Brooklyn-born, Detroit-raised Aaliyah Dani Haughton has packed a career’s worth of work into her mere 21 years. She started young.
Recognizing talent when she saw it, Aaliyah’s mother signed her pre-schooler up for vocal training and an endless string of performance auditions (and encouraged her daughter to go with the single first-name stage name). Once in school, the pretty little girl had a singing part in all the plays and continued trying out for the big time, appearing, at age nine, on television’s Star Search. Two years later she was singing with Gladys Knight onstage in Las Vegas.

Undoubtedly talented, the youngster did get a little help along the way. Her uncle, an artistic management company CEO, introduced her to recording artist and songwriter R. Kelly, and the resulting collaboration was a hit: Only 14, Aaliyah recorded her debut album, the platinum-seller Age Ain’t Nothing But A Number, with its two Kelly-written gold singles, Back & Forth and At Your Best (You Are Love), and became an “overnight” success. European, Far East, African and North American tours followed, and, other than a few months of industry press speculation that the teenager and her older collaborator had married (rumours which both Aaliyah and Kelly eventually denied), all was well. Movie soundtrack and video contracts rolled in: Low Down Dirty Shame (1995), All That (1996), and Sunset Park (1996). The busy entertainer was a straight-A student and dance major at Detroit’s Performing Arts High School, and her pop-flavoured, up-tempo hip-hop, contemporary rhythm and blues style was in demand. Her second album, One In A Million (1996), went double platinum with its own set of number one singles (this time penned, not by Kelly, but by a selected group of writers): If Your Girl Only Knew, The One I Gave My Heart To, and Hot Like Fire. Movie soundtracks continued to feature the artist: Anastasia (1997 – Aaliyah sang the Oscar-nominated song, Journey to the Past, at the awards ceremony), Dr. Dolittle (1998), Music of the Heart (1999), Next Friday (1999), and The Nutty Professor II (2000).
Then came the big-screen acting debut. Aaliyah was cast in the “Juliette” role (“Trish” for this movie) in the kung-fu action romance Romeo Must Die (2000). She was also (of course) hired for the soundtrack and the MTV Award-winning soundtrack video.

Admired off movie and video screens as well, the hip entertainer has become a “paragon of young urban fashion” – named Seventeen magazine’s Diva For The Year 2000.
Upcoming for the singer/dancer/actor are a third solo album, and a new movie, Sparkle, that’s sure to have a soundtrack requiring the talents of its lovely young leading lady. Hardworking, focused and well-connected, Aaliyah has proved, in a few short years, that she has what it takes to stay at the top of the tough business of show business.