Aaliyah - One In A Million

Album: One In A Million (Blackground)
Songwriters: Missy Elliott and Tim Mosley
Hit #1: January 4th, 1997 (6 Weeks-Airplay)

A murky, upside-down-feeling ballad, "One In A Million" sounds like it's playing in some Y3K-era, post-apocalyptic nightmare world. It's the only way to try to explain the track's stunning, goth-surreal atmosphere. Drums pound in offbeat rhythmic patterns, malfunctioning guitars zing out random riffs and somewhere skulking in the darkness is Aaliyah, drowsily echoing romancing sentiment to a man she feels destined to spend the rest of her life with, at any cost.

In accordance with the shadowy sonics encircling her, Aaliyah takes a crush to dark, obsessive levels. "Baby you don't know/ What you do to me/ Between me and you/ I feel a chemistry," she emotes, with the droning flatness of a soulless zombie, "Wanna please you anyway I can/ Wanna share my world/ Don't you understand?". Note the desperation in that last line. She may feel like he's 'one in a million' and love the dirty drawls he wears, but the notion soon forms that the feelings might not be reciprocated. Sensing this, she breaks away from her hypnotizing stoned vocal, releasing a pinching cry where she's teetering on the edge of insanity by the thought of him not remaining by her side. "I'll give you anything you want from me," she sings, as the knocking, cavernous beat shrouds her in sun-deprived loneliness.

The inverted, skeletal remix drowns Aaliyah further in the mix; she's now reduced to a faint apparition trapped amidst Hellish growls and moans. But her new crew (Tim, Missy and Ginuwine) are to the rescue, bringing her back to life with coaxing rap ad-libs and the soulful male response she was begging for before.

Like "If Your Girl Only Knew", "One In A Million" captured R&B venturing in new and exciting places. Exquisite layers of suffocating gloom housing human vulnerability offered a challenging, mind-bending listen that quickly made moot the idea that the state of Black music was in peril. Within years, the track's otherworldly elements would become a commonplace sound in all forms of music.

Best Moment: That skittering drum track.