In a recent interview with ET, Damon Dash revealed that he was angry with Hype Williams over Aaliyah‘s tragic death 20 years ago.
This week marked the 20th anniversary of R&B singer Aaliyah’s tragic passing after a plane crash in the Bahamas. Record executive and producer Damon Dash dated the singer from 2000 up until her untimely death in 2001, and in an interview with Entertainment Tonight, he opened up about his feelings surrounding the anniversary and Aaliyah’s legacy.
While it’s been 20 years since the world lost Aaliyah, Dash reveals it still feels “like yesterday for him”. He shared in the interview, “I was reflecting [that] there hasn’t been one day since she’s passed, not one in the 20 years, that I haven’t either heard her name, heard her record, or seen a picture of her. Every single day she’s present in my life and I feel lucky for that.”
Dash also revealed his anger towards Hype Williams, director of the “Rock the Boat” music video — Aaliyah shot the video in the Bahamas before the flight. Speaking of when she flew to the shoot, he shared, “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…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.”
According to Dash, however Lenny Kravitz had offered Aaliyah a jet to use for the shoot, but Williams used it instead on the day of her passing. “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. So, you can ask Hype about that.”
While ET host Kevin Frazier attempted to get Dash to elaborate on the situation, Dash simply said, “ask him”. Dash also shared sweet memories of his time with Aaliyah, including when he recalled the moment they met at a basketball game.
“We met at a basketball game, but that was her as ‘Aaliyah.’ She had on a basketball jersey, and I just looked at her,” he told Frazier. “I was young, kind of, like an artist, just saw her as one. But then she was in [Klarberg’s] office and I was like, ‘Who is that?’ ‘Cause when you would see her, she would look different every time, you know? She had different angles, it was crazy. So from there, we started to kick it.”
Check out the full emotional interview below:
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