Revisiting Aaliyah’s ‘One in a Million’

In 1996, Aaliyah released her second album, One in a Million — and it blew World Cafe correspondent John Morrison‘s mind.

“It felt like we got a little flash of what the future would be,” he says.

For our latest installment of Culture Corner, Morrison reflects on the influence of One in a Million 30 years later, and on Aaliyah herself, whose future was cut short in 2001, when she died in a plane crash at just 22 years old.

“To lose her that early in her journey as a musician, it feels like we lost not just an individual but what music could’ve been like had she been around to continue to shape it.”

This episode of World Cafe was produced and edited by Kimberly Junod. Our digital producer is Miguel Perez. World Cafe‘s engineer is Chris Williams. Our programming and booking coordinator is Chelsea Johnson and our line producer is Will Loftus.