Bro. I'm never deleting Twitter(X).😂😂

R. Kelly and Aaliyah photographed by Anthony Cutajar for Word Up! magazine, 1994.

Year-End Poll #54: 2003

[Image description: a collage of photos of the 10 musicians and musical groups featured in this poll. In order from left to right, top to bottom: 50 Cent, R. Kelly, Sean Paul, Beyoncé, 3 Doors Down, Matchbox Twenty, Chingy, Aaliyah, Kid Rock and Sheryl Crow, Evanescence. End description]

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As I alluded to yesterday, ringtones became one of the record industry's strategies for raising profits in a post-Napster world. Two of the songs on today's poll are notable for this reason, with 50 Cent's In da Club becoming the first number one song on the Billboard Ringtone Charts in 2004 (the first song to reach this achievement) and Beyoncé's Crazy in Love becoming the best selling ringtone in the United Kingdom that year.

We're also starting to see the south start to take over the sound of rap in the mainstream. Groups like OutKast, Arrested Development, Three 6 Mafia, and Geto Boys already helped to put the south on people's radars (note: these artists are all from different regions in the south so their music branches off from different styles, so I'm not lumping them together for any of those reasons). But in the early 2000s with the mainstream popularity of crunk, the south was going to define a lot of what rap sounds like to people this decade. With all of the R&B fusion gaining popularity in the genre, crunk helped to serve as an alternative sound. There isn't any crunk on this poll (sadly Get Low by Lil Jon and the East Side Boyz missed eligibility by one slot), but we'll definitely see its presence later on.

Today's chart also features the posthumous release of Aaliyah's Miss You. Aaliyah, singer, actress, "Princess of R&B", was killed in a plane crash in 2001 when she was only 22 years old. For the music video, artists like Jamie Foxx, Queen Latifa, Lil Kim, DMX, and Missy Elliot made appearances to pay tribute to the late artist. The video also opens with DMX reciting a poem he wrote after the news of her passing. During her short life, she helped to define an entire generation of R&B and her influence is still heard and seen today.

The Boondocks Director: Anthony Bell | Studio: Rebel Base | USA, 2005

R.Kelly

1998’s “If I Could Turn Back The Hands Of Time”

R. Kelly - P. Diddy

Aaliyah and R. Kelly in her music video “At Your Best (You Are Love)” (1994)

The Album

The Single(s)

Сейчас решил посмотреть старые клипы одного из лучших и моих любимых R&B певцов R.Kelly и узнал, что ему дали 30 лет тюрьмы! Это шок, это боль. В каком отвратительном мире мы живём. 2007 так не было. Хоть клип гляньте.