The tragic story of Aaliyah: Singer wed sex trafficker R Kelly at 15 and was ‘pursued’ by Jay-Z, before her untimely death in plane crash at 22

She’s known as the Princess of R&B, but her short life was deprived of a fairytale ending.

Brooklyn-born singer Aaliyah Dana Haughton, who transformed the genre in the 1990s with her second album One in a Million (1996), illegally wed sex trafficker R Kelly at the tender age of 15, despite him being 27 at the time.

Despite the childhood marriage, which was later annulled, Aaliyah found stardom in her music career and on-screen, including in the 2000 film Romeo Must Die.

Her beauty and talent found her in A-List circles, where she socialised with the likes of Jay-Z and disgraced rapper Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs before her untimely death in a plane crash in 2001.

It was a string of occurrences that has attracted controversy, with online sleuths alleging that, despite there being no evidence, Jay-Z was somehow involved in Aaliyah’s death.

The wild theories are no doubt multiplying as the rapper has been dragged into scandal after an unnamed woman accused him of raping her alongside Sean P ‘Diddy’ Combs when she was 13 – a claim he has dismissed as a ‘blackmail attempt’.

Here, Femail delves into the late singer’s tumultuous life, from becoming an international music star to her tragic death in 2001.

The singer’s bond with Jay-Z has caught the attention of wild conspiracy theories (pictured together in 2000)

Aaliyah (seen in New York in 2001) was tragically killed in a plane crash over the Bahamas, where she was shooting a video

ILLEGALLY WED SEX TRAFFICKER R KELLY

When Aaliyah illegally tied the knot to R Kelly, who was jailed in 2022 for sex trafficking and racketeering, she was just 15.

The pair met when she was 12 and he was 24 after being introduced by Barry Hankerson, who was Aaliyah’s uncle and Kelly’s manager, according to Metro.

Kelly influenced the singer’s music and wrote and produced Aaliyah’s first album, Age Ain’t Nothing But A Number, released in 1994.

On the surface, the pair appeared to have a good working relationship, and Aaliyah had gushed over Kelly. ‘We’re very close, he’s my best friend,’ she said in a 1994 interview.

In August of that year, when she was 15 and he was 27, they wed in a ceremony that was said to last ten minutes.

Pastor Nathan Edmond, who conducted the 1994 nuptials, testified in 2020 via video link at Kelly’s sex abuse trial, held at a federal courthouse in Brooklyn.

Edmond alleged that he was recruited to marry Kelly, who was 27 at the time after he was shown a falsified document that stated Aaliyah was 18.

‘I didn’t know it was anyone special,’ Edmond stated. ‘You couldn’t see her whole face because her hair was over half of her face.’

Aaliyah met R Kelly (pictured together) aged 12 through her uncle, who was also Kelly’s manager

Pictured: R. Kelly leaves the Leighton Criminal Court Building after a hearing on sexual abuse charges in Chicago

Kelly influenced Aaliyah’s early career – and wrote and produced her first album, Age Ain’t Nothing But A Number

What was R Kelly found guilty of at his trial?

R Kelly stood trial Brooklyn federal court last year after he was accused of being the ringleader of a sex ring involving women and underage girls and boys.

The charges were first brought in a five-count superseding indictment in Brooklyn federal court in July 2019.

In March 2020, he was slapped with additional charges upgrading the case to a nine-count indictment.

The charges relate to allegations involving six alleged victims – five women named as Jane Does in the indictment and the singer Aaliyah. These charges are:

ONE COUNT OF RACKETEERING – GUILTY

The racketeering charge includes 14 underlying acts including: one act of bribery, three acts of sexual exploitation of a child, one act of kidnapping, three acts of forced labor and six acts of violating the Mann Act.

Racketeering charges are used where there is an ‘enterprise’, mob or mafia running organized crime operations.

In this case, Kelly is accused of running a racketeering ‘enterprise’ for two decades made up of his ‘inner circle’ of managers, bodyguards and other employees who would help him recruit women, girls and boys for him to sexually exploit and traffic them around the US.

To convict Kelly on the racketeering charge, jurors had to find him guilty of at least two of the 14 acts.

EIGHT COUNTS OF VIOLATING THE MANN ACT – GUILTY

The Mann Act is a federal law that makes it illegal to traffic people across state lines for prostitution or illegal sexual activity.

Four of these charges relate to an incident involving Jane Doe #5 in 2015 while the other four involve Jane Doe #6 in separate incidents in May 2017 and February 2018.

Three of these charges involve Kelly allegedly exposing the two women to herpes without informing them.

In December 2021, Kelly’s former tour manager, Demetrius Smith, testified to the same court that he bribed a government worker with $500 (£392) to obtain Aaliyah’s fake ID so that Kelly could marry her.

