Happy Birthday, Aaliyah

Aaliyah would have turned 35 years old today, so let’s take a moment.

Any Aaliyah song I could post would qualify as a jam, of course, but I’m going with “Best Friends,” a track off of Missy Elliott’s forever-excellent Supa Dupa Fly, because it is one of the greatest recorded tributes to ride-or-die female friendship we have, and because the Missy-Aaliyah-Timbaland trio just made perfect sonic sense. Here’s Missy, in The Fader’s 2008 tribute to her late best friend:

Me and Tim, our sound was so far left that it was kinda hard for people. They liked it, but they didn’t know if they really liked it, because it was so different from everything else on the radio. But the weird thing was, as soon as we did “One in a Million,” she immediately thought it was a hit. We didn’t have to convince her, she was like, I’m telling you, this is hot. I knew then there was a chemistry. She wasn’t close-minded. She was an artist that got it.

After that, we became family. She was my little sister and Tim was my brother. And we became the Supafriends! We felt like we was gonna save the world. We was gonna change music every chance that we got. We felt like we was gonna always be family. Forever.

There is a moment in this song that I consider one of those perfect music moments that I can play over and over again. It’s right around the 55-second mark, when Aaliyah comes in after a strong, harmonized line with Missy and sings, softly, “I’ll be there,” over Timbaland’s strings. It makes me feel some deep, shared nostalgia for a friendship I had no part in. Happy birthday to Baby Girl.