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Eternal Soul

On the heels of her best-selling debut, Age Ain’t Nothing But a Number, fifteen-year-old Aaliyah was rocked by a sex scandal that would have crushed a lesser talent. But breaking ties with her label and former producer and paramour R. Kelly afforded the teenage singer to create a new musical life for herself. She joined forces with production/songwriting duo Timbaland and Missy Elliott, who crafted a set of funky and futuristic soul tracks that took audiences and stale R&B radio by storm. Aaliyah showed strength and resilience—and effortless cool—and went on to garner multiplatinum sales, becoming a huge star. But her comeback was short-lived. At twenty-two, just as she released her third album and started an acting career, Aaliyah lost her life in a plane crash. However, icons never die, and her musical legacy endures.

published online Wednesday, December 9, 2020 Originally published in Issue 59, Summer 2014 By Michael A. Gonzales

It was the last weekend before Labor Day 2001, and the sidewalks of New York 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.

Coming a year before Björk’s equally brilliant 1995 album Post, Aaliyah’s debut, Age Ain’t Nothing But a Number, came from a teenage girl from the D who brought the rhythmic weirdness first.

In 1995, Aaliyah Dana Haughton met Timbaland when she was sixteen after leaving her first label, Jive Records, amid much controversy of an illicit marriage to her then twenty-seven-year-old producer R. Kelly, who’d written most of the material on Age. Although both sides denied the allegations, a marriage license was later published in Vibe magazine.

While the “pied piper of R&B”—as Kelly proclaimed himself—had gained much fame since the release of his multiplatinum 12 Play album in late 1993, and was given a pass by the press and his fans, Aaliyah was portrayed as a Lolita seductress. When her picture was shown at the 1995 Soul Train Awards (she wasn’t in attendance), audience members booed.

Years later, allegations of Kelly’s alleged sexual misconduct continue to overshadow his music, including an infamous golden-shower sex tape, a housekeeper who sued him for sexual harassment, and rumors of millions doled out to settle “dozens” of “harrowing lawsuits” brought by scores of underage girls the musician reportedly sexually abused.

Although Age was a platinum-seller for Jive, the label allowed Aaliyah to be released from her contract. Her management company, Blackground, owned and operated by her mother’s brother, Barry Hankerson, who also managed R. Kelly, signed her with Atlantic Records. At the urging of Atlantic vice-president of A&R Craig Kallman (who in 2014 is the label’s chairman), Tim (aka Timbaland) flew to Aaliyah’s hometown of Detroit, Michigan, with fellow producer, songwriter, arranger, and rapper Missy Elliott.

Initially, Aaliyah’s second album was supposed to be helmed by the jiggy prince of production Puff Daddy (P. Diddy) and his trademarked, sample-heavy touch with the Hitmen team (Chucky Thompson, Deric Angelettie, Ron Lawrence, Stevie J., and others), but it never happened.

“I went to Puff’s studio in Trinidad for a week,” Aaliyah said in 1996. “We started working together, but we couldn’t finish the songs on time. I had to leave, because I had to go to Atlanta to record with Jermaine Dupri.”

Setting up shop in Detroit at Vanguard Studios, which was owned and operated by producer/guitarist Michael J. Powell, who’d overseen Aaliyah’s demo material when she was twelve, Tim and Missy went to work. “The first song we recorded was the title track [‘One in a Million’],” Timbaland told me in 1999. “From our first session, I was blown away by how talented she was.” While Missy later claimed that “If Your Girl Only Knew” was the song recorded during their first session, what remains undisputed was the closeness the trio felt during that time.

The Black noise duo christened the beautiful Brooklyn-born, Detroit-reared singer “Baby Girl,” and they became inseparable. Staying at Vanguard for a week, the three of them later flew, according to Missy Elliot, on “a little, little plane,” to Pyramid Studios in Ithaca, New York, to finish their work. The end results were the six groundbreaking tracks and two interludes from her second disc, One in a Million.

Legendary engineer Jimmy Douglass (who worked on countless Atlantic R&B classics) connected with them in Ithaca. “Aaliyah was coming off such a big debut,” he says, “so it would’ve been all right for her to be bratty, but she wasn’t. She was such a nice human being. Aaliyah was very quiet, but when she sang, she sounded great. I was impressed.”

In July 1996, a month before One in a Million was released, I interviewed Aaliyah at the Sea Grill, a restaurant at Rockefeller Plaza in New York City. Having first met her two years before, I realized that Aaliyah was always a sweetheart, yet very guarded. After a sex scandal that might’ve squashed a lesser talent, she was obviously resilient. She answered questions thoroughly but tried not to disclose too much about R. Kelly or the alleged marriage.

“I faced the adversity,” Aaliyah said. “I could’ve broken down, I could’ve gone and hid in the closet and said, ‘I’m not going to do this anymore.’ But I love singing, and I wasn’t going to let that mess stop me. I got a lot of support from my fans and that inspired me to put that behind me, be a stronger person, and put my all into making One in a Million.”

Sitting next to her equally beautiful mother, Aaliyah was radiant, coy, and confident as she talked about Tim and Missy’s production skills. “At first, Tim and Missy were skeptical if I would like their work, but I thought it was tight, just ridiculous,” she said. “Their sound was different and unique, and that’s what appealed to me.

“Before we got together, I talked to them on the phone and told them what I wanted. I said, ‘You guys know I have a street image, but there is a sexiness to it, and I want my songs to complement that’; I told them that before I even met them. Once I said that, I didn’t have to say anything else. Everything they brought me was the bomb.”

Besides Tim and Missy, she also worked with producers Kay Gee (Naughty by Nature), Daryl Simmons (L.A. Reid and Babyface), and Vincent Herbert (Toni Braxton), who laced her dope remake of Marvin Gaye’s classic “Got to Give It Up,” which featured a smooth Slick Rick rap. Aaliyah explained how the remake came about: “I wanted some real party songs, so when my uncle played me that [original track], I thought of how I could make it different. Slick Rick [who’d been in jail] was on work release at the time, so Vincent got him on the song.

“I don’t know how Marvin Gaye fans will react, but I hope they like it,” she continued. “I always think it’s a great compliment when people remake songs. I hope one day after I’m not here that people will cover my songs.” Aaliyah’s uncle and manager Barry Hankerson was the person most responsible for making his niece a star. “Barry was bringing Aaliyah to the studio to record when she was twelve years old,” remembers producer and Vanguard owner Michael J. Powell via telephone from his home in Detroit. “At the time, Barry was trying to get Aaliyah a deal with MCA, and he came to me to make her demos.”

Powell was a Chicago native whose studio, Vanguard, was a place that made sophisticated soul. Best known for the lush retro-nuevo production on Anita Baker’s incredible Rapture album in 1986, Powell has also worked with Aretha Franklin, Patti LaBelle, and Gladys Knight, who was married to Barry Hankerson from 1974 to 1978. “As a producer, Michael is a very patient person with great ears,” says Bill Banfield, composer and professor at the Berklee College of Music. A friend of Powell’s, he has also recorded with him. “Vanguard was the second generation of Motown with a live band, polished arrangements, and Detroit soul.”

Powell, who is still working in Detroit, recalls working with the singer back before her debut: “That was the time before Aaliyah went to work with R. Kelly, and she sang in a full, powerful voice that was like Whitney Houston’s. We recorded a few covers—‘The Greatest Love of All,’ ‘Over the Rainbow,’ and ‘My Funny Valentine,’ which she had sung on Star Search. She could handle big ballads, and she had great range. I have heard her do things the public have never heard. She was a natural.”

One of Aaliyah’s first professional gigs was singing with her aunt Gladys Knight in Las Vegas. “We performed at Bally’s five nights a week with a little break in between,” Aaliyah said in 1994. “Singer David Peaston [whom Hankerson also managed] opened the show, and then Gladys would bring me out to sing ‘Home’ with her, and then we did ‘Believe in Yourself.’ I loved it; for me, it was like being on tour.”

In 1996, while Aaliyah cited “One in a Million” as her favorite song, the label chose to release “If Your Girl Only Knew” as the first single. However, having debuted in 1994 with the more traditional soul stylings of R. Kelly writing and producing Age Ain’t Nothing But a Number, not everyone was pleased with the singer’s new direction.

