christmas party, in the Manhattan Center. There’s a studio behind it that Timbaland used to use all the time. You had to actually walk past the ballroom to get there. Aaliyah walks by and says, I’m just working with Missy and Timbaland in the back, you should come. And I was like, I’m gonna get in so much trouble, but I just put on an album and ran back there. There was much more mystery around them all, and Timbaland and Missy weren’t in videos at that point, so they seemed like these weird mythical geniuses that came out of nowhere and changed pop music. If it wasn’t for Aaliyah being the face and voice of their sound they might have never got to where they did. They were presenting this sort of brilliant but challenging breakthrough music through this beautiful young girl who could sing it perfectly."

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082416-Music-Greatest-Aaliyah-Moments-In

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22 minutes ago, bostonGUY said:

If I ever get a chance to meet him, I would ask him about Aaliyah tbh, not Gaga

I'd ask him about both :giveup:

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