Aaliyah’s Estate Releases Statement on Former Label Releasing “Unauthorized Projects”

Aaliyah’s most popular music is not available to stream on most streaming services. Her 1994 album Age Ain’t Nothing But a Number is noticeably her only album available to stream.

Fans have been left longing to stream songs like “Are You That Somebody?” and other hits from her albums One in a Million (1996) and Aaliyah (2001).

On Wednesday, an Instagram account called Blackground Records 2.0 shared a new website and hashtag #AaliyahIsComing, leading fans to speculate about a possible streaming release.

Aaliyah’s uncle and former manager, Barry Hankerson, owns Blackground Records, which released most of her music. In addition to Age Ain’t Nothing But a Number, Hankerson owns most of Aaliyah’s master tapes and has confirmed that he is behind the “2.0” revival.

In response, Aaliyah’s estate released a statement Wednesday night detailing its “battle behind the scenes, enduring shadowy tactics of deception with unauthorized projects targeted to tarnish.” The statement criticized an unnamed  “unscrupulous endeavor to release Aaliyah’s music without any transparency or full accounting to the estate.”

The statement added:

Missy Elliott retweeted the estate’s tweet, which included the hashtag #IStandWithAaliyah. An earlier statement showed that the estate noted: “While we share your sentiments and desire to have Aaliyah’s music released, we must acknowledge that these matters are not within our control and, unfortunately, take time.”

Complex’s “The Inexplicable Online Absence of Aaliyah’s Best Music” from 2016 detailed how Craze Digital, a music distribution company that did not own the rights to Aaliyah’s music, illegally uploaded One in a Million and Aaliyah to iTunes in 2013. In 2017, Aaliyah’s greatest hits were uploaded to the internet, but then they were quickly removed.

#IStandWithAaliyah pic.twitter.com/Q2zgAvRAgX

— Aaliyah (@aaliyah) August 5, 2021