After Vibe published a story about Kelly in its December 1994/January 1995 issue and included a copy of the fraudulent certificate, the marriage went public; it was annulled shortly thereafter. Hankerson, reportedly furious, permanently separated Aaliyah from Kelly, but he didn’t cut his own business ties with him until years later, in 2000. Kelly, at the time the most popular R&B singer in the world, was too valuable.

In 1996, after striking a distribution deal with Atlantic Records, Hankerson moved Blackground—and Aaliyah—from Jive to Atlantic, gaining full control of her masters in the process. To replace Kelly, he recruited an emerging songwriting/production duo from Virginia Beach, Missy Elliott and Timbaland, to work on the next album. Released in 1996, One in a Million went double platinum on the backs of singles like the title track and “If Your Girl Only Knew,” which both became radio hits thanks to Timbaland’s innovative production style, Elliott’s memorable hooks, and Aaliyah’s effortlessly icy vocals. Hankerson quickly signed Timbaland to a solo deal, along with his collaborator Magoo, but Elliott defected to launch her own recording career, leaving Blackground short a songwriter once again.

Hankerson signed a Timbaland collaborator from Louisville, Kentucky, named Static Major, and over the next four years the pair turned out some of the best songs of the era, including Ginuwine’s “Pony,” in 1996; Aaliyah’s greatest single, “Are You That Somebody?,” in 1998; and “Try Again,” her first and only No. 1 hit on the Billboard Hot 100. By the turn of the millennium, she was an international star.

This was peak Aaliyah. Her music was tight, upbeat and complex, layering double and triple harmonic lines. Her voice, in isolation, was not among the all-time greats, but her whispery presence on a track was captivating. Her angular, syncopated