Aaliyah: Ten years ago today, the singer Aaliyah was killed when he crashed in the Bahamas after a video description. While fans mourned his loss, pouring over the newspapers and listening to radio updates, those who knew him personally felt the pain much closer to their hearts. Aaliyah then boyfriend, Damon Dash spoke to Billboard this week, his relationship with Aaliyah. The former Roc-a-feller executive reflected on the better times and how her death impacted him. A few excerpts from Dash’s interview with Billboard’s The Juice: On meeting Aaliyah through his accountant in 2000: “She was intelligent and she caught me. I’m the kind of guy who says things sometimes just to make myself laugh, but she would just catch me making jokes for me. I couldn’t get anything past her. She had a very quick mind and a very kind heart.”On their chemistry “The energy we created together for people to observe was kind of crazy. We’d be in a room full of people talking to each other and it felt like everyone was listening but it would be just us. It would be like we were the only ones in the room…It was like something was going down in history every time I was with her. Every time I was around her I felt it was the place to be.”On juggling a relationship and career: “She was always working and shooting movies. She was always gone for like four months at a time, then come back and be gone for another month. She had to rehearse and I was doing my own thing, so it was really hard for us to get long stretches of time together. When you’re with someone like that you buy into a life of being separate, but again, I couldn’t help my feelings. "In what was to come". My heart broke nothing prepares you for that ... Our time together means a lot when we had more time, we feel like this [commitment] could be next. She was one of the nicest people I ever met. Even with the pain he felt, would do it all again,”
