This Drake-Produced Posthumous Aaliyah Album Is Actually Gonna Happen, Huh?

This Drake/Aaliyah story’s been kicking around for a while now, so let’s start with a recap:

- Drake, as is music-world custom, became enough of an Aaliyah fan to sample her voice on his Thank Me Later track “Unforgettable.”

- Drake, after some “oh, Aaliyah’s good for a girl” talk with UK radio DJ Tim Westwood, mentioned some “great Aaliyah news“–great for Aaliyah, great for Drake, great for the drakes and the geese and the ganders and humanity at large. The only “great Aaliyah news” that’s really available to break at this point, unless Drake somehow found a cache of unreleased Aaliyah material that she left in Toronto during one of her frequent, notorious Canada trips, would be posthumous material.

- Producer Jeffrey “J. Dub” Walker said in March that the posthumous record was in fact in the works and would contain an unreleased track called “Steady Ground.” Rashad Haughton, Aaliyah’s brother, said all of that was complete crap and that no such project was in the works.

- Sometime before or after all this, Drake got an Aaliyah tattoo. We mention this because it is funny. (And possibly hypocritical.)

Now, the news: Drake’s involvement in Aaliyah’s posthumous album is more substantial that it could have been. HipHopDX reports that he’ll executive produce the project. It’s a fairly major coup by Drake considering that longtime Aaliyah producer Timbaland is highly available, as are numerous others more connected to the singer. Those guys could still be involved in some other capacity–details on the album are still basically nonexistent–but Drake’s got one hell of a figurehead position here, and we speak for the entire world (well, the R&B-listening world, as filtered through Twitter and comments section) when we say we really, really, really hope he doesn’t screw it up.

The other rumor, should it be true, will give us some idea whether he’ll do that; Drake will reportedly debut another Aaliyah-sampling single at the OVO Festival this Sunday. No word on whether the track will mention the Aaliyah album, let alone make ti on there, but we wouldn’t rule either out.

The post This Drake-Produced Posthumous Aaliyah Album Is Actually Gonna Happen, Huh? appeared first on Popdust.