Aaliyah Dana Haughton

On August 25, 2001, at 6:45 pm (EST), Aaliyah and various members of her record company boarded a
twin engine Cessna 402B (N8097W) at Marsh Harbour, Abaco Islands, The Bahamas, to travel to an
airport in Opa-locka, Florida, after they completed filming the music video for "Rock the Boat".[39]
The crew had a flight scheduled the following day, but Aaliyah and her entourage were eager to
return to the United States due to the filming finishing early, so they demanded that their heavy
equipment be loaded on the plane rather than left behind. It resulted in the aircraft being well
beyond the standard weight and balance tolerance provided by Cessna.[40]
The plane crashed shortly after takeoff, about 200 feet (60 m) from the runway.[39] Aaliyah, pilot
Luis Morales III, hair stylist Eric Forman, Anthony Dodd, security guard Scott Gallin, video
producer Douglas Kratz, stylist Christopher Maldonado, and Blackground Records employees Keith
Wallace and Gina Smith were killed.
Aaliyah has been credited for helping redefine R&B and hip hop in the 1990s, "leaving an indelible
imprint on the music industry as a whole."[86][87] Steve Huey of Allmusic wrote Aaliyah ranks among
the "elite" artists of the R&B genre, as she "played a major role in popularizing the stuttering,
futuristic production style that consumed hip-hop and urban soul in the late '90s."[88] Described as
one of "R&B's most important artists" during the 1990s,[89] her second studio album, One in a
Million, became one of the most influential R&B albums of the decade.