We're approaching the 20th anniversary of losing Aaliyah, and her sweet memories are being disturbed by troubling headlines that claim she was "drugged, unconscious and carried onto the plane," referencing her very last flight. Despite the fact that this has been a rumor for years, it was never quite solidified or elsewhere documented. All of that changed when a preview for an upcoming book titled Baby Girl: Better Known as Aaliyah, was released. The book is an unauthorized biography slated to release on August 17th.
When the media got ahold of the snippet of the book referencing the alleged pill Aaliyah took, headlines began to crank out as follows:
Journalist and author, Kathy Iondoli, took issue with the way the media was "misconstruing" her unreleased book, so she decided to go the the Rolling Stone to clear things up. She said the following,
"I’ve been in the music industry for 22 years, which means I have something like two years while Aaliyah was still active. When Aaliyah passed away, we had our own rumors that were being told to us as industry people, not fans of an artist, but just industry rumors that were kind of floating around. We were all kind of told the passing rumor of, “Well, she was drugged and she was asleep. She was this, she was that.”
When I was doing my research, I went really wide, and then I went really local, so you go to the biggest Hollywood coverage, and then I got to the local newspapers in the Abaco Islands [where Aaliyah spent her last days]. I went as far as I could, and then you try to get below the local newspapers and you try to get to the people who are actually on the ground. One of the people who was researching on the project with me sent me this link to this video that was on YouTube with this young man who put up this diary because he was triggered by Kobe Bryant’s helicopter crash, and it triggered what happened to him years ago when he was at the airport with Aaliyah.
This is the part where you really have gotta pay attention to the details. Those of you who follow me visually, you KNOW I'm going to break this down, thoroughly. But for now, just sink your teeth into these preliminary facts and findings and remember what I'm telling you about these details and how they do not remain consistent. Kathy continues,
I reached out and I went in his DMs and I said, “Hi, I’m an author and I’m doing this book on Aaliyah. Can I just speak to you?” He gives me a call, I gave him my number. When he told me about this pill, it would have been wrong of me to write it off as Advil, but it would also have been wrong of me to completely say it was a drug that knocked her out, but I had to acknowledge there was a pill. You can’t not do that, especially when this man was the one who handed her the cup of water.
He specified that she had a headache, and I put that in the book. Maybe it was just for her headache, but the fact of the matter was she boarded that plane, from the way he described it, very unaware that she was boarding a plane, especially for someone who minutes prior, was adamant about not getting on the plane. All we know is that she did not want to get on the plane, something was handed to her, and she fell back to sleep. I had to present all of this, I had to.
I think that the problem is, when it comes to Aaliyah, because she’s so mysterious, because everything is always kept under such tight wraps, people develop these large fantasy stories about what happened. They do that a lot with celebrities, especially ones that they don’t feel like they know. Immediately, the newspapers just went wild with it. It was upsetting because that’s not the point in telling the story. The point of telling the story for me was that I hope that at some point, there is a young female artist, a young Black female artist especially, who is sitting in her cab and doesn’t feel comfortable doing something and she needs to know that this story existed so that when she says no, she means no. I want her team to protect her. That’s the reason why I put that story in there."
Hmm, okay. Fair enough, Kathy.
You all know I had to leave you with a lil extra something to dig into and analyze, right?
Take a look at page 168 from the book Baby Girl: Better Known as Aaliyah:
..interesting. Keep it sticky, let me know your thoughts..and you know, we'll chat later! In the meantime, stay "In the Know" and get up-to-date with all things Aaliyah by digging into these:
Thanks for the heads up about this book!! I was going to order it but I’ll pass on that now!! I hate how Aaliyah is dragged through the mud every year…..I can’t imagine what her young life was like if the “rumors “ are correct…..let that baby rest!!