Deep Album Cuts Vol. 248: Aaliyah
For pretty much the entire streaming era, two of Aaliyah's three albums were unavailable on Spotify and Apple and other services, mainly because of a hold up with the label that released them Blackground Records. But since August, Blackground's catalog has finally been hitting streaming services, with Aaliyah's albums and compilations becoming available along with albums by Tank, Toni Braxton, and Timbaland & Magoo, who I made a playlist of a few weeks ago. Aaliyah, who died 20 years ago this year, didn't get the chance to make many albums, but I still wanted to look back at her incredibly influential catalog and include some non-album tracks.
Aaliyah deep album cuts (Spotify playlist):
Track 18 from A Low Down Dirty Shame (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) (1994)
Track 1, 5, 10, 14 and 17 from One In A Million (1996)
Tracks 7 from Romeo Must Die: The Album (2000)
Tracks 2, 6, 12, 15 and 20 from Aaliyah (2001)
Tracks, 4, 9 and 19 from I Care 4 U (2002)
Tracks 11 and 15 from Ultimate Aaliyah (2005)
Obviously One In A Million is Aaliyah's masterpiece, and I wrote a whole column a few years ago about why it's one of the best albums not on streaming services. But Aaliyah is almost as great in its own right. And of course with only three albums to her name, I had to include Age Ain't Nothing But A Number, but obviously, R. Kelly wrote and produced all that stuff, so steer clear of the playlist for that reason if you want. Goodwill for Aaliyah has helped Age remain one of the only things Kelly did that's still semi-acceptable to play, but the album is practically a crime scene, it's all pretty uncomfortable to think about.
Even within Aaliyah's short career, I find myself wishing she hadn't gone 5 years between albums, and I really wish she had gotten an entire album of Timbaland beats like Missy and Ginuwine, instead of half of One In A Million and just 3 singles on Aaliyah. But it seems like she was always recording and doing things for soundtracks, and left behind a fair number of B-sides and unreleased tracks that wound up on her two posthumous compilations. "The Thing I Like" and "Don't Know What To Tell Ya" were singles that only charted outside the U.S., so I felt like they were fair game for the deep cuts playlist.
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