The late R’n’B singer Aaliyah was one of the most esteemed mainstream vocalists at the turn of the millennium. Emerging with the help of figures such as R Kelly, Timbaland and Missy Elliott, her music sat atop the charts for years, and she was a prominent musician.
Aaliyah (real name Aaliyah Daughton) has an illustrious discography with a vast array of material, all of which is phenomenal. The singer’s debut album, Age Ain’t Nothin’ But a Number, is a classic.
Aaliyah dated and had close relationships with a number of famous acts during her career. The vocalist’s debut album was executively produced by the disgraced R Kelly, who married 15-year-old Aaliyah three months after the project’s release. A witness in one of R Kelly’s many legal battles claimed that she witnessed him sexually abuse Aaliyah when the singer was just 13 years old. However, at the time, common knowledge was they were dating.
Following R Kelly in the late 1990s, Aaliyah began dating Roc-a-Fella co-founder Damon Dash. The former Victoria’s Secret model, Natane Adcock, had set the two up and on July 2nd, 2000, Aaliyah, Dash, Jay-Z and Adcock were all photographed at Diddy’s Independence Day party.
However, Dame Dash’s relationship was public, but few know that before her death, Aaliyah was getting intimate with Wu-Tang Clan emcee Ghostface Killah. In an interview with DJ Vlad for Vlad TV, Killah’s crewmate Raekwon (real name Corey Woods) spoke about the relationship and how it played out.
Confirming to a shocked Vlad that Aaliyah was definitely aware they were dating, Raekown stated, “Word, Ghost had bagged her. And I remember we had a mansion in LA and I used to talk to Ghost a lot about, like, ‘Word, you bagged that? Yo, bring her to the lab, bring some friends over’ or whatever the case may be.”
Recalling the couple’s intimacy, Raekwon told Vlad that he saw the vocalist and his crewmate lying together in Wu-Tang’s LA mansion one day. Vividly detailing what he witnessed, Woods remembered, “One day, I guess I took a nap that day, and I was walking through the crib, and next thing you know, I seen Aaliyah. Him and Aaliyah [asleep] in a chair. I wake him up like, ‘Yo, what’s up? What’s going on?’ He was like, ‘Nah, I’m just catching some rest, though’, and I was just laughing.”
Speaking of Ghostface’s love for Aaliyah before she died, Woods concluded, “He really liked her…I think they had a little crush thing going on. A little baby crush going on, you know?”
You can watch Raekwon speak about the relationship in the video below.
