Aaliyah & Kidada Jones: Rare Photo

🔁 via @kidadasworld ❤ Thank you so much for sharing with us all! 😍 And thanks @weloveaaliyahaughton for the tag! 😘

Aaliyah, Bill Bellamy & Kidada Jones: Rare Photo

🔁via @photoham: "How To Be A Player premiere 1997 | Aaliyah + Bill Bellamy + Kidada #tbt"

Woww....new fave alert right here! 😍❤ Thank you so much for sharing! The fact that she is wearing different designer labels and still slaying! Like how!?? 😩 I know my ass could never! 😭 lol

Aaliyah, Kidada & Quincy Jones Batman & Robin Premiere, June 12th, 1997 (Rare)

🔁via @aaliyahpl_: "Aaliyah, Kidada and Quincy Jones posing for photos at the "Batman & Robin" movie premiere in LA, June 12, 1997. Wearing matching outfits, Aaliyah and Kidada were taken for sisters by paparazzi, lol."

I love how they got mistaken for sisters! 😂❤ Thank you so much for sharing! 🙏🏽 Enjoy everyone! Full video footage below...

Aaliyah, Kidada Jones & Kate Hudson, Courtesy Of Caroline Torem Craig (Rare)

🔁via @nynightclubbing of Aaliyah, Kidada Jones and Kate Hudson. Thank you so much for sharing the full size version! And thanks to @favouritethingsbyazzizz for the tag! ❤

Aaliyah & Kidada Jones, Courtesy of Caroline Torem Craig (Rare Photo)

(📸: @nynightclubbing) How adorable is this!! Lili and Kidada Jones 😍❤ Thank you so much for sharing! 🙏🏽

Aaliyah, Kidada Jones and Eliane Nicole: Fiji, 1998 (Rare Photo)

🔁@eliane.nicole: “Happy 41st Aaliyah! I love you. The world loves you! Planet Earth is better because you were here.🙏🏾💜💜💜 Here we are vacationing in Fiji, January 1998, exactly 21 years ago this month. Trip that. #CapricornSeason #GOAT #BabyGirl #HighVibrations 🦋📷: @therealqd3”

New fave!! 😩❤ Just look at her! 😭 Thank you so much for sharing with us all 🙏🏽

"The Day Aaliyah And I Took a Sticker Photo": By Hyun Kim 김현

Taken at Chelsea Piers Bowling Alley. Photos courtesy of author Hyun Kim.

Here's an interesting article written by writer/editor Hyun Kim for Vibe, MTV and Tidal. He talks about his time interviewing Aaliyah back in 2001, whilst playing bowling and other video/arcade games.

"In 2001, I went bowling with Aaliyah. We weren’t friends; it wasn’t a date. The occasion was a Vibe cover story. We’d originally been scheduled to meet in Melbourne, Australia, while she was filming Queen of the Damned, but things don’t always work out the way they’re supposed to — which left me in Australia for four days, alone, with nothing to do.

I was told to wait in my hotel room as long as I could in case I received a call from Aaliyah’s people about the interview, but the call never came. So I wandered the streets of Melbourne, thought that there were more Asians there than I’d expected, and got so bored that I went across the street from the hotel to watch a cricket match. I got even more bored, so bored that I ended up falling asleep in the sun and getting one of the worst sunburns of my life. I did get to explore the food; I ate ostrich and kangaroo on what turned out to be my last night there. Vibe called eventually and told me the interview wasn’t going to happen, at least in Australia, and that they’d rebooked my return ticket for the next day. I rang the front desk and told them to cancel my safari excursion I had planned, as I tried to get the most of my time on the continent.

