At the height of Jodeci’s freaky hip-hop soul ballads, the group’s mastermind, DeVanté Swing, gathered a bunch of hungry musicians from around the country and dropped them in a 24/7 writing camp. On an average day for Da Bassment crew at Dajhelon Studios in Rochester, New York, you might have found Ginuwine in one room tinkering with a track you’d recognize as his horndog classic “Pony.” In the next area, Tweet, nearly a decade before “Call Me” hit BET, recording demos with her girl group, Sugah. Down the hall, Static Major collecting the scraps that would turn into Playa’s Cheers 2 U, the if-you-know-you-know ’90s R&B gem. Maybe you’d walk into one of DeVanté’s regular songwriting competitions, almost all of which Missy Elliott won. And you’d probably spot Timbaland—with Magoo, naturally—soaking up DeVanté’s madman fusion of gospel, gangsta rap, and new jack swing while he tried to figure out how the hell he was gonna get on.
It was Missy and her effortless flips from slow jams to jiggy rap that DeVanté wanted first. Some time after their 1991 debut Forever My Lady took them from church boys to the lotharios of R&B, Jodeci made a tour stop in Virginia, and Missy, with her R&B group Fayze (later renamed Sista), snuck backstage and sang their song “First Move” for DeVanté. Impressed—and eager to follow in the footsteps of Berry Gordy’s Motown or Andre Harrell’s Uptown Records—he offered to sign them to his newly formed Swing Mob clique. Missy, who had cut her teeth at the makeshift studio in Timbaland’s Norfolk, Virginia bedroom, said she would only go if her boy who makes their beats was invited along for the ride. Quickly, DeVanté moved Missy, Tim, the rest of Sista, and a pet ferret into a two-bedroom apartment in Hackensack, New Jersey, before relocating to Rochester as Jodeci worked on 1995’s The Show, The After Party, The Hotel.
But for all the brilliance within the walls of Dajhelon Studios, not much came of it. “Pony” fell through the cracks, Sista’s debut album was shelved, and Tim only scored a few production credits here and there. DeVanté’s mythical aura glowed so brightly that even future stars struggled to get noticed. Though he was only in his mid-20s at the time, to this day his collaborators all speak about him like a musical god. “DeVanté is the most talented person I’ve ever been around,” the late Magoo said in 2015. “He could play Bach and Beethoven impeccably. He taught himself how to play guitar in two weeks. He taught himself how to use a vocoder just so he could use it on Jodeci’s “Feenin’’’ record. He was teaching himself this stuff. I was watching this guy in awe.”
The tension mounted when the Voldemort of ’90s hip-hop sunk his claws into DeVanté: Suge. It’s not clear what exactly happened, but Suge Knight didn’t maintain many relationships that weren’t exploitative. Most graduates of Da Bassment have been tight-lipped about this era, and when they do talk, it’s like they’re reading off a teleprompter. But if you believe the way Tim tells it in his 2015 memoir, The Emperor of Sound, DeVanté buckled under all of the pressure and power, and wound up running the 1990s equivalent of a toxic TikTok influencer house.
Suddenly, on an average day, you might have found DeVanté’s lackeys smacking up anyone who stepped out of line. There were private rooms with pornos on loop, copious amounts of drugs, and nameless women filtering in and out. The musicians were rarely paid and had to resort to boosting from the corner store or scrounging through Jodeci’s crumbs for a meal. Timbaland writes that DeVanté used the producers in the camp as errand boys and that he would count his change down to the penny. One night in Teaneck, New Jersey, DeVanté ordered Tim to take his girlfriend, Dana, to the store in a snowstorm. Their car swerved into a tree; she died. That was the breaking point for the members of Da Bassment: Under constant surveillance by an increasingly paranoid DeVanté, they started to defect like draft dodgers. Tim slept next to his packed suitcase until he got away.
