August 25 marked 25 years since singer Aaliyah and her crew died in a plane crash in the Bahamas, so Us Weekly sat with some of her loved ones to speak about the final moments they shared with her.
One of those who spoke up was Roc-A-Fella cofounder Dame Dash, who was her boyfriend at the time.
Dash revealed she felt so wary about the plane before boarding it, but ultimately got on it to film the ‘Rock the Boat’ video.
“She texted me saying, ‘I don’t like the plane.’ I told her, ‘Don’t get on it.’ However, she said she had to do it for the video,” he told Us. “She knew the plane wasn’t right, and she was always scared of planes.”
Since Aaliyah’s fear of flying was known, Dash said she had ways of trying to overcome it.
“Every single time, she was scared,” Dash says. “She always took a satin pillow with her. She called it her good-luck pillow.”
Us Weekly writes that Dash thinks Aaliyah was “eager to get home to him,” adding that one of the last things she said to him was “’I am just going to do this video then come right back.’”
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Aaliyah was only 22 when she died after the plane crashed less than a minute after taking off. Eight other people aboard died as well, and it was later determined that the pilot was reportedly not authorized to fly the aircraft, and alcohol and cocaine were found in his system.
After her death, it was ultimately decided to release the video she was filming, with director Hype Williams at the helm.
Carmit Bachar, who was one of Aaliyah’s background dancers in the video, praised Williams for uplifting Aaliyah’s legacy with the video.
“I [was] so moved by what Hype Williams created,” Bachar told Us Weekly. “I don’t know how he did it after everything that transpired, but he did an incredible job. There’s that final shot of Aaliyah underwater. She’s swimming and swaying to the side, and her hair swoops around her, almost like a mermaid. It’s so angelic. Then she rises toward the surface, and there’s this beautiful light above her. It looked like she was going up to heaven. I remember that moment making me cry, and it still gives me chills.”