Later, Aaliyah’s publicist would schedule our bowling session at New York’s Chelsea Piers; the thought was that something relaxed and informal would put us both at ease for the interview. As I waited for the logistics to get locked down, it eventually began to sink in that I was writing a cover story for Vibe. I was born in Korea and immigrated to upstate New York when I was seven, where I was an ESL student. I fell in love with writing in high school when my 11th grade English teacher asked if he could enter an essay I wrote on The Autobiography of Malcolm X in a local contest. A few months later, I received a letter saying I won first place. The grand prize was $300, which at the time was a lot for a 16-year-old. I told everyone in high school that I would write for the Source one day.

Eight years after that essay, at the age of 24, I had the chance to write a cover story for the biggest urban culture and music magazine, a place where I’d interned just four years before. It wasn’t the Source; it was Vibe. It was bigger. I was excited, of course, and more than a little nervous. We’re talking about my first cover story for Vibe, with a beloved and notoriously private artist. It’s beyond cliché to say that Aaliyah was on the brink of superstardom before her death, but that’s how folks felt about her at the time — throughout most of her career, really. She’d managed to somehow overcome the R. Kelly scandal that clouded her early in her career (a topic that was explicitly deemed off-limits for my interview); her late-’90s chemistry with Timbaland seemed akin to what Janet had with Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis a decade earlier. Even her film career was starting to take off after the success of Romeo Must Die. She landed a role in the coveted Matrix trilogy.

Photo Courtesy of Hyun Kin. Enhanced for better quality by yours truly!

Then I got the news. On the night of August 25th, 2001, friends began calling my phone repeatedly. I was at some party in Chelsea and spent most of my time in the basement, where I had no cell reception. When I stepped outside from the party, my phone buzzed incessantly, alerting me that I’d missed numerous calls and had several voicemails waiting — all saying, “Hey man, did you see the news?” It was a strange feeling to be connected to the death of someone you barely knew.

Since Aaliyah died the month the Vibe issue came out, my story became known as Aaliyah’s “last in-depth interview.” Vibe sent me on a mini press run to promote our August issue; I sat in a studio for hours, doing back-to-back interviews with radio stations across the country. (Often I was introduced as one of the last journalists to have talked to her, but I don’t think that was true. Maybe it helped sell issues, and even me as a journalist.) All of them wanted to know one thing: “What was she like?”

The thing is, my interview with Aaliyah wasn’t one of my favorites. She was friendly, but she was guarded. She blurted out, “Private life!” whenever I brushed on topics like her rumored relationship with Damon Dash. When I asked about the Roc-A-Fella Records pendant on her neck, she cooly responded, “It’s just a little symbol for a record.” Emil Wilbekin, Vibe’s editor in chief at that time, told me that Aaliyah had liked my story even though I did receive several hate mails from her fans saying that I painted her in a bad light and that I didn’t respect her privacy. That same month, I would write another “cover” story on Aaliyah; this time, it would be a tribute.

Of course, I understood her need to protect her personal space, especially after the R. Kelly drama. After all, it was Vibe that published their wedding certificate six years earlier. I knew I wouldn’t get to spend much time with her, so I loaded up on secondary interviews. I talked to her high school principal, her best friend Kidada Jones, Andy Hilfiger, Carson Daly, choreographer Fatima Robinson, her mother Diane Haughton, Queen of the Damned director Michael Rymer, and Timbaland. I even spoke with Ed McMahon, who was the host of Star Search, where a young Aaliyah had once lost. It was the most secondaries I’d ever collected for one story.

"We played Time Crisis. She shot the pink gun, me the blue one; I don’t remember how many quarters we dropped. She said she was looking forward to going home to read Harry Potter that night."

Celebrity interviews that take place during an activity like bowling sound good in theory. But often, they don’t allow you to find any rhythm with your interview subject. Especially when you have to compete for attention with their friends and bowling scoreboards. And usually, the idea for this kind of informal interview comes from their publicist or manager, not the artist.

But a fun setting does give the writer some color to play with. So after bowling, Aaliyah and I played the video game Time Crisis. She shot the pink gun, me the blue one; I don’t remember how many quarters we dropped. She said she was looking forward to going home to read Harry Potter that night.

