Aaliyah - If Your Girl Only Knew

Album: One In A Million (Blackground/ Atlantic)
Songwriters: Melissa Elliott and Tim Mosley
Hit #1: September 28th, 1996 (2 Weeks)

The day teen R&B star Aaliyah entered the studio with the then-unknown Virginia songwriting/ production duo Missy Elliott and Tim "Timbaland" Mosley would be the day Black pop would change forever. Both parties were in desperate need for eachother; Aaliyah needed to distance herself away from the stigma that she was R. Kelly's puppet (as well as the potentially image-killing ordeal of being his underage wife) and Missy and Tim needed the benefits of an established artist to break into the business. They all got their wishes and along the way, introduced urban music to it's future.

"If Your Girl Only Knew", the first single from Aaliyah's stunning sophomore release, One In A Million, arrived like a mysterious force from another dimension far, far away. With Timbaland's ambient electro-hip hop masterwork and Elliott's daytime talk show-derived pen skills, the track embodied R&B of "The Jetsons"' era.

Betwixt serpentine metallic-synth strands, a thunderclap drum beat and creepy wails seemingly echoing from the bowels of Hell, we enter the thoughts of Aaliyah as her ears are being bombarded with the mouthpiece from some slick-tongued player. Fully aware that he's already got a girl at home, Aaliyah lets her mind wander on what homegirl would think if she knew what her man was doing ("If your girl only knew/ That you was trying to get with me/ (What would she do?)". While amused by her imagination's vividness ("She would probably curse you out and unplug her phone," she smirks), the singer also holds some guilt of her own, recognizing that her slight interest in dude implicates her as an equal partner in his betrayal.

Too cool to show him that she's falling for his tricks though (she barely shifts from her drowsy, disaffected vocal stamp), Aaliyah eventually snaps back to reality, deciding it's best that she stay away from the drama. "It's dumb to put up with you/ I won't be no fool," her inner dialogue concludes, as she pulls herself up and slowly struts off-scene to the sharp rhythmic pulse of Timbaland's ever-morphing futuro-funk odyssey.

Unlike anything else R&B had ever been privy to, "If Your Girl Only Knew" launched an electric chemistry between artist and producer that would stand head-and-shoulders above the suddenly bland competition while introducing the masses to an appealing new groove it would never be able to forget.

Best Moment: That winding, snake-charmer bassline that runs throughout the cut.