That album broke ground with its experimental tempos and drum programming and hip-hop soul songwriting. Jason King

“Me and Tim were so excited, because this was the first production we were doing outside of DeVante’s camp,” Missy explained. In addition to Jodeci and their famed producer DeVante Swing, the aforementioned camp of young upstarts included Sista (Missy’s rap quartet), Ginuwine, Magoo, Playa, and Tweet. “We were only supposed to do one record, but Craig [Kallman] kept asking us for one more; but, when they played [the singles] ‘If Your Girl Only Knew’ and ‘One in a Million’ for radio programmers, they were afraid to embrace it. They said the beats were too different and it wouldn’t fit in with their playlist. They wanted something that sounded like Puffy.”

Still, when a few braver souls started playing the record, it just took off. “That album broke ground with its experimental tempos and drum programming and hip-hop soul songwriting,” says Jason King, cultural critic, musician, and the director of the Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music.

By 2001, Aaliyah released a handful of Timbaland-produced, soundtrack-supported singles that pushed the experimental sound even further—including the Grammy-nominated scorchers “Are You That Somebody?” from 1998’s Dr. Dolittle and “Try Again” from her costarring vehicle Romeo Must Die in 2000. As pop critic Kelefa Sanneh wrote in 2001 in the New York Times, “ ‘Try Again’ helped smuggle the innovative techniques of electronic dance music onto the pop charts, establishing Aaliyah as pop’s most futuristic star.”

The lyrics of both songs were penned by former Playa member Static Major, who also wrote “We Need a Resolution.” Like Missy and Timbaland, the songwriter was once a protégé of Jodeci producer DeVante Swing. Engineer Jimmy Douglass, who has worked side by side with Timbaland on every production since the early days, says of the late songwriter, who died in 2008 from myasthenia gravis: “Static was like a brother to Tim, and he knew exactly how to write to Tim’s music. The first record they did together was Ginuwine’s ‘Pony,’ and that led to their [musical] history.

“We recorded ‘Are You That Somebody?’ at Capitol Records’ studio in Los Angeles,” Douglass recalls, “and it was a soup-to-nuts session, which means we did the entire song in one session. Wrote it, tracked it, and mixed it from 11:00 p.m. to 9:00 a.m.; the next to last thing we added was the sound of the baby, and the very last time was Tim saying, ‘Dirty South.’ It was a union studio, so they weren’t used to working overnight; we were trying to finish that song as quick as possible.”

Douglass also engineered the “Try Again” sessions, which began with Static writing a song that was inspirational. Recorded in New York City at Sound on Sound Studios, “Try Again,” as Douglass recalls, “was originally written to inspire young people, but Barry [Hankerson] heard it and told them, ‘It’s got to be about love.’ The melody and hook were the same, so Static changed the lyrics and it became a love song.”

In addition, Aaliyah had begun an acting career that was taking off. Cast in the Joel Silver–produced kung-fu crime flick Romeo Must Die as well as the Anne Rice vampire thriller Queen of the Damned and the Matrix sequels, Aaliyah hadn’t released a full-length album in the five years. “I wanted to take a break after One in a Million to just relax, think about how I wanted to approach the next album,” she told journalist Elon Johnson that April. “Then, when I was ready to start back up, Romeo happened, and so I had to take another break and do that film and then do the soundtrack, then promote it. The break turned into a longer break than I anticipated.”

Back in the Meatpacking District that August night in 2001, I gathered with friends at the then-popular club APT where DJ Chairman Mao spun old-school hip-hop and soul as high-heeled girls sipped crimson-colored cosmopolitans.

Two hours later, a strange vibe could be felt in the wood-paneled room as folks began looking strangely at their Blackberries, pagers, and cell phones. Standing beside me, a female friend suddenly blurted, “Oh my God, it says here that Aaliyah died in a plane crash.” Seconds later, along with other women in the room, she began to weep.

The accident occurred when she and her team were returning to Miami, Florida, from the Bahamas, where she shot the video for “Rock the Boat,” the third single from Aaliyah, her third album finally released in 2001. Their small twin-engine Cessna plane was several hundred pounds overweight and crashed after takeoff, exploding on impact. The pilot was found to have had cocaine and alcohol in his system and had falsified data in order to receive his FAA license.

At the age of twenty-two, Aaliyah Dana Haughton became the latest pop star to enter that rock-and-soul heaven that the Righteous Brothers sang about so many years before. Glancing around at the crying females, most no older than Aaliyah herself, it became obvious to me that she was much more than a star—she was one of them.

Harlem resident and former Jive Records executive Jeff Sledge, who had known the songstress since she was a fifteen-year-old schoolgirl, had returned from the movies with his fiancée when he heard the news. “It was supposed to be hip-hop night on Hot 97, but they were playing a mix of Aaliyah songs instead,” he recalls thirteen years later. “And then [DJ] Red Alert announced that she had died. I was stunned.”

Of course, he wasn’t the only one. For days, the world mourned the young star with television specials, radio interviews with her contemporaries and friends, and a candlelight vigil in front of her alma mater, the Detroit High School for the Fine and Performing Arts. Furthermore, her stunning movie-star features were plastered on the covers of newspapers and magazines.

Although she had the looks of a femme fatale, she was a sweet girl who’d been forced to grow up much too fast and died too young. However, as we all know, icons never die, because the images are forever. In her short lifetime, Aaliyah must’ve had her picture taken a million times, made countless videos, and created music that is still relevant to fans as well as to fellow pop idols Beyoncé, Drake, Chris Brown, Rihanna, and others.

“There are so many artists trying to re-create the Aaliyah vibe in their music,” says singer Courtney Noelle, who was in seventh grade when the Black pop princess died. Growing up on the East Side of Pittsburgh, Noelle made up dances to “One in a Million” while watching the video constantly. “Aaliyah was so relatable and cool; she wasn’t over-sexualized, so we didn’t worry about Mom disapproving,” Noelle continues. “She sang, danced, and acted, but she did it all so effortlessly. She was just so beautiful and graceful.”

While One in a Million was a landmark, the adolescent wonderfulness of Age Ain’t Nothing But a Number is often overlooked when Aaliyah’s small canon of work is examined. Of course, as Jason King points out, “Age has been marred by their troubling marriage and the [statutory] rape/pedophilia allegations that would come later. I don’t think we can now hear Age, particularly given the title, without taking the issue of teenage rape into account. So when I’m listening to Age, I’m struggling to try to listen to it out of context, but mostly I’m hearing R. Kelly as an alleged predator presenting to us his sonic and musical vision of how he wanted Aaliyah to exist in the commercial marketplace.”

Still, for me, Age Ain’t Nothing But a Number connects with many memories of the ’90s soul years that gave us debuts from Mary J. Blige, Jodeci, D’Angelo, Faith Evans, Maxwell, Erykah Badu, and the era’s most successful singer, writer, and producer, Robert Sylvester Kelly.

In 1991, R. Kelly and Public Announcement signed to Jive Records a few years before Britney Spears and the Backstreet Boys took them mainstream. Better known for being the home of top-tier hip-hop acts A Tribe Called Quest, Boogie Down Productions, Schoolly D, and E-40, the Jive label was put into the business of soul by the success of Kelly’s post–New Jack Swing sound on Born into the 90’s and 12 Play.

“Barry Hankerson had been talking about his niece Aaliyah since she was twelve, but [label owner Clive Calder] thought she was too young,” says A&R man Jeff Sledge, who began working at the label in 1992. “When she turned fourteen, Clive agreed, but only under the condition that R. Kelly produced the whole album. Musically, it just made sense.”

For Robert Kelly, 1993 was a hell of a year. A bittersweet twelve months that included a substantial development in his R&B sound, the death of his beloved mother, Joanne, and the success of his album 12 Play, which was praised by critics and fans alike. It was also the year he began working on the material that would eventually become Age Ain’t Nothing But a Number.

Although R. Kelly attempted to uphold his Chi-Town swagger after the death of his mother, the man was a mental mess. There were bizarre reports of the singer locking himself in hotel bathrooms during press days, blowing off Rolling Stone photo shoots, and sleeping in the closet. “His mother was the sweetest lady,” Jeff Sledge says. “When she died, he had a nervous breakdown. During that time, he was also making Age, so Aaliyah was always around to comfort him. After his mother’s passing, all he felt he had left in life was his music and working with Aaliyah.”

