I want to believe in ghosts often for no other reason than the dead deserve the right to pay a visit to those who mishandle their belongings long after they're gone. 

On January 16th, what would have been her 45th birthday, her label Blackground Records 2.0 wished her a happy birthday and promised fans that a new album from the singer was still on the horizon.

“It’s coming,” the company wrote in an Instagram caption with a link to a landing page at unstoppableaaliyah.com. The page teases Unstoppable, the announced posthumous Aaliyah album initially scheduled for release in January 2022. The lead single for that project was “Poison,” featuring The Weeknd, released one month prior. 

The Weeknd sampled her “Rock the Boat” on his song “What You Need” off his 2011 mixtape House of Balloons, so the collaboration made sense (I guess).  However, it would be generous to say the song garnered a mixed reaction because, for the most part, fans were mainly befuddled by the poor quality of the track itself. The track was said to have been crafted around Aaliyah's vocals demoed in 2001. 

The criticism was so intense that an updated version was realized, but it was not enough to distract from the reality of the poor quality of the source material they worked with.  One Twitter user responded at its release: "If Aaliyah's vocals on the demo were too unclear to the point that your engineers couldn't mix and master them to sound good, this song shouldn't have been released. Shame on y'all."

As for what one could make of the song, it wasn’t especially remarkable regarding conception. Not the worst, but nothing close to the quality of Aaliyah’s catalog, which this same label dragged its feet on sharing online. It didn’t help that on the same day, The Weeknd released a much better collaboration with FKA Twigs called “Tears In The Club.” 

I understand that the head of Blackground Records 2.0, Aaliyah's uncle, Barry Hankerson, has expressed good intentions with the Unstoppable album. During an appearance on Atlanta radio station V-103, Hankerson hoped that people would sample parts of songs they like to “express themselves as artists” and “keep her music going.”

In fairness, I like the use of Aaliyah’s vocals on Chris Brown’s track “Don’t Think They Know.” And the previously posthumous Aaliyah single, “Enough,” featuring Drake, did provide comfort when I heard it. I miss Aaliyah’s music, too, and it saddens me that Hankerson says the label had “exhausted our unpublished music.” I don’t take issue with them trying to stretch what little they have per se.

But as much as I’d like to hear more Aaliyah, what’s all been shared about this project thus far seems antithetical to Hankerson’s goals and, more importantly, doesn’t help Aaliyah’s legacy. 

When the album was first teased, collaborators included Ne-Yo, Chris Brown, Future, Drake, and The Weekend. So, not only is this project presumably based largely on low-quality demos, but it’s also an album filled with solely male collaborators.

All of these men have produced some bops, but much as I take issue with the album even happening, if it must happen, where are the women? So many female artists have cited Aaliyah as an influence. Why not reach out to any of them? Based on what we knew about Aaliyah in life and what we have learned in death, she would have been better served by more women around her. Men exploited Aaliyah; must we surround the last of her work solely around men and their gaze again?

Most posthumous releases aren’t good to begin with, so this comes across as another mishap in handling her legacy. Barry Hankerson got it right when he finally allowed Aaliyah’s music to be streamed online in late 2021.

In a statement, he said: "Thank you to all of her many fans for keeping [Aaliyah's] music alive. I'm sorry it took so long, but when you lose a family member so unexpectedly, it takes time to deal with that type of grief. I decided to release Aaliyah's music to keep her legacy alive."

I used to worry that Aaliyah’s music might be lost to future generations because it wasn’t streamable. Still, now that the wrong has been corrected, based on what we know about Unstoppable, maybe it’s best we let it be and let the kids find her on TikTok. These new songs don’t sound like they will invite new listeners, but they might put off more of the fans that made her a star.