“Aaliyah was a pro at hearing those notes as you taught them to her, singing them back to you even better than you saying them to her,” said Craig, who co-wrote, produced and did vocal arrangments on “Let Me Know” and “Never Giving Up” for Aaliyah. “And her ear was just really dynamic. And that way that was one of the first things I saw when I first worked with her was the speed and the retention. She was very intelligent. Her mental game was crazy.”
Furthermore, Aailay’s singing style, fashion sense and charisma were so effective that “it didn’t require gospel singing voice because she had she bought style and flair and swag into a conversation that hadn’t happened yet,” King told rolling out.
Because Aaliyah was the rarest of gems, it was impossible at first for folks to comprehend that Aaliyah was taken from us at age 22 and was never going to return.
“So I think in that way, she left us high kind of hanging when she left us. We were all kind of like ‘wait, what? She’s gone? That doesn’t happen to people like you. You mean, you’re never come back? We’ll never hear another record from you? We will never see another film from you?’ So I think she left a longing in a lot of people’s hearts.”