Yet it was in this traumatizing school of hard knocks where Tim and Missy soared as a producer-songwriter duo. Missy had this uncanny ability to thread the needle between spicy party anthems and flawed character studies. “You know if you wanted something hot, you would go to Missy,” said DeVanté in a rare 2011 interview (he’s been generally off the grid for decades). Meanwhile, Timbaland absorbed the showmanship of DeVanté’s intricate arrangements and pushed his anything-goes spirit to the brink with cockeyed beats built on his own influences: Rick James ad-libs, electrofunk, East Coast hip-hop, post-Teddy Riley R&B, and more. Together it made for a deadly one-two punch, though that wouldn’t be fully recognized until one of their demos—the gooey romance of Sugah’s “Sugar & Spice,” which sounds like if the Supremes were in the Native Tongues collective—caught the ear of a teen R&B diva looking to escape the shadow of her own abuser.
R. KELLY: THE SEX, THE SOUL, THE SALES—AND THE SCANDALOUS MARRIAGE TO TEENAGE SUPERSTAR AALIYAH. That was the coverline of the December 1994/January 1995 issue of Vibe, which published the marriage certificate for the illegal shotgun wedding of R. Kelly, 27, and Aaliyah, whose age was recorded as 18, though she was actually 15. As the story goes: Barry Hankerson—Blackground Records founder, Gladys Knight’s ex-husband, Kelly’s manager, and Aaliyah’s uncle and advocate—introduced the singer to Kelly when she was 12. With a dream of blending hip-hop into the Motown soul and sacred music of her Detroit childhood, similar to what Kelly had already done on his multi-platinum 12 Play, Aaliyah began working with him on her debut album at 14 years old.
Age Ain’t Nothin’ But a Number, released in May 1994, was written, produced, and titled by R. Kelly. Hypersexualized and waveriding the tail end of the new jack swing boom, the album purposefully aged up Aaliyah’s persona while keeping the exact number blurry. Rumors of their relationship came up in nearly every interview they did, typically dressed in matching baggy outfits; Aaliyah’s eyes are usually hidden by sunglasses or the brim of a cap. The interviews are as uncomfortable to watch as the record is to listen to: impossible to separate from the context of Kelly’s pedophilia and grooming. According to the testimonies of R. Kelly’s 2021 sexual abuse trial, Aaliyah allegedly thought she was pregnant, and Kelly and his cronies bribed whoever needed to be bribed to falsify a marriage license to keep her from talking.
In the moment, the album sold over a million copies and spawned a few hits, including the Isley Brothers cover “At Your Best (You Are Love)” and the flagrantly sexual “Back & Forth,” both of which reached Billboard’s Top 10. Much of the credit went to Kelly, though: His presence and celebrity overshadowed Aaliyah’s own voice, which merged the swag of a rapper with the vocal range of a choir girl. After the word was out about the marriage, which had already been annulled, it wasn’t unusual for the public to be unsympathetic and even to blame Aaliyah for the predatory relationship. Danyel Smith’s Vibe story opens with a coldhearted scene from a Philly hair salon where the gossiping stylists don’t speak about Aaliyah as a victim, but as the little brat who wasn’t enough of a real woman for their man.
When Aaliyah received the “Sugar & Spice” demo from her label, she was 17 and in search of a resurrection. Looking to leave the Kelly era in her past and reclaim musical agency, she’d considered working with superproducers of the time like Diddy and Jermaine Dupri, but she wanted to meet with Timbaland and Missy, despite her uncle Barry’s reservations. Still waiting on their big break, Tim and Missy paused their work on Ginuwine’s debut album to fly up to Detroit. Missy urged a reluctant Tim to pitch some of the dusty hangout textures that had been their bread and butter in Da Bassment, tracks that had been sitting unused for a couple years. Aaliyah wanted something riskier, so they cooked up a sample of a style based on the vertigo bounce of work from Jersey and Rochester that had never seen the light of day. (The snippets weren’t widely available until 2011, when a demo tape, ripped from a cassette and labeled by superfans, appeared online.)
