I t was the last weekend before Labor Day 2001, and the sidewalks of NewYork City were brimming with Saturday-night folks looking for fun.While a decade before the Meatpacking District was literally just that—with refrigerated trucks parked in front of dingy warehouses and the cobblestone streets sticky with animal blood—by the new millennium, those same blocks had transformed into a chic section of town overflowing with boutiques,restaurants,and clubs blasting the songs of summer that included P.Diddy’s Black-rock single“Bad Boy for Life”and Destiny’s Child’s pop-tart anthem“Bootylicious.” As I was passing one trendy spot, pop sensation Aaliyah’s latest single, “We Need a Resolution,” blared from the speakers.With a voice that was shy and sexy, the mesmerizing track was the first from her self-titled third album, released a month before. Produced by frequent collaborator Timbaland—whose signature cyberfunk explorations into sound put an electrifying mojo on Black radio in the mid-’90s beginning with Aaliyah’s sophomore album, 1996’s One in a Million —her cool, broken-hearted soprano blended perfectly with the heat generated from his funky, futurist machine dreams. Like Rachael, the emotional android in Blade Runner , Aaliyah became a cyborg chanteuse, a digital diva for a new generation of soul children. With the music being stuck in a rut of stylistic nostalgia and neo-soul mania, One in a Million made R&B’s potential feel limitless again, as it pulled listeners into the future.
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