Rapper Missy Elliott is coming forward with details about recording “4 Page Letter” with late singer Aaliyah after fans on Twitter posted a video spoof of the singer.
At the beginning of Aaliyah’s hit “4 Page Letter,” the singer tells her sound engineer to turn the music up several times before she starts singing. After fans on Twitter posted a video spoof of the singer, Elliott responded with a story about Aaliyah in the recoding studio.
“Funfact,’ wrote Elliott. “When I was in the booth singing this my engineer had the music too 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 but she loved it so we kept it like that.”
Elliott said that Aaliyah liked the mistake and they decided to keep it on the track. They decided that every time Aaliyah said “Turn my music up,” the engineer would raise the volume.
“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. this skit is damn near what happened tho.”
The video was made by TikTok user trinabina93, who thanked Elliott for sharing a memory of Aaliyah and for watching her video. Elliott responded, wishing trinabina93 success, peace and happiness.
A Grammy Award-nominated recording artist, Aaliyah was beginning a career as an actress. Her debut album, “Age Ain’t Nothing But a Number,” was made when she was 15 years old and produced by R Kelly.
The singer was in the Bahamas to shoot her music video “Rock the Boat” in 2001 when tragedy occurred. Aaliyah’s plane crashed in a swamp just after taking off on Aug. 25. Aaliyah, along with eight others, died in the crash. She was only 22 years old.
Aaliyah was dating producer Damon Dash at the time of her death, and Dash recently revealed an eerie conversation he had with Aaliyah before she went to the Bahamas.
Dash said that he warned Aaliyah that producer Hype Williams would try to add work to her schedule. He also said that he was incensed when he found that the singer could have taken Lenny Kravitz’ jet, but that Williams had taken it instead.
“When she actually saw the plane… She said, ‘I don’t like this plane.’ I was like, ‘Well, don’t get on it.’ She was like, ‘Well, I got to because I got work to do,’ ” said Dash. “She got on the plane, and she always had a very serious fear of planes in general, so she had to overcome a fear to get on that plane on the way there.”
He added, “But what I was really more tight about was that I had heard that Lenny Kravitz had offered her a jet and that Hype had took the jet. So, that’s what really pissed me off about the situation when I heard about that. You can ask Hype about that.”
Elliott is a successful songwriter who wrote many hits for Aaliyah including one of her biggest records, “One In a Million.” She also has written songs for Beyoncé, Monica, Mariah Carey and Whitney Houston.