In the studio, they played Aaliyah their reference track for “If Your Girl Only Knew,” a midtempo cut with a G-funk filling and Missy’s ballbusting lyrics about a cuffed dude tryna spit game. Missy thought it might be too dirty for a teenager, but Aaliyah dug the maturity and soon laid down her own interpretation, toying with falsetto ad-libs and hanging onto syllables comically long without seeming like she’s trying too hard. Despite that, it’s slightly off-putting to sit with; impersonal and guarded, like she’s living somebody else’s life. But possibly Aaliyah recognized that in the wake of Age Ain’t Nothin’ But a Number, where every lyric came freighted with manipulation, that it was freeing to just hop on some fly shit? Or that much of the meaning in Tim and Missy’s tracks came from the sound and moods of their new-old cosmic funk, in a way that allowed her to both hide and be herself, slip in and out of costume, like a mid-period Eddie Murphy flick? Whatever it was, they kept on working together until they had created the bulk of Aaliyah’s second album, One in a Million.
Released in 1996, when Aaliyah was a 17-year-old high school senior in Detroit, One in a Million is one of the coolest and yet most impenetrable R&B albums of the 1990s. It’s especially true of the nine tracks (out of 17) produced and written by Timbaland and Missy Elliott—“If Your Girl Only Knew,” by far the weakest, was the first single—which, three decades later, still don’t sound like anything else. Over the years, so many critics have praised this album for representing the future, but I think it’s inimitable because it feels so specific to the collaborators’ current moment.
A lot of that is because of Timbaland’s beats. He has such a deep understanding of all the music he loves that he can pick through history for parts like a mechanic souping up their luxury car for the low. When the percussion tears up the sultry mood on “Hot Like Fire,” you can sense the pitter-patter of James Brown’s “Funky Drummer” pulsing through him. The laid-back extravagance of “Heartbroken” and the slow-fast grind session “Came to Give Love (Outro)” merge the stoned atmospheres of Da Beatminerz on Dah Shinin’ with Tim’s own preacherly theatricality. (“When I met him, he was ultra-religious,” said Magoo. “His mother is a God-fearing woman. She was one of the Saints in the church. She was one of those people in the church you go to for prayer.”) So does “Ladies in Da House,” where his beatboxing collides with a haphazard drum pattern that sounds like a go-go band at half speed: These beats can’t be recreated because there’s no formula. They’re the crest where a dozen different sounds, scenes, and styles are hitting all at once.
None more than the title track, which samples crickets and has herky jerk hi-hats that remind me a little of Mantronix’s sci-fi funk, while also sounding chill enough to fit in a mix between the soulful thuggin’ of Biggie’s “One More Chance” remix and Mary J. Blige’s “Real Love”—in fact I was probably introduced to “One in a Million” as a kid in the 2000s because Funk Flex regularly dropped these joints in succession. You can hear precedent for the album’s centerpiece in Da Bassment’s demos—the nature sounds of Virginia’s “Slow Drag” and the sleigh bells of “Sugar & Spice” come to mind. The ability to seamlessly weave in left-field sounds was always a DeVanté Swing speciality, like with the robotic murmurs at the beginning of Jodeci’s “Ride & Slide” or the cartoon effects in the background of their skit “Room 577,” but with DeVanté you would miss the quirks if you were half-listening. Timbaland shaped entire beats around those moments and threw them right in your face.
Of course “One in a Million” is nothing without Aaliyah. If she were just a vessel for Timbaland’s experimentation, the other Da Bassment demos would hit the same way, but they don’t because the singing is so rote and tied down in tradition. Aaliyah’s conversational vocals hang in the air like a skyhook. It’s like she’s flirting with her crush over the phone for the first time. When she does go big, it’s when you don’t expect it. “See no else,” she sings, raising her voice, then bringing it back down for “Love me like you do,” as if she’s embarrassed to finish the thought. On Missy’s debut, Supa Dupa Fly, her writing is full of swagger even when she’s going through some shit, but Aaliyah’s touch is that she brings that teenage insecurity and self-doubt out of the lyrics.
