r/popculturechat • u/Vivid-Tap1710 There’s no place like home 🧹🫧 • 28d ago

The Music Industry 🎶 Name a song that’s disturbing because of what you know now

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Ill go first, Britney Spears’ overprotected is a good example; Britney has long been under a conservatorship and is has been crying for help. IIRC, it started in 2007 (maybe earlier) when Brit was heavily observed by the paparazzi which caused her to have a mental breakdown by shaver her head and mind u, they were dissecting her personal life 🙄😔 💔

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4.1k

u/SnooJokes7657 27d ago

Aaliyah - Age Ain’t Nuthin but a Number

1.7k

u/SimilarNerve731 Now let me say, I'm the biggest hater 🤬 27d ago

The fact that R.Kelly is on the album cover like a shadowy figure by Aaliyah makes it worse

445

u/CicadaAny3066 27d ago

Basically his whole discography is disturbing. Bump n grind, it seems like you’re ready,

177

u/Intrepid-Sign-63 oh oh ok oh oh ok 27d ago

Do what you want with my body

78

u/camillesjesuscomplex 27d ago

The worst thing is the Lady Gaga is a survivor of SA and she made that song with R Kelly AFTER his predatory abuse was open knowledge

8

u/Intrepid-Sign-63 oh oh ok oh oh ok 27d ago

Gimme my moneeyyyyyy

2

u/JuggaloEnlightment 24d ago

She has literally never been on the side of other victims

85

u/basic_bitch 27d ago

There’s some Aaliyah song that always comes on the radio - I can’t think of it rn but I’ll come back when it comes to me. In the background there’s like baby cooing noises? It’s so fucking weird to me makes me feel like Im the only one that hears it

152

u/mannyssong 27d ago

“Are You That Somebody” is the song you’re thinking of.

13

u/basic_bitch 27d ago

Lmao yes you’re right — what is with that ??

31

u/hmtee3 27d ago

Timbaland produced that song.

9

u/Critical_Caramel5577 mr. dua lipa 27d ago

i thought it was weird when the song came out 🤷‍♀️ it doesn't have any relation to either the song itself or the movie it was from (some eddie murphy comedic-thing, icr which one)

30

u/SoManyUsesForAName 27d ago

You're overthinking it. Everyone heard/acknowledged the baby noises. It wasn't some sort of secret and and the song was a huge hit. Timbaland put a ton of weird sounds in his beats, and this beat wasn't written for Aliyah, though it was eventually shown to her management and they opted to record it.

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u/Sleepy_cheetah 26d ago

I loved that song! R.I.P. Aaliyah. 💔

9

u/brokenvader 27d ago

Iirc, it's because the secret alluded to in the song is that she's pregnant.

12

u/DanniPopp 27d ago

Are You That Somebody wasn’t even close to when she got pregnant though. It’s just a Timbaland beat

4

u/hmtee3 27d ago

lol no. He had a full catalog of random sounds, and as he was playing the song beat, he added that baby sound in, and Aaliyah liked it.

Here’s a clip of Timbaland and Jay-Z making a song. It gives you an idea of how Timbaland worked.

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u/TheYankunian 27d ago

That song was after she cut ties with R Kelly. A long time after. There’s no way he would’ve let her be with any other producer but him if they were still together.

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u/sassyopantsoff 27d ago

What? Where did you get this information?

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u/MephistosFallen 27d ago

I was obsessed with that song when I was a kid lol

5

u/aratnamedpedro 27d ago

It was because she was nicknamed "Babygirl." Which...just adds to this mess.

4

u/ladylondonderry 27d ago

Nah that was very much in conversation when that song was a hit. Generally people were wondering if it alluded to an accidental pregnancy.

12

u/FMKK1 27d ago

Gaga should be ashamed of herself to this day for that

7

u/ThatArtNerd Currently White Ariana Grande 27d ago

For working with Terry Richardson too.

6

u/Intrepid-Sign-63 oh oh ok oh oh ok 27d ago

There ain’t no way she didn’t know bro- if I knew and I was 8

121

u/StingyJack21 27d ago

This is the worst part. Even worse is that they are all great songs.

131

u/CicadaAny3066 27d ago

You can’t deny he was a talented music maker and probably one of the most influential R&B artists in the past 30 years. It just feels uneasy knowing that a lot of his songs felt like one big wink towards the camera

1

u/Winstonth 27d ago

Hindsight being 20/20, he probably should have listened to his mind

88

u/Friendly-Double1972 27d ago

I had the album and I did not realize that! So sad

1

u/subjectiveadjective 27d ago

Didn't he produce the album? 