We put our video game guns down and started walking toward the exit. I spotted a sticker booth, which was probably on the downslope of popularity in 2001. I think Aaliyah picked the theme. I have no idea where I may have stuck the missing stickers, but I’m happy I didn’t use all of them. I wish I didn’t have my sunglasses on my head. I wish I had smiled better, but truthfully I was pretty bad at doing that in photos back then. (I have no idea where I’m looking.)

And then there’s Aaliyah. Looking directly at the camera. Looking perfect. As always. Her smile looks genuine. She’s crouching down — maybe to make me look taller? We waited for the stickers to print. We hugged goodbye. I wasn’t sure if I had enough for a cover story. I wasn’t sure if I knew her any better than I did the day before. But the sticker photo would give me enough to tell this story, almost 19 years later."

(Source: https://level.medium.com/aaliyah-and-i-took-a-sticker-photo-d283209dec3)

Aaliyah: Rare Photo

🔁 via @familyfirst “@littleburger bday party at Jason Williams House #playa #ripaaliyah #kidadajones #tbt”

Wow I love this!! Thank you so much for sharing this gem in better quality! 😍🙏🏽❤ I remember seeing this shared awhile back by @blackplaya502 but it’s nice to see a clearer version of this beautiful pic! Also thanks to @favouritethingsbyazzizz for the find! 😇

Aaliyah: Rare Photo

🔁 via @kealoha.kiley who shared this gem from January last year on Aaliyah’s birthday. I think majority of us missed seeing this so I thought I would share it today to cheer up everyone! Her caption goes as follows…. “Happy Birthday to the one and only angel #Aaliyah! 😍 I wish I knew then what I know now. She had the kindest heart and prettiest smile! I wish I never lost the #NSYNC bday presents you bought me and my #RomeoMustDie pants you gave to me. Those things were priceless. 
Anyway… yeah.. once upon a time… We were coo with Aaliyah and Kidada Jones. 😌” | What a beautiful memory and image to go with it! Thank you so much for sharing! 🙏🏽💚

Aaliyah: Rare Photo

🔁 via @andyhilfiger: “Tommy Jeans Crew!” | What a throwback!!! 😩😍❤ Thank you so much for sharing! 🙏🏽💚

Aaliyah: Ice Box Launch Party (Rare Photos) June 7th, 2000

Aaliyah, @eliane.nicole, @bijouphillips and @kidadajonesog 😊😍❤ Why does this look so recent though? The quality is insane! 😍 You can view the rest courtesy of @eliane.nicole via www.poplifeproductions.com 🙌 Special thanks to @aaliyahalways for bringing these beautiful gems to my attention! 😘❤ 

Aaliyah: Fiji, 1998 (Rare Photo)

🔁 via @eliane.nicole: “Aaliyah and me in the beautiful ocean in Fiji. This was such a special trip. She rarely vacationed because she worked constantly since she was a very young girl, so it was so nice and very rare for her to have this downtime with friends. We were there for 3 weeks from December 1997, to January 1998. We rang in the new year in Fiji. Her loyal fans always hit me up asking me to share pix of her. It is so wonderful how much they love her and keep her memory alive on social media even 16 years after her passing. She never saw Facebook, IG, any of it, but I know she would be so tickled by it all and touched that her fans do daily posts and are so reverent in keeping her legacy alive! ❤️❤️#beautifulmemories #babygirl #Aaliyah” | Thank you so much for sharing with us all! 🙏💚 Love seeing Aaliyah in her braids! 😩😍❤