That teenage emotion isn’t something Aaliyah was able to express often. So much of the narrative about her at the time was how grown and mature she seemed to those around her, justified by a vocal range that suggested experience. “My mother always said that she feels like I always had sex appeal,” said Aaliyah in a 2001 Vibe interview, one of the only candid quotes she ever gave about the way others perceived her. “Even when I was very young, when I would take pictures, there was something sexual about me. I do feel sexy for sure. I embrace it, and I’m comfortable with it. I enjoy it.” She speaks like she doesn’t take the idea that seriously, but it is a subtle glimpse at the way her childhood was fast-forwarded to serve the family business: The music and fame of Aaliyah.
Some of the best parts of One in a Million are when she just seems like a high school student catching feelings. “A Girl Like You” is a lowkey swoonfest produced by Darren Lighty and Naughty By Nature’s Kay Gee that could have been on the Above the Rim soundtrack, and Aaliyah sounds like she’s daydreaming about some boy in class when she melts into a “When I first saw you,” even though she’s going back and forth with Treach, who is almost a decade older. I get a similar feeling from “4 Page Letter,” where Tim’s snare is as fat as some of the Marley Marl drums on Long Live the Kane as Aaliyah sends a wordy note to a boy she can’t bear to face: “I was too shy, so I decided to write.” (Tim’s outro captures the droning effect of Tribe’s Minnie Ripperton sample on “Lyrics to Go”—it rips.) And the duet “Never Givin’ Up,” with teen wailer Tavarius Polk, has the over-the-top passion of one of those couples back in school that were always making out under the bleachers.
“Never Givin’ Up” is produced by Vincent Herbert and Craig King, the first collaborators Aaliyah worked with after getting away from R. Kelly. Recording over three months in Detroit, they unlocked the gospel pupil in her. “I got chills all over my body,” King said of the first time he heard her sing in person. She has chemistry with them, unlike Jermaine Dupri and Carl So-Lowe on “I Gotcha’ Back,” because it feels like they served her an Xscape leftover, and Daryl Simmons on the Diane Warren-penned power ballad “The One I Gave My Heart To,” because Aaliyah is just too cool for a Diane Warren-penned power ballad. Herbert and King also hook her up with retro flips of Marvin Gaye and the Isley Brothers that are so lighthearted and dancey that you don’t care that she’s keeping an emotional wall up.
The constant struggle with One in a Million is that I’m never exactly sure what Aaliyah thinks. That’s not necessarily a requirement for good music, but it is the kind of thing that makes your connection to an artist deeper. In Aaliyah’s case, though, it’s understandable. She was less than two years removed from having her rape turned into tabloid fodder and gossip, while her abuser got to carry on being a superstar for another 25 years. She barely even took any time off, going right into putting together the next album, wearing smiles with obvious pain behind them, and dodging questions about Kelly every time she stepped outside until her death, in a 2001 plane crash, at 22.
But deep down, there is something personal about One in a Million anyway. It’s all in the music, especially when she’s locked in with Tim and Missy. All the weight slides off her back when she’s cooing over Tim’s bleeps and bloops on “Beats 4 Da Street” or hitting jazz lounge harmonies alongside Missy’s Hi-hi hee-hee-hee hi on “Ladies in Da House.” It’s bittersweet. Even when Missy—as Missy does—gives her a nasty bar, the point doesn’t seem to be to run away from her youth, but to imagine what those adult passions and letdowns will feel like when she gets there. I thought of those life-altering scenes in The Right Stuff of the astronauts in space for the first time, realizing the unknowable is within reach. Tim and Missy bring that stargazing out of her and she brings it out of them, too. That’s why there has never been another One in a Million, because it isn’t just about that drum, that lyric, that melody. It’s about Timbaland, Missy, and Aaliyah getting on the same wavelength at the perfect moment.