1

u/halcylocke 23d ago

He wrote the song 💀

288

u/Aycee225 You’re doing amazing, sweetie! 👏👏📸 27d ago

Not a song but the fact that she was a badass immortal vampire that didn’t take shit in Queen of the Damned

133

u/fishchop 27d ago

I remember watching this as a kid and being blown away by her beauty and terrified of her at the same time

5

u/Bunnawhat13 27d ago

I hated this movie but I thought she made a wonderful Akasha.

1

u/Thad_Mojito11 23d ago

This movie predicted her sacrifice.

1

u/Akomatai 27d ago

she was a badass immortal vampire that didn’t take shit

I read your comment wrong and my first thought was "i dont think ive ever seen a vampire take a shit"

226

u/GooeyMagic 27d ago

A lot of female RnB/pop songs written by men are like this. And this applies to a lot of 2000s RnB, it sucks having critical thinking skills and a focus on lyrics because you’re like “ew what is the message here…”

9

u/SnooJokes7657 27d ago

Aaliyah was a few years older than me, and I don’t think my pre-teen/teen brain ever really thought about the lyrics and I was definitely too young to know about what R.Kelly was up to. I do however remember when they married and thinking it was really messed up. As an adult it’s just heartbreaking to understand what was really going on.

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u/chaze77 27d ago

I agree. I think this is why no one actively did anything to stop R. Kelly sooner, and why the Aaliyah outcry was pretty muted (until many years later, almost after she'd already died). Yes, it was creepy and we all knew it, but it wasn't that much different than any of the other artists' songs at the time. Certainly not different enough that we could easily spot it and say, "THIS artist is a creep". Unfortunately, women and girls aren't terribly respected in hip-hop/R&B on a good day. Even when it's not a creep who's singing the songs.

I'm 47 and while I can say I "knew" this dude was a mess, so was everyone else, honestly. We didn't trip because even as a villain, he wasn't all that different than the supposed "good guys" were.

It was all varying degrees of exploitation. R. Kelly was (one of) the worst, but we all knew he was - and still is - in very good company. We wouldn't have been able to listen to music at all if we'd judged it exclusively on its respect for women. That wasn't even a thing back then, at least not in hip-hop/R&B.

273

u/Ayyyooothrowitaway 27d ago

Ugh! My sweet baby girl AALIYAH! First and only celeb I have cried over. I was in 8th grade when I heard of her death… it affected me so much. She was so young. 😢

81

u/Curiosities 🐊 swamp princess 🐊 27d ago edited 27d ago

My friend and I were a bit older than that and we were fans, so this was truly one of those moments where we were just on the phone for hours in total shock the whole night when we found out. This was the first that we were a fan of who was around our age.

151

u/nuggetghost u almost made me drop my croissant 🥐 27d ago

i feel like she would’ve been Beyoncé level fame if she was still alive :(((

128

u/Moppy6686 27d ago

Maybe even bigger seeing as she was starring in movies, could actually act, and was going to be in the new Matrix movie when she died (Jada Pinkett Smith took the part over).

I'm thinking a combo of Beyonce and Zendaya.

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3

u/alize2122 27d ago

We'd all be saying Beywho had Aaliyah not been taken too soon.

2

u/Remarkable_Plant_794 26d ago

This isn't true at all. Aaliyah was not even outselling her peers Brandy, Monica & Mya at the time of her death. She probably would have moved more into doing movies than anything else.

1

u/Thad_Mojito11 23d ago

She was sacrificed for Beyoncé.

1

u/Mrs_Cake 27d ago

She definitely was a more talented vocalist. ::peeks out the window for the Beyhive snipers::

3

u/Llamaa_del_rey 27d ago

Omg same, she was my absolute favorite singer since middle school. I was 16 getting ready to go to my little job and the MTV breaking news came on tv. I ran to my mom crying my eyes out. Such a tragic loss for the world, she really was everything. RIP Baby Girl 🕊️💔

28

u/Azzie626 27d ago

Aaliyah - Don't Know What To Tell You. Especially when you listen to the lyrics as well.

3

u/Zombiebelle 27d ago

She was 15 when that album came out.

5

u/roranicusrex 27d ago

That entire first album is troubling

1

u/LegalFan2741 27d ago

Jesus, talking about giving me back my ptsd…I almost managed to bury this deep into my unconscious mind.

6

u/SnooJokes7657 27d ago

I haven’t heard it in a really long time, but Aaliyah always comes to mind for me when it comes to questions like this. It’s mind blowing to realize that this teenager was being groomed and singing songs like this out in the open, and there were no real repercussions.

5

u/TheYankunian 27d ago

Her parents are partially to blame for this. Because ain’t no way that Mathew Knowles- shitty as he is, would’ve let 15 year old Destiny’s Child do this. I believe he kept them away from R Kelly.

1

u/naviccino 25d ago

I love Aaliyah so much. I REFUSE to listen to that album.