Aaliyah: Disco at Bret Ratners House, 2000

🔁 @eliane.nicole: “I think I posted this one before but I love it so it’s worth a repost. Here we are at the disco at Bret Ratner’s house, must be summer 2000. Pictured here:Me, @kidadajonesog , Aaliyah, @nicolerichie, and Nicole’s friend. Anniversaries really have a way of making you travel down memory lane. So many beautiful fun memories with Aaliyah. ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ btw that’s Adam 12 (@adambravin ) in the circle in the background in the DJ booth tearing it up on the ones and twos. I can’t even describe how he used to rock it at those discos. Aaliyah loved to dance the night away until sunrise, we all did. The party didn’t start until midnight. Some of the most fun parties in the history of LA parties at the Rat disco that summer. Oh the stories I have. And it was pre social media and tabloids so we could do whatever we wanted! #RIPAaliyah #babygirl” | Thank you so much for sharing your memories as well as this beautiful photo! You’re very lucky to have personally known Aaliyah and shared those fun times with her! 🙏💚

Aaliyah: Rare Photo

🔁 via @elaine.nicole Thank you so much for sharing! Aaliyah in Fiji with Kidada Jones! 🙏💚 #Aaliyah #AaliyahArchives #AaliyahDanaHaughton #AaliyahHaughton #Babygirl #Lili #Liyah #TeamAaliyah #Rare #Fiji

Aaliyah, Rashida & Kidada Jones: Rare Photo (February, 2001)

🔁 via @eliane_nicole: "Me, Rashida, Aaliyah, Kidada February 2001. Rashida’s birthday party at Belly.“ | Talk about squad goals! 😩😍❤ Such a dope pic! Thank you so much for sharing! 🙏💚 

Aaliyah & Kidada Jones: Fiji (1998)

🔁 via @eliane_nicole: "Kidada, me, Aaliyah, @therealqd3 in Fiji 1998. Can’t believe she’s been gone 14 years. Trip. Miss her so much. So lucky to have known her in her brief journey.“ | Wow….what a way to start the day! Thank you for sharing these gems with us all! 🙏💚

Aaliyah & Kidada Jones: Fiji (1998)

🔁 via @eliane_nicole "Kidada, me, Aaliyah in Fiji 1998. Miss her so much.“ | So gorgeous! 😩😍❤ Thank you for sharing! And thanks @xxbabygirlaaliyahxx for all the tags! Appreciate that! 😘❤ 

Aaliyah: Rare Photo Courtesy of 'Caroline Torem Craig'

🔁 via @nynightclubbing “Vintage 
Aaliyah with her lollipop and best friend Kidada Jones and Another popular Tommy Hilfiger model turned rapper Simon Rex I think he is Dirt Nasty now????” | Thank you for sharing! 🙏💚

Aaliyah With Gwen Stefani, Kidada Jones & Rashida Jones (Better Quality)

🔁 via @_higz #GwenStefani #KidadaJones, #Aaliyah and #RashidaJones. (📷: @patrickmcmullan) Thank you so much for the tag! Absolutely adore this better quality! 😩😍💕 This photo was taken on November 14th, 1997 where they all attended The Fifth Annual Race to Erase MS at the century Plaza Hotel in New york.

Aaliyah Archives: News

🔁 via @lilkimisbeautiful (Photo Credit 📷: @tylanol_nchill ) “I think it would be dope if the whole Bad Boy crew were to show love to #Aaliyah, a #BROOKLYN native for at least 2 shows from the tour. Not asking for much, just maybe have clips of her and BIG, of course, on the big screen behind them while they are all singing "I’ll Be Missing You” -the Ohio, August 25th show because that is the day she passed -the Detroit show since she was raised in Detroit. -the New York, NY show because she’s from NY. 
#classic #timeless #aaliyahformac #newyork #ohio#detroit #babygirl #LilKim #badboyreunion#queenbee #legend #icon #iconic #trendsetter#ORIGINAL #legendary #QueenofRap#femalerapper #rnb #rapper #rap #hiphop #music#pop #diddy #diva #badboy | I honestly think that this would be such a dope idea if it were to happen! 🙌💕 It definitely makes sense since Aaliyah was cool with all of those from the bad boy crew! I'm very curious to see other peoples opinions on this. What do YOU think? Please write your thoughts and comments below!