Prosecutors said Kelly wanted to use the marriage to shield himself from criminal charges related to having sex with a minor and to prevent her from testifying against him.

Kelly entered a not guilty plea for bribing someone to get Aaliyah a fake ID in New York via a video feed from Chicago.

The marriage was annulled in 1995 by Aaliyah’s parents, who did not know about the wedding before it occurred. 

Pastor Edmond told the court that he performed the ceremony at Sheraton Gateway Suites near Chicago’s O’Hare Airport.

He claimed Kelly and Aaliyah wore matching sweatsuits, and that they both had one leg of their sweatpants rolled up to the knee.

After their secret, low-key wedding, Kelly and Aaliyah denied rumors that they had tied the knot.

There were also whispers that Aaliyah was expecting Kelly’s baby, with one writer telling VIBE magazine in 1994: ‘I’ve been hearing about Robert [Kelly] and Aaliyah for a while—that she was pregnant. Or that she was coming and going in and out of his house.’

Meanwhile, a former live-in girlfriend of Kelly’s testified that the singer told her that he only married Aaliyah so that she could get an abortion.

Aaliyah never confirmed the pregnancy. She went on to have a glittering career as an actress and singer before her death in 2001.

Maria Cruz Melendez, an assistant U.S. attorney, told the court during opening statements at Kelly’s trial: ‘Aaliyah met the defendant in approximately 1992, when she was about twelve years old. 

‘Aaliyah had a gift. She was a talented singer, and people thought that she could make it far in the industry, so the defendant [Kelly] began to produce and write music for Aaliyah when she was still a child.

‘Shortly after he began working with her, the defendant began to engage in sexual activity with her. And for years while Aaliyah was a minor, too young to even consent to sex, he continued to engage in sexual activity with her that lasted several years.’

In 2019, Kelly’s lawyer, Steven Greenberg, claimed his client had ‘no idea’ Aaliyah was underage at the time of their marriage.   

Aaliyah’s boyfriend at the time of her death, Damon Dash, declared that the singer  wanted absolutely nothing to do with R. Kelly after the pair got an annulment on their controversial marriage. 

Appearing in the follow up 2020 Lifetime documentary, ‘Surviving R. Kelly Part II: The Reckoning,’ the music insider stressed that the young star wanted to get ‘the f**k away’ Kelly. 

Dash, who dated the star from 2000 until her death in August 2001, said: ‘If people would have protected Aaliyah, then so many other girls wouldn’t have gotten touched’.

The Roc-A-Fella co-founder described Aaliyah as a ‘sacrificial lamb’ adding that she didn’t deserve how she was treated.   

‘You know that was a good soul, a good girl and she wasn’t even so resentful like ‘let that man live but keep that f****r away from me,’ he added. 

‘That’s all she wanted. She was just happy to be away.’ 

Dash asserted that he was privy to the ‘whole story’ between R. Kelly and Aaliyah and called their controversial marriage a ‘cover up.’ 

‘He married a child,’ Dash stated. 

In 2022, the disgraced R&B star, R Kelly, was sentenced to 30 years in federal prison for sex trafficking and abusing young girls as the judge told him that he taught his victims that ‘love is enslavement and violence,’ and ‘the public needs to be protected.’ 

‘PURSUED’ BY JAY-Z

In the years after her marriage was annulled, Jay-Z reportedly took a keen interest in Aaliyah, which has caught the attention of conspiracy theorists.

Photographs exclusively revealed by Daily Mail in 2019 showed just how close the rapper was to the ‘princess of R&B’ one year before her death.

Taken during a Fourth of July party in 2000, the rapper was captured with his arms around the singer as they danced and laughed together.

In one image, Jay-Z gripped a bottle of Belvedere vodka and posed with Aaliyah and disgraced rapper and producer P. Diddy.

Meanwhile, Aaliyah’s boyfriend at the time, Dash Damon, is seen shirtless with a group of girls and dancing with Aaliyah.

A source at the Fourth of July party in the Hamptons confirmed that Jay-Z, who was 30 at the time, appeared besotted with the then 21-year-old star.

The eyewitness said: ‘Jay-Z had just had a big hit with Big Pimpin’, and he decided to have this party with Damon and the rest of his crew for the Fourth of July. Diddy was there, too.

‘Aaliyah was becoming super famous at the time and had just starred in her first movie, Romeo Must Die, so they were all doing really well.

Damon Dash, Sean Combs, Aaliyah and Jay-Z attend a Fourth of July Party at Diddy’s house in East Hampton, NY on July 2, 2000

‘Jay-Z rented a mansion in East Hampton and they had a catered barbecue in a tent in the back yard. It was a really fun party.’

The source added: ‘Damon was dating Aaliyah at the time and Jay-Z was single, he wasn’t there with a girl. 

