This summer, R&B fans were finally blessed with the DSP release of Aaliyah’s catalog. Her self-titled final album is finally accessible on platforms like Apple Music and Spotify and arrived to coincide with the 20th anniversary of her death. Day-one fans have been revisiting the project while younger fans are just beginning to familiarize themselves with the impact that Aaliyah had on R&B.
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Songs like “4 Page Letter” remain legendary tracks in her expansive catalog. From Timbaland’s production to Missy Elliott’s songwriting on the record, Aaliyah tapped into a different side of herself on One In A Million. Of course, the single itself has managed to enter the world of TikTok after its DSP release. A fan reimagined the session for “4 Page Letter” and exactly what was happening when Aaliyah asked the engineer to turn her sound up.
Missy hit Twitter this week where she offered fans some insight into what was going down during that session. She explained that she actually said it first in the reference track but Aaliyah enjoyed the bit so much she decided to include it in the final version.
“Funfact [laughing emojis] when I was in the booth singing this my engineer had the music to low so I was telling him to turn it up but Aaliyah thought I meant to do it so she sung it like i did on the demo but it was a mistake,” she wrote. “She loved it so we kept it like that.”
“And since Babygirl loved the mistake I told Jimmy the engineer to keep raising the music on the track everytime she say turn it up so it would make sense to the listeners so y’all wouldn’t think we was crazy,” Missy continued in a separate tweet before confirming the TikTok video was a pretty accurate depiction of the studio session.
Check Missy’s tweets below.