R. Kelly’s love for music began when he was a fifteen-year-old student at Chicago’s Kenwood Academy where he encountered famed music instructor Lena McLin. The niece of gospel innovator Thomas A. Dorsey, she taught her students opera, gospel, jazz, and soul. As a child growing up during the Depression, she lived with Reverend Dorsey and played in church. While other girls wanted dolls, Lena McLin wanted sheet music.

McLin taught R. Kelly everything she knew about the keyboards, pushing him by anointing her student “the next Stevie Wonder.” Encouraging the poor lanky boy from the South Side to put down his basketball and sit at the piano, she started him writing songs as well as teaching him discipline. “He didn’t have much,” McLin explained to me in 1995 in a Chinese restaurant in the Hyde Park section of Chicago. “He came from a terrible ghetto and sometimes wouldn’t have the clothes the other kids had, but I had a vision of what he was going to be. The Lord told me he was a genius, and I wouldn’t take no for an answer.”

So, what exactly is a genius? “A genius lives in the present day, has studied the past, and preconceived the future,” explained McLin. “Robert’s mission is to bring back the real essence, the real creativity, the real soul to the music.” Although Robert dropped out of Kenwood when he was seventeen, he already had five hundred completed songs in his portfolio, according to McLin. “Well, I don’t think it was five hundred, but it was a lot,” R. Kelly told me in 1995 while mastering his third album at the Chicago Recording Company (CRC). Founded in 1975, it is billed as the largest studio in the Midwest. The studio became R. Kelly’s main sound factory in the early years.

For R. Kelly, the state-of-the-art room became the rhythmic cathedral where he would expand on the musical legacy of Windy City soul—his city where the Chi-Lites once doo-wopped on street corners, Leroy Hutson made gangster-lean tracks for Curtom, and a young rapper named Common was recording his Resurrection album somewhere across town.

“Miss McLin started me writing every day,” Kelly said. “I’d write a song and she’d tell me it was the most beautiful song she’d ever heard. She also started me messin’ around with the piano. I just wanted to make her happy.” Growing up in the notorious Ida B. Wells Homes, Kelly found those streets a lot more dangerous than the days of Cooley High.

“I had a lot of ups and downs, lots of lessons, and trials and tribulations,” Kelly said. Avoiding the gangs, he spent much time at a neighbor Willie Pearl’s house playing her keyboards. One of the first songs he wrote, “Orphanage,” was inspired by a television program. Singing in L stations throughout the city, he waited for strangers to drop change in his chitlin bucket.

Kelly was discovered by house-music pioneer and former Trax Records employee DJ Wayne Williams. After seeing him perform original material at a friend’s barbecue, Williams had to convince his new bosses at Jive Records to sign him: “I was constantly telling them that R. Kelly was the shit, but it took Barry Weiss, the president of the label, coming to Chicago, before they finally said yes. Jive had full confidence in him and gave R. Kelly creative freedom.” While Kelly’s debut, Born into the 90’s, sounded as though it was jacked wholesale from the Teddy Riley/Aaron Hall school of Harlem boogie, by the time 12 Play came out in 1993, the brother had perfected a baby-makin’ style on tracks “Bump N’ Grind,” “Your Body’s Callin’,” and the epic erotica of “It Seems Like You’re Ready.”

Additionally, the album’s more danceable tracks, “Summer Bunnies” and “I Like the Crotch on You,” showed his dance-floor diversity. Still, whether the tempo, Kelly’s lyrics were often sexually explicit, filled with lustful references and obvious double entendres. “He grabbed the brass ring by stepping fully into the role of hypersexual super-stud,” Jason King says. “That’s an archetype in Black music that stretches very far back and that Isaac Hayes took to new heights in the early 1970s. Songs on 12 Play were very much musical analogues of the celebration of Black, freaky, and carnal culture in the 1990s.”

Soon afterwards, Kelly began applying his newly developed, smoothed-out, seductive sounds to singles for Hi-Five (“Quality Time”) and Changing Faces (“G.H.E.T.T.O.U.T.”), and was more than ready to tackle a full-album project for his manager’s niece. “With the flair and energy he puts into his music, we can feel it,” McLin said. “Even when working on songs for others, he touches all the talent he comes in contact with; Robert’s mission is to bring soul music back.” Inspired by an extensive list of vocalists, musicians, and producers including Quincy Jones, Donny Hathaway, Curtis Mayfield, and Tyrone Davis, he turned himself into an R&B auteur on the Age Ain’t Nothing But a Number project.

R. Kelly was determined to become a one-man Holland-Dozier-Holland with a splash of Phil Spector eccentricity to keep things interesting. “Age was solely an R. Kelly production intended to not only introduce us to Aaliyah, but to show off R. Kelly’s polymath awesomeness,” says King. “It’s hip-hop soul in the way that Mary J. Blige, Xscape, and SWV fused those genres. But, Aaliyah embodied the hip-hop soul merger in a different way. She had the sweet, soothing, and slightly reserved soprano more associated with Diana Ross, Minnie Riperton, or Janet Jackson. I don’t think any producer understood what contemporary R&B audiences wanted to hear and pushed them further in the 1990s more than R. Kelly.”

In the summer of 1993, with Aaliyah on break from the Detroit High School for the Fine and Performing Arts, she spent her entire vacation holed up inside the CRC. “The first song we recorded was ‘Old School,’ which I loved, because it had an Isley Brothers flair,” Aaliyah said. “That song didn’t take long to do, maybe two days. At first, I had to get comfortable, but I had been around Robert, so it was cool. Both Robert and I are perfectionists, and if you listen to the music, there is a lot of passion in it.”

Like Batman, one of his favorite comic book characters, R. Kelly worked best at night. “Most people are asleep, so it’s just the moon, the stars, the quiet, and the music.” Subsequently, the nights spent with the underage singer led to Kelly’s first accusations of statutory rape when an alleged affair began between them. Although there was a twelve-year age difference, the affair supposedly led to marriage, which paved the way for scandal and an annulment. While R. Kelly and Aaliyah always denied these accusations, the man who wrote the title track to Age tellingly said, “I write from everyday experiences and what moves me; that, to me, is a true writer. I love all forms of music. Everything that comes into my mind and hits my heart, I write it and record it. I love songs that mean something, and have some kind of truthfulness to them.”

Photographer Terrence A. Reese (aka Tar), who shot the album covers for 12 Play and Age, recalls that during the shoot “Aaliyah relied on Robert to teach her. He was like Berry Gordy to her Diana Ross. The following day was her fifteenth birthday, and she was also going to film the ‘Back & Forth’ video, so they were working on the dances and styling. You could see the attraction between R. Kelly and her.”

Turning back the hands of time to Good Friday, 1994, I was on a flight from New York City to Detroit to interview Aaliyah. Hired by Jive Records publicist Lesley Pitts, who was also my girlfriend, I was assigned to write the budding singer’s bio. Having worked with TLC and Toni Braxton on their debuts, Lesley was excited about the teenager’s pop potential.

Aaliyah’s first single, “Back & Forth,” was already being played on the radio and video channels. Unlike the broken-glass balladry of Mary J. Blige, which was hard as the Yonkers ghetto she hailed from, Aaliyah’s voice had a soft strength that reminded me of the Black pop women (Dionne Warwick, Marilyn McCoo, and Barbara McNair) I’d grown up listening to in the ’70s.

For weeks, Lesley had been bragging that this new kid was going to be large; after hearing a few tracks, including “At Your Best (You Are Love),” her lovely cover of the Isley Brothers’ ballad, I was hooked. “I like to groove to artists like Parliament or the Isley Brothers, because that was when music was really real,” Aaliyah said later that day. “I just think the Isley Brothers are so unique.”

After my jet landed in the Motor City, I took a short cab ride to the Sheraton Hotel and within minutes was sitting in the dining room with Aaliyah, her mother Diane, and Lesley. Dressed casually in jeans and sneakers, Aaliyah wore her shades, but soon took them off as she became more comfortable with me. “When I was younger, I used to go around the house singing with my mother,” Aaliyah said, her voice poised and proper.

Coming from a middle-class family, she was a product of nice schools and an artistic yearning that was encouraged with classes. “I’m a big fan of Johnny Mathis, so I used to sing ‘Chances Are’ with my mom. Luther Vandross was another favorite. I was so drawn to singing, because I could get away from everything, and I just loved it.”

Uncle Barry first introduced Aaliyah to R. Kelly when she was twelve. “He was just completing Born into the 90’s, and I sang for him,” she smiled, her voice lightening. “I sang for him, and he liked what he heard. Still, we didn’t start working on the album until a few years later.”

Arriving first in January of ’93, when there was snow on the ground, Aaliyah returned in the summer, and their relationship clicked in the studio. “We vibed off of one another, and that’s how the songs was built,” she said. “He would vibe with me on what the lyrics should be. He’d tell me what to sing, and I’d sing it. That’s how the whole album was done. We put in a lot of hours; as far as the music, we’d be in there all night making sure it was perfect. There were times when I was tired, but I knew I had to push on if I wanted to come off.”

When the two weren’t recording, they’d be in the studio watching horror movies. “Silence of the Lambs was my favorite,” she said. “The studio can be hectic, so sometimes we went to McDonald’s.”

While some of the Kelly’s double entendres could be embarrassing, Aaliyah defended “Back & Forth,” a song whose title hints of sex. “It’s not a song about love or whatever; it’s about going to a party and having fun. I have songs about love, crushes, or whatever, but that song is about dancing. This album is about teens and what they go through.” One of the more forward crush records was the sensually upbeat “No One Knows How to Love Me Quite Like You Do.” Aaliyah smiled when I asked about it and said, “Every girl looks for that one person who is going to love them right. That song is saying, when it comes down to it, I like how you satisfy me.”

Months before Age was released on May 24, 1994, the stylish Millicent Shelton–directed clip for “Back & Forth” was shot at Aaliyah’s performing arts school in Detroit, where teens were recruited to be in various scenes. “That was my first video, but Millicent made me comfortable.” Between takes, she listened to the music of Tupac, Wu-Tang, and Gang Starr. “They all rap on an intellectual level.”

In the studio, she was a sponge who later spoke about her aspirations to produce and write: “When we were recording ‘Down With the Clique,’ I watched how Robert [Kelly] laid the drums and everything. He taught me to play the piano a bit, and I’m also trying to learn the mixing board, though it looks complicated. The studio is my first love.”

After wrapping the interview, Lesley and I went upstairs to our hotel room. Once inside, I turned to her and bluntly stated, “I know this sounds crazy, but I get the feeling R. Kelly is sleeping with that girl.”

Looking at me as though I was losing my mind, Lesley was appalled. “Why would you say something like that?”

“It’s just a feeling I get.”

“Well, it’s not true, so don’t say that,” she scolded, more protective publicist than loving girlfriend. Of course, a few months later, the entire sordid story became yet another tale in the Babylon that is the music industry that eats its young.

In 2013, journalist Jim DeRogatis, who broke the R. Kelly sex scandal in 2002, told the Village Voice, “I had Aaliyah’s mother cry on my shoulder and say her daughter’s life was ruined. Aaliyah’s life was never the same after that.”

Six days after the disaster that ended Aaliyah’s life as well as the lives of the pilot and seven members of her team, I sat in my Brooklyn apartment watching footage from Aaliyah’s funeral on Entertainment Tonight. There were images of the white horse-drawn carriage that carried her casket from Frank E. Campbell Funeral Chapel to St. Ignatius Loyola Church on East Eighty-Third Street in Manhattan.

After the funeral, in front of thousands of fans, twenty-two doves representing the years of her life were released in front of the church as her mother Diane, father Michael, older brother Rashad, Uncle Barry, and fiancé Damon Dash cried. The only person missing, for obvious reasons, was R. Kelly.

Six years before—just a year removed from his notorious split with Aaliyah—R. Kelly sat inside his studio at CRC telling me about producing for other artists, including Michael Jackson (“You Are Not Alone”) and Kelly Price (“Friend of Mine”). “I have many styles,” he said. “I’m more than just the 12 Play guy. I don’t write one kind of thing.”

Looking at him closely, I asked, “If there was just one person you could work with right now, who would it be?” Without hesitation, he held his head high and shamelessly answered, “Aaliyah.”

#aaliyah #Aaliyah's musical legacy endures

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jungle-angel · 1 year

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Out in the Middle: Part 13

Summary: Thanksgiving is approaching and the kids are excited as ever

Yellowstone Waldorf School

November, 2022

Ms. Jackson’s third grade classroom was as busy as ever with students tending to their class project, their fingers sticky with glue and tape residue. Some were busy cutting yarn or small squares of leather or felt while others carefully tied together little sticks and twigs they had found outside before covering their little structures with carefully cut pieces of canvas. Outside it was already snowing, the ground completely frozen and the trees bare of any leaves, but the classroom was as warm and welcoming as ever.

“Ms. Jackson?” Amy asked. “Can you help me?”

“Ok baby, what’d you do?” Ms. Jackson asked.

“I can’t tie a slipknot very well.”

“Here, let me see for a sec honey.”

Amy handed off the ball of twine to Ms. Jackson, Colby’s mother, and her absolute favorite teacher. “Ok baby,” Ms. Jackson said. “Watch my fingers now. Remember when we were doin our handwork this morning?”

Amy nodded. She watched her teacher’s nimble fingers forming and tying the knot slowly before she had Amy try it herself. It might not have been perfect, but Amy managed to get the idea pretty quickly.

“Ok, put’em together,” Tate told her. “I’ll hold it.”

Amy put the small bundle of sticks together, putting the slipknot around it before pulling it tight. “What are we gonna do when we build the longhouse?” she asked him.

“We could do what we did when we did our Veterans’ Day projects,” Tate told her.

“But what if they don’t all fit?” Amy asked.

“I dunno,” Tate shrugged. “We’ll find something.”

Amy, Tate and the other two students they were working with, began to put the canvas over the little teepee they had built before putting a little table in place. “This is gonna look so cool once it’s done,” Tate grinned.

“I wish we could show our moms and dads for tomorrow,” Dante Gonzales remarked.

“It’s ok,” Tate said. “Living Museum is on Monday in the gym so we’ll get to show them anyways.”

They all worked together as best they could, placing the little Pilgrim and Indian figures they had made wherever they chose. If it was anything they loved about being in school, it was when their Living Museum block took place, putting dioramas and displays together with materials that were found both on the school grounds and in the local craft stores.

When the sound of an old hand-bell ringing in the hallways signaled the end of the day, that was everyone’s cue to clean up. “Alright my friends,” Ms. Jackson announced. “Everybody clean up and put your chairs on your desks. If ya’ll took materials from the art shelves, please return them where they were found.”

The diorama pieces were all put in the art corner on small tables where none of the pieces would be damaged. Everyone helped clean up the floors, sweeping, brushing off their desks and wiping them down with the microfiber cloths Ms. Jackson kept in the supply closets. The wood of the chairs clunked against the wood of the desks as students put them up and went to the cubby rack for their coats and backpacks, a few of them slipping into warm winter boots, hats and mittens.

“Alright my friends,” Ms. Jackson announced. “Bus line, if ya’ll have the yellow tags on your backpacks you’re gonna follow me to the gym. Car-line is gonna go and follow the others out the front.”

Tate, Amy, Dante and four other students with yellow tags hooked to their backpacks, followed their teacher to the gymnasium where other students from the lower school and the upper school began to file in. Hannah’s second grade class came in with Evie and Joey close behind her while Tatum and Tanner each came in with Jake and the first graders. Kaya and Rosey were the last to come in with their pre-k class, sticking out from many of the others with their pink and purple coats, warm ugg boots and Disney princess backpacks.

The Dutton and Abbott kids all scrambled towards each other and took a seat against the walls, the noisy and excited chatter echoing in the gym. Everything seemed to echo in the school that had once been the old stone Presbyterian church, the footsteps in the halls, the chatter and even the crickets that sometimes found their way into the halls.

Attendance was promptly taken by the teachers for each group. The high schoolers who still took the bus went out first seeing as many of them had opted to be bus monitors. After what felt like forever, the buses of the kids were called and they could go home.

******************

“Oh c’mon where’s the friggin bus, I’m freezin my ass off,” Rhett complained, trying to keep the blood flow in his body going.

“Takes’em forever to get up the friggin hill,” Kayce remarked.

“If they say they wanna come outside and play after, we can just watch from the windows,” Rip suggested.

“I’ll fuckin do it I don’t care,” Teeter chuckled as Colby put his arm around her. “Sick o’ freezin ma bag ass off anyways.”

Much to their relief, the bus finally pulled up and let the kids off. Colby’s niece and two nephews jumped off the last step, running behind the Abbott and Dutton kids who were all screeching about how cold it was.

“Alright monkeys!” Rhett called to them. “Everybody in the truck, we’re goin in the house.”

Into the vehicles they all went, loading up their backpacks and kicking the snow off their shoes before the doors were shut. “Who had a good day at school?” Rhett asked as they turned around and went up the long stretch of driveway to the house.

“Me!!!”

“I did! I did!”

“What’d ya’ll do?”

“We’re doing our living museum,” Amy answered.

“What’s that?”

“We build dioramas and we put them up in the gym to make a museum.”

Rhett patiently listened to their chatter as the others followed him up the driveway, the big house beginning to come into view. The snow was beginning to fall even harder, the snowflakes big, fat and wet as they fell and covered the ground.

Rip was the last to pull up behind them and park it with the others. As soon as their feet hit the ground, the kids ran for the porch, opening and shutting the door behind them. Tatum blew a raspberry at Tanner before slamming the door behind him, attempting to lock his twin out.

“Hey!! Tatum Royal! Let your brother in right now,” Rhett commanded.

“Sorry daddy.”

Everyone shuffled in, tired from the day and the cold. The fire crackled away in the fireplace as the kids stamped their shoes off and hung up their backpacks. “Daddy can we watch a movie?” Hannah asked.

“Go right ahead, it’s the weekend so ya’ll get your movie time.”

Hannah let out a wild holler as she followed the others down to the basement to search the video tape rack for a movie. Rhett flopped into the couch and let out an obscene groan before he felt you sliding your way on top of him.

“Hey cowboy,” you purred.

“O darlin can it wait?” he groaned. “I’m fuckin freezin.”

“Want me to make you something?”

“Got any cider?”

“I’ll make you a hot one in a minute,” you said, placing a soft kiss on his freezing cheek. His arms snaked around you, holding you as close as he possibly could, breathing in your scent as his face reddened from the heat that rose into his cheeks.

“You and the girls takin care of business tomorrow?” he mumbled.

“As soon as we get that damn turkey,” you answered.

Rhett had almost completely forgotten about the turkey hunt he had promised to go on with the guys. “How many are we gonna need?”

“Well counting on how many people are in this house I’d say about three.”

“We’ll get what we can,” Rhett told you. “For now I wanna rest.”

You weren’t going to deny him that. The two of you lay there on the couch with the fire going, the kids out of sight and everyone else going about their business. You pulled the Indian blanket from where it had been hanging over the back of the couch and threw it over you and Rhett, his quiet snores filling your ears before you too soon drifted off into sleep.

#outer range #yellowstone #rhett abbott #rhett abbott x reader #rip wheeler #kayce dutton #teeter and colby #tate dutton #amy abbott

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vague-humanoid · 2 years

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disappointmentpastry · 3 years

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Philippine Dark Academia

In this tropical country, the weather kindly turns from a cool humid wet season to a scorching summer. Thus, the Dark Academia trend of tweeds and wool is hardly suitable. So what is Philippine Dark Academia?

To me, PH DA is the terno you wear for Buwan ng Wika, the little steps you make in your treasured bakya when you walk into school to celebrate your culture.

PH DA is hot coffee on hellishly heated afternoons with mango and shrimp paste as we scour the works of Balagtas in the late afternoon sun.

PH DA is the rumble of capiz-inlaid sliding windows in homes of the Spanish-colonial style period, slightly rattling but calming, in perfect harmony to the early morning calls of peddlers selling sticky rice treats like suman or sapin-sapin.

PH DA is writing in our old writing system, the one in place before the colonizers came. So that we don't forget what has already been forgotten.

PH DA is the songs in our native dialects, calling for many things, that once in the past we asked from the spirits, now we ask from religious faith.

PH DA is unlike the western Dark Academia.

Our Dark Academia clothes are not of wool and tweed but of light cotton and linen, not in dark tartan patterns but in bright skirts that look almost like picnic tablecloths. PH DA is not simple pearl studs or tiny diamonds; we wear antiques worn by our grandmothers, carefully preserved crosses, fragile gold, and pearl drop earrings, well carved and bright gold bangles, and even heavy necklaces with weighty pendants.

That is Philippine Dark Academia, and I love it.

Image from: Gonzales, G. (n.d.). Dela Cruz, Juan. possibly “Anding”, ca. 1920s, postcard. [Photograph found in Ramon Villegas Collection, From Fashionable Filipinas: An Evolution of the Philippine National Dress in Photographs 1860-1960, Manila]. Retrieved from https://fashionandrace.org/database/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/11/3_supporting-image-1-scaled.jpg

#dark academia #dark aesthetic #philippines #tweed #wool #traditionaljewellery #traditionalwear #heritage #aesthetic #baro't saya #maria clara #terno #colonial history #colonialism

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armory-rasa · 4 years

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So you said that tan cote worked for the other people, but not for you? What happened? Is there a difference in the way to apply it?

Okay, so this was the video that persuaded me to give Tan Kote another chance, because Don Gonzales is a well-known, very legit leatherworker and his results more than speak for his process.

(There are a lot of people who work with leather that, when we have a disagreement, I can look them in the eye and be like, Stand down, I know better than you do, but he’s not one of them. Him, I’m sitting back and taking notes.)

He’s also the only person who’s been able to articulate why one would ever want to use tan kote over something waterproof like resolene: because what he makes is saddles, and leather that sees lots of outdoor use has to get oiled regularly to keep it from cracking, and you can apply oil over tan kote and (given 24 hours to sink in) it will permeate.

...Which is great for saddles, and I am glad to have learned that factoid for future reference, but that doesn’t mean tan kote is the best for what I want to do.

Anyway, the two main differences that made my wallet go wrong:

1 -- The highlight he was using was Fiebings antiquing paste. That is my highlight of choice, it’s what I wanted to use for this project, but apparently my local Tandy doesn’t carry it in black, and I didn’t have time to wait for an online order to arrive. So I used the Eco-Flo (UGH, when will I learn) antiquing gel, but as you could probably guess from the “gel” vs “paste” nomenclature, is a whole lot more liquidy than the Fiebings product. Tan kote can resist small amounts of moisture, but having a load of Eco-Flo gel dumped on it was too much, and it started to dissolve again, whereas it could have stood its ground against the Fiebings paste.

2 -- He wasn’t trying to keep the leather from resisting ALL the highlight color. He was applying a brown highlight to undyed leather, with the expectation that some of it was going to stain the leather surface, and he was okay with that -- that was the game plan. His target color combo was brown-on-brown.

Meanwhile, I was trying to apply black highlight to blue leather, and I wanted the flat surfaces of the leather to be absorbing nothing of the highlight, as close to zero as possible -- but tan kote dissolves in water, the surface gets sticky and/or dissolves, and suddenly you have way more of the highlight clinging to the leather than you wanted. And if your goal is “brown, with darker brown in the tooling” then it might be fine, but if you want zero of your highlight muddling your main color, then you need a resist that is way more waterproof than tan kote, the end. I recommend resolene.

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anntaylor1 · 3 years

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How air purifiers and humidifiers sway your wellbeing?

Air purifiers and humidifiers diversely affect air quality that can influence our wellbeing. Here are probably the most well-known conditions:

Asthma and hypersensitivities – Some air purifiers are intended to diminish allergens noticeable all around, for example, dust bugs, pet dander, dust or shape spores. Many individuals who experience the ill effects of sensitivities or asthma utilize an air purifier to decrease their openness to these triggers. These allergens are carried on particles skimming noticeable all around, frequently so little they become suspended for quite a long time at a time. Customary air channels catch these particles, while the Molekule air purifier is the solitary innovation that can successfully annihilate allergens.

Humidifiers, then again, no affect allergen levels. All things considered, they might help manifestations feel less serious if your nasal sections are dry and aggravated. Note that humidifiers don't lessen sensitivity or asthma side effects, and they may even expand the danger of hypersensitivities and asthma (Svendsen, Gonzales and Commodore, 2018). Besides, if a humidifier isn't as expected cleaned, it can foster shape and really bring mold spores into the air, setting off hypersensitivity and asthma side effects.

Colds, influenza and respiratory bothering – Common air purifiers catch particles noticeable all around, however a few particles that convey infections are so small they can go through ordinary air channels. However an air purifier can't help a current cold, it may facilitate your side effects by eliminating other respiratory aggravations from the air.

As indicated by the NIH, a humidifier may assist with assuaging a stodgy nose and the distress of colds or influenza. The right degree of mugginess may likewise give a defensive profit with infections. As indicated by a few investigations (Lapidus et al., 2013), expanding the dampness noticeable all around to a scope of 40-60 percent decreases the irresistibleness of infections. Comprehend that a humidifier can't fix you once you are now debilitated, however can make side effects less hopeless by forestalling dry, scratchy nose and throat.

Dry air – An air purifier doesn't add dampness to the air, so it won't assist with exorbitantly dry air, which can compound a scope of respiratory diseases, including asthma, bronchitis and sinusitis.

A humidifier expands the dampness noticeable all around, in this way expanding relative stickiness and further developing dry cools. At the point when the air is excessively dry, frequently during winter when the radiator is on, it can aggravate your nose and throat.

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anandashreeastrology · 3 years

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July 1-Mars opposite Saturn Feeling frustrated? Over heated by an inner fire? Stay calm, #Pitadosha is enflamed now. Deadly high temperatures have swept across North America, as fiery Mars has aligned with a hard cruel gaze of Saturn. Simultaneously disruptive Uranus is at the midpoint between them, increasing their high-pressure potency and enflaming tempers everywhere. This is a particularly tense astrological alignment that may feel frustrating, awkward or sticky. There may be a lot to do, and no clear action plan. Stay cool, non-reactive, and keep things as simple as possible. Things will get done, one step at a time. Warrior Mars is now positioned in the entangling star of the snake, ASHLESHA, a tantric star of healing, magic and inner-work. There’s an inward pull for self-protection now, that may feel at odds with a desire for connectivity and love, as Venus and Mars join in July. Issues around trust, creativity and power are unfolding in the weeks to come-- especially following the new moon of July 9. Sign up for free Full and New moon forecasts to find out more. Link in bio @anandashree_vedic_astrology Art by Andrew Gonzales #vedicastrology #jyotish #jyotishastrology #vedicastrologer #vedicspirituality #nakshatra #ashlesha #saturnretrograde #marstransit #kuja #ayurveda #spiritualawakening #yogaart #kundalini #tantrichealing #vedicremedies #energyhealing #venustransit #yogacalm #healingmagic https://www.instagram.com/p/CQxUe1VH15o/?utm_medium=tumblr

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carinagonzales · 4 years

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Dear future interns,

First off, congratulations on reaching your internship! You’ve managed to get this far and now it’s time for a small peek at what lies ahead in the future -- post studies.

You’re probably wondering about where to go, what to do, how to make friends, basically how to survive. I have three tips for you.

1. Make a list

I know it’s a bit of a pain to do some times (a lot of the time) but trust me when I say it helps. If you’re a bit of a forgetful kind of person like me or you tend to forget what you’re supposed to do when you stare at a screen, have a list helps. Whether it’s on your phone or a small sticky note (that you’ve probably rewritten several times because you keep on forgetting to add this and that), having a visual reminder of what you need to do helps keep you on track. Don’t forget to check and then double check that list. If the list involves another person, maybe to perform a daily task, ask if it’s correct and have them check and then double check the list. This is a crucial step and it is 100% worth the extra 5 minutes of your time.

2. The customer is always right... to a point

They say that the customer is always right, but that statement is only correct to a certain degree. No matter what industry you’re in, it’s always important to listen to your guest and try to exceed their expectations with their wants and needs. BUT if the situation gets out of hand and they try to harass you, say for a ~~~~~discount~~~~~, you may “politely debate” and ask any of your fellow coworkers or managers to back you up and help fix the situation. Which leads me to my last tip...

3. Ask for help.

Let’s face it, just because you’ve been taught in class everything that’s supposed to be done and you’ve received high remarks for said subject, doesn’t mean you know it all. OOF MAJOR EGO STRIKE BUT HEY IT’S TRUE. It’s okay to ask for help, in fact, it’s highly welcomed -- just don’t abuse it by constantly asking for help to the point where you’re just being lazy, that won’t get you anywhere. Your internship has probably got to be the biggest learning curve you have before stepping into the actual industry. It’s one of the biggest chances you’ll ever have to absorb so much information that will definitely help you decide a career path in the future, so take advantage of that and use this opportunity wisely; and if you ever feel like you’ve hit a road block of some sort during your internship, just as for help. In the words of Albus Dumbledore, “Help will always be given at Hogwarts to those who ask for it”.

There you have it. Three tips to help you survive internship. If you need more advice, have questions, or just want to talk, always remember that we’re here. Whether it be your professors, fellow students, and even alumni. We want to see you excel as much more than you think we actually do, after all, when we’re done with all of this you’re next.

Stay safe, stay clean, and don’t forget where you came from.

Stay Feliz!

- Ma. Carina D. Gonzales

#ToFutureInterns

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lovecircuitscomic · 7 years

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WE’RE BAAAAAAAAAACK!!!! Can you guess what’s in the box???

Hey everyone, we hope you enjoyed the guest art! Me and Genué have been working hard as the finale of con season approaches us once again :)

Just a heads up Genué is at SacAnime THIS weekend at table AA I12

Meanwhile we’ll both be attending Rose City Comic Con the following weekend. I’ll be at table D-11 and Genué will be at E-05. Come say hi and let us know you read the comic, and you might go home with something extra fun and sticky ^_-

EDIT: I also forgot to mention, ELEMENTS: Fire is nominated for 2 IGNATZ awards. OUTSTANDING ANTHOLOGY and OUTSTANDING STORY!

Congratulations to Maddi Gonzales for Too Hot To Be Cool which was published inside of ELEMENTS: Fire!!!

Also I was on the amazing podcast Racist Sandwich, please check it out!

As always!

♥ Please check out our STORE or PATREON ♥

As always thank you for not using Adblocker!

#SACANIME #RCCC #ROSE CITY COMIC CON #Love Circuits #LoveCircuits #Update #We RETURN #Comics #Queer Comics #LGBTQ Comics

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trendsdresscom · 4 years

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Jackie Cruz Flaunts Gorgeous String Bikini Pics, “Latina with an Afro”

Jackie Cruz as Rhea on GOOD GIRLS (Mitchell Haddad/NBC)

On the Season 3 premiere of Good Girls, “Find Your Beach,” while working on the next business venture with Ruby (Retta) and Annie (Mae Whitman) and struggling to process her guilt over Rio’s death, Beth (Christina Hendricks) makes a new friend, Rhea. She’s not just any woman — she’s Rio’s baby mama!

Rhea is portrayed by Dominican-American actress/singer Jackie Cruz, who — and you might not guess this based on the way Rhea dresses on Good Girls — looks absolutely amazing in string bikinis! She captioned the series above: “A Latina with an afro or an Afro-Latina?”

As an actress, Cruz is best known for her role as Marisol “Flaca” Gonzales on Netflix’s #1 series Orange Is the New Black.

She certainly looks amazing, right? Wow!

She captioned the bikini pic (above) from Thailand: “Must be the Mango and sticky rice.”

Cruz will appear next on the big screen in the movie Faraway Eyes with Christina Ricci (in theaters March 7, 2020).

Good Girls airs Sundays at 10 pm on NBC. [Get it all on your phone with NBC UNIVERSAL app available here. Download is FREE.]

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The post Jackie Cruz Flaunts Gorgeous String Bikini Pics, “Latina with an Afro” appeared first on Trends Dress.

from Trends Dress https://trendsdress.com/2020/02/16/jackie-cruz-flaunts-gorgeous-string-bikini-pics-latina-with-an-afro/

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dannycaing · 4 years

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IMAGO WITHIN

IMAGO WITHIN by Danny Caing Date Written: April 3, 2019

CHAPTER 1: THE INTERVIEW

Location: VTV or Corporación Venezolana de Televisión. Caracas, Venezuela Date: August 3, 2000 Thursday 8:32 PM

CATALINA: Leonardo was struck by a ball of light that afternoon at the riverside of Rio Arauca. He was eight years old at that time and reported missing for three days. He was in a coma for two months, then, on Christmas eve he woke up.

EMILIANO: It was Diego Ramirez, who was fishing on the river saw what happened to Leonardo that afternoon. At the hospital, his body had no burned skin marks.

Catalina and Emiliano were interviewed live on the VTV or Corporación Venezolana de Televisión. They live in El Amparo, Venezuela. The whole world was watching how their son became a famous faith healer.

T.V. HOST: When did you notice your son that he has this rare gift of power to heal?

CATALINA: I had a bleeding disorder. I was very sick lying in my bed. Leonardo came to me and asked me to pray with him the Lord's prayer. He knelt touching my forehead. Then he said, Jesus, heal the sickness of my mother. Right there and then, my bleeding stop. I feel very well and cooked our dinner that night. He was only 12 years old. Later he told me to focus my eyes on Jesus Words.

EMILIANO: I had been to a lot of troubles those days. I hit Catalina and Leonardo when I'm drunk. When he woke up from a coma that night on Christmas Eve, I was weeping and embracing him. Suddenly, I felt warm and heard him said Jesus Words is good. From that time on I stopped drinking and smoking. Now, I feel better about my new job. My son changes me. I've been reading Jesus Words over and over again.

T.V. HOST: As we all know, he started healing people when he was 18 years old. Where is Leonardo for six years?

CATALINA: Since that time, Emiliano and I never got sick. Leonardo told us not to reveal his healing power to anyone. He never went to school and had no friends. My husband is a mechanic. We have a little shop in front of our house. Leonardo assists him all the time fixing engines for the fishing boats.

EMILIANO: One day, one of my regular customers, Mr. Felix Gonzales, requested that he will pay an installment for the repair of the engine. He said that her daughter had Acute myelogenous leukemia. Then Leonardo asked him if where is her daughter? He told us that she was with her family at home. The doctors said she has three months to live. Her daughter's name was Jessica and 14 years old.

CATALINA: When we were inside Jessica's room with her family, Leonardo politely asked us to kneel around her bed. As he touched Jessica's forehead, he asked us to pray with him the Lord's prayer. We were holding hands together. Suddenly, there was great joy inside the room when Jessica woke up at that moment and asked for water. Inside that room, everyone was healed, the Gonzales family. Leonardo became a friend of Jessica and her family. Leonardo asked them to read Jesus' words in the four gospels. Jesus is the Living Word of God.

T.V. HOST: So, this was Leonardo's official healing in public? How old is he then?

CATALINA: Leonardo was 16 years old. But he told them to keep it secret.

T.V. HOST: The whole nation was shocked when Néstor Cabello, the most wanted drug trafficker, and arms dealer surrendered himself to the authority proclaiming the name of Jesus. All his wealth, properties were donated to the poor. Humor claimed that his only son was healed by Leonardo who was dying of a rare congenital heart condition, Eisenmenger syndrome.

EMILIANO: I remember he went to our house that morning with so many vehicles. He asked help from Leonardo and brought his dying son inside our living room. Leonardo asked them to pray with him including the security guards the Lord's prayer. Right after his son sat on the bed with a smile, everyone was rejoicing in the name of Jesus. Mr. Cabello and his men throw the ten sacks of $100 money bills to the river. Leonardo refused to accept a fee. They left three cars in front of the house. I don't have a license to drive. The truth, I don't know how to drive. I have to turn over one of the cars to the Police Station. It was full of arms and ammunition. There was a rocket launcher, sticky bombs, and grenades. When I went to the Police Station, there was no one there and the town looked empty. Later, I found out everyone was swimming in the river.

There were waves of laughter among the audience and cheers.

T.V. HOST: Amazing! The people in El Amparo were dancing in the streets that whole afternoon with $100 bills sticks on their clothing. It was like a fiesta parade.

EMILIANO: When Leonardo was 18 years old, we live in my brother's house in Caracas since they moved to Medellin, Columbia. It was during this time Leonardo became known when he healed 832 patients with terminal cases at the Children's Orthopedic Hospital in just one day.

CATALINA: That was the last time we saw him. Later he is in the news at Valencia healing people, then at Maracaibo, then at Barranquilla in Colombia. Everywhere he goes everyone around him was healed, in Jesus' name. He encouraged them to read Jesus Words so you can also be a healer. He would slip out from the crowds and then appears in another place.

T.V. HOST: It was in Chiriqui, Panama where he was stabbed almost to death. In Liberia, Costa Rica he was imprisoned for two months. He was released when Leonardo saved the Chief of Prison from a heart attack near his cell. Last year he was in Guasaule, Nicaragua. Then, in Badiraguato, Sinaloa, Mexico. It was in the local newspaper that a guy was shot dead along the road to La Bajada del Monte. Local folks recognized him as the healer named Leo. But when we sent our team to investigate the scene, Leonardo's body was not found.

CATALINA: I have a feeling that Leonardo is still alive. Before he left us, he told us to get ready and be prepared to embrace the light coming from the sky in 2083. Pray the Lord's prayer every day of our lives.

T.V. HOST: What he was telling you, is that the sign of the second coming of Christ?

CATALINA: No, I don't think so. He did not mention Jesus, he said, the light is coming from the sky.

CHAPTER 2: PRESENT DAY

Location: Hollister, Idaho, U.S.A. Time: 8:32 P.M.

Inside a room was a girl in bed staring the moonlight beam on her window. She has brain cancer. Her parents decided to bring her home to spend more time with her before she expires. One night they brought someone with them inside her room.

MOTHER: Sweetheart, there' is someone who would like to see you. He is here to heal your sickness in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. His name is Leonardo.

They all knelt and prayed the Lord's prayer as Leonardo put his hand on the forehead of the girl. Before Leonardo left them, they told them to read every day Jesus' Words and pray the Lord's prayer. The light is coming in 2083.

Background music: "Imago Within" by Danny Caing https://soundcloud.com/imago-within/imago-within

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chillydayzgaming-blog · 6 years

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Borderlands

Ever wanted a million guns? How about 17.75 million guns ripe for the taking? Guns that'll melt your enemy's faces off, burn them alive, make them scream for their mothers as they experience more than 1.21 gigawatts of electricity coursing through their veins? Then Gearbox Software has a game for you. Released in 2009, Borderlands is a loot based FPS with RPG style skill perks and classes. Four characters to choose from: Sarcastic marksman Mordecai, over enthusiastic brick shithouse named appropriately enough Brick, femme fatale reality shifting Siren named Lilith and finally the impromptu leader of the bunch Roland. He's the big black guy with a turret. Between it's respawning enemies who exist to drop loot and it's wonderful space western setting Borderlands became a cult classic that enjoyed more fanfare over time, gaining traction as an alternative to standard shooters of the time. The first time I recall hearing about the game was from an article talking about Ice T playing it himself. A glowing recommendation from him and it being cheap used at GameStop ensured that I would pick it up. Showing it off to my friends we soon began to play it together, eventually I picked up the GoTY edition, getting all the DLCs that I hadn't yet grabbed anyway, but by that time I was in my third play through of the game. The game working off of a cyclical new game plus mode allows for the player to replay it over again if they wish, with additional difficulty added to the game. To offset that the loot gets better too, so yay, more farming. My fondest memories of Borderlands was starting up the game, putting on some Cage the Elephant and just going to town on the final difficulty. The first area, the Arid Badlands, is a blast. Classic space western fare: Hostile bandits, crazy alien animals to shoot and plenty of loot chests to open up. Learning about all the hidden boxes, running a circuit of slaughter and chilling out to a great band is phenomenal fun. Strongly suggest it as a cathartic method to relax. Surprisingly enough I actually enjoyed classic Borderlands' bare bones story. That doesn't mean it was fantastic, it was cut down from the early ideas for the final release. Essentially the story boils down to there being a vault full of loot, you know, the stuff you've been collecting all the while? But that in a way is a wonderful subversion of what we expect. We expect the McGuffin of the story to bring us what we want, when at it's heart it is meant to only play the role of a desired thing. Be it a princess in yet another fucking castle, big black books filled with Eldritch knowledge or in Borderlands case a vault full of loot. But, spoiler alert, it isn't. It's full of tentacle monster guy. You've seen enough hentai to know where this is going. So you trampled across the East coast of a forsaken continent on a largely abandoned planet just to have to fight a roughly four story interdimensional monster hell-bent on diddling you with his tentacles. Bet you feel used huh? But, really, didn't you have fun along the way? The NPCs are pretty entertaining without being overbearing, dry wit in ample supply in addition to the clear cut quests. I feel as though the vault's true purpose was to show us what we want more than anything in the game, and that's more challenges to overcome. We the players would find it boring if the PCs ended the game with an unending pile of loot, we want to keep up the lootfest ourselves. So after you beat the end boss, who was admittedly pretty easy, you get the opportunity to begin again, but stronger this time. There's a bit of side mentions of cyclical time to help handwave this, which I appreciate, separates it from most other games in that regard. At it's heart the game did have issues with it's writing however. While I did enjoy the more serious tone of the game the slight lean towards humor was very fitting for it, dark humor injected here and there helps to keep it from being too dry. But it felt like a tipsy guy trying to keep his composure, giggling to himself one minute and standing stone faced the next. This was later "fixed" via the DLCs and sequels, going from leaning towards humor to diving headfirst into it. But that left the first game in an awkward position, it's pretty light story doesn't nearly compare to later games in the series. However what was in the game was fairly well done, I'm judging it by it's initial release, not taking the DLCs into account. The main character's lacked good insights into them as people, perhaps to help us associate with them better, but when it comes to a story I want to know how a character reacts, feels about their world. For what it is I have to give the game a 15/20 in the story/concept category. Excellent loot based FPS, subpar story but cool world. Borderlands thrives on it's FPS mechanics. Wonderful gunplay, metric fucktons of guns to utilize and useful character perks to utilize. Want to turn a hawk into an AC-130? You can do that. Shift through reality while running like Speedy Gonzales? Yeah, kinda. Punch shit like, really really hard? Brick shithouse at your service. Ammo spewing, ally healing and bone hurting bullet shooting turret? You'll be making people go owie pretty fast. Along the way you'll gain a bunch of passive and activated abilities too, which are a staple of any perk based game nowadays. Come to think of it Skyrim has perk trees that kinda remind me of Borderlands, would be interesting if it was partially inspired to do so by the surprise hit. Anyway, gotta give the game.e a high five for it's system, it works fantastically. As it's a loot based FPS, you have a backpack that slowly gets upgraded over time. Which is great because after a certain point you end up drowning in grenade mods, shields and weapons after wading through a dungeon. Ooh, speaking of I should expand those things. First off we have those lovely modifiers for your grenades, teleporting, sticky, you name it. Hell, the healing ones are my favorite, a plethora of devastating health sucking good vibes at your fingertips. Your shields are like a secondary health bar that refill over time on their own, plus cool side effects to give you little bonuses. Stuff like resistance to elemental attacks, faster recharging or beyond average shield count. Borderlands' dungeons are some of the most fun I've had in a while. Not too big, ripe with hostiles and loot, perfect for an hour of stomping through with friends. Of course where Borderlands truly shines is in it's open air bandit camps. As I said before I adore the starting area, the Arid Badlands, it's handful of Skag dens and Bandit camps are some of the best fun I've ever had grinding. To me it's not even grinding, it's cathartic ass kicking. Anyway, you get a lot if dusty places to kill stuff in, plus some mountainous places later on. Overall it's world design is quite beautiful, can't really fault it beyond any spots you can get stuck in. Overall it's gameplay and mechanics earn it a solid 20/20, the little things like weapon skill building over time, class variation and just simple dumb fun in it's dungeon diving makes it a near perfect game to pop in and just tear shit up with your friends. Onto Graphics and art style. Borderlands utilizes a cell shaded design that's iconic and quite easy to recognize. Rocks pop out at you, enemies stand out amongst the backdrop and the equipment is well understood from afar. Just enough detail without it being too attention grabbing. Character designs are a bit exaggerated, but that's to be expected really. I can't fault the game for having generic visuals in terms of NPCs and the world, at the same time it also benefits from my soft spot for space westerns. So unlike a lot of shooters it gets a nice noon in the form of it's iconic style, which really helped to set it apart. Ironically it was to be more realistic, but midway through production they changed that. For the better I say. The graphics, for it's time, were/are wonderful. I say are because, well, they still look pretty good. Might not stand up to say... the sequels, but that's just due to higher resolution over time. All in all I believe it has solid graphical quality, no faults to be seen from my 100+ hours of gameplay. So to grade it on it's visuals I'd give it a 20/20, started a series strong with it's unique design, strong visuals and charming atmosphere. Space Western game's gotta have a twangy soundtrack yeah? This one does, plus some haunting tunes as well. While the gun sounds are a bit soft for me the music, both the OST and the choices for opening and ending tracks, are are superb. Opening up with Ain't No Rest For the Wicked by Cage the elephant (my favorite band) and ending with No Heaven by DJ Champion the game uses it's music to help set the mood. You aren't good guys, you are shades of anti-heroes that are on the planet of Pandora to kick ass and get loot. The reasons vary but in general you're gonna spend most of your time shooting native wildlife and locals in the face. A lot. Not much else to comment on, 15/20 in that regard. Just needs stronger sound effects. Plus more PC interaction, but that's more writing than anything else. Enjoy shooting shit? Looting shit? Then Borderlands is the game for you. Easily 30+ hours of shooting and looting, multiple playthroughs and a never-ending stream of baddies to torment even if you do "beat" the game. Not that you ever really do beat it, it's one of those games that you can keep playing forever really. And you know what? I really enjoy that. I see replayability being from two things: wanting to experience the game more/again or seeing how you can do things differently. Myself, I change very little across playthroughs, but I LOVE to feel those events again. If not for the story than for the sheer... wonder or excitement of the events. The first few nights in Minecraft, the end of a dungeon in Skyrim that deposits you at a vista and in this case just the thrill of stomping through dungeons that I've cleared dozens of times before. I can honestly play the same zone in this game for hours. For that reason I have to award it a 20/20 for longevity, just slip the disc in and keep enjoying the gift that keeps on giving. There is very little that I would change about the game, it's a bloody masterpiece as is really. But as I've said before it's lacking in the story department. Having the characters have more shit to say, either due to quests or at each other as they're out and about. Better sense of group cohesion is what I want, to feel that these guys are a group of fire forged friends out looting the countryside together. Plus expand in their back stories, have audio logs like future games had to help explain them a bit more, perhaps a personal quest or two. Hell, have their personalities and backgrounds come out via their dialogue with each other and NPCs, just enough to help us get them better without it being too distracting. Metal Gear Solid V: the Phantom Pain did this quite well, since Snake was meant to be more of a silent protagonist he had more personification via cassette tapes. Perhaps expand on the PCs via that sorta mechanic? Oh, and better SFX, guns and such. Just make it more visceral sounding, that feeling you get when you pop a bandit's head with a satisfying headshot... Enhanced with proper bullet sounds. This game helped bring back loot based games. Be they FPS, dungeon crawlers or whatever, it helped show that a non mainstream game could as much ass or even more ass as the same major releases of that year. It's art style, iconic. The atmosphere and tone, simply a pure mixture of light-hearted romp with violent lootfest. Gunplay that is up there with some of the best shooters. Very few things to complain about, it's a game you and your buddies should buy used and just pop it in to play all weekend. Gold star game overall, 90/100. Very few can match it in sheer fun, that's without taking DLCs into account.

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