‘I saw that Jay-Z was trying to get close to Aaliyah but I didn’t think too much of it at the time.

‘I probably thought they were just friends or making music together.’

Dash, who dated Aaliyah until her untimely death aged 22 in 2001, told how Jay-Z was ‘going hard’ to woo the Try Again singer in conversation with Page Six in late November 2019.

Dash said of Jay-Z’s pursuit of the rising star: ‘He tried very hard. I did not mean to fall in love with Aaliyah, she was just that cool.

‘But you know, we were both going hard … everybody was trying to get to Aaliyah — it was not just Jay.’

‘I guess Jay was also trying to get at her as well, and I didn’t know,’ Dash said in an interview last year.

Jay-Z hovers in the background as Diddy, Jennifer Lopez, Aaliyah, Damon Dash and Natane Adcock pose for a photo at Diddy’s 2000 July 4th party 

Dash said that he had plans to marry Aaliyah before she died (seen together at the the world premiere of the 20th Century Fox film Planet of the Apes in 2001)

He added: ‘It never worked out for them but we were both trying to get at her. Everyone was getting at Aaliyah.’

Last year, Dash claimed Jay-Z ‘obviously’ noticed that Aaliyah did not welcome his advances. 

‘Yeah, he felt a way,’ Dash said of Jay-Z. ‘He was sending her flowers. He was courting her.’

After Dash made the comments, the eyewitness at the 2000 Fourth of July party said: ‘Now that Damon has said what he said it all makes sense. Jay-Z was all over Aaliyah.

‘They were hugging each other and you could totally see there was a chemistry between them.

‘I knew that Damon was going out with her so I did think it was a little weird.

‘Sometimes people share girlfriends. I don’t know if they were sharing but they wouldn’t be the first.’

Dash, 53, co-founded Roc-A-Fella Records and hip hop clothing line Rocawear with Jay-Z in the 1990s.

Pictured: Damon Dash and Jay-Z during Sean P. Diddy Combs’ surprise 35th birthday party at Figa in New York City

Their partnership came to a sour end after Jay-Z bought Dash out of Rocawear in the fall of 2005.

Dash dated Aaliyah for about a year until her untimely death in a tragic plane crash in the Bahamas in August 2001.

Although they were not formally engaged Dash claimed that they were planning to get married before she died.

Following her death Jay-Z paid tribute to the tragic singer in a remix of her song Miss You.

The song includes the lines: ‘Have you ever loved somebody used to get the party poppin’/ We used to party hop/ We used to be in the Hamptons/ Party a lot.

UNTIMELY DEATH

R&B fans mourned when Aaliyah and eight others died on 25 August 2001 in a tragic plane crash.

The twin-engine Cessna crashed just after takeoff in the Bahamas, where the 22-year-old R&B star had been shooting a music video.

Aaliyah’s sudden death came just as her career was beginning to soar. Her second movie role in vampire drama ‘Queen of the Damned’ was almost complete and her self-titled, hit third album had just been released.

Her family sued Virgin Records, alleging they were negligent in not preventing the plane crash. 

They later settled case in September 2003, but the agreement notice stated that details of the settlement must be kept secret, NME reported. 

In 2021, a Bahaman man who got to spend time with the late pop star Aaliyah just hours before she was killed in a plane crash, claimed she never wanted to get on the  stricken aircraft in the first place and had taken a sleeping pill just hours earlier.

Kingsley Russell, whose family ran a taxi and hospitality business in the Abaco Islands, was just 13-years old on August 25 2001, but he was with the star as his stepmother drove her team to the airport for her return flight back to the U.S.

Russell got to work with Aaliyah’s entourage as her team’s baggage carrier thanks to his aunt, Annie Russell, who ran a small hospitality business on the island.

As a teen, Russell claimed that when the star saw the plane to take her back to the U.S. mainland, she refused to get on board and went back to sleep in the taxi his stepmother was driving, telling her team she had a headache. 

Russell, who remained silent for two decades spoke out about what he said happened in the hours before the crash on that fateful day in a book, Baby Girl: Better Known as Aaliyah, by music journalist Kathy Iandoli.

Having passed out in the back of the cab, her team ultimately had to carry Aaliyah onto the plane while she was still fast asleep, despite her earlier protestations over traveling, he claimed.

Hours later, she would be dead as the Brooklyn-born star and the eight members of her entourage were killed when the plane crashed shortly after takeoff, about 200 feet from the end of the runway, as it struggled to gain altitude. 

It was later revealed that the small twin-engine Cessna was significantly over its allotted weight by several hundred pounds and had one more passenger that it was certified for. 

The weight was also not properly distributed, making it harder to control once airborne. 

It also emerged the pilot had faked his certifications to get his license, and he was also found to have cocaine and alcohol in his system at the time of the accident.

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Read more at DailyMail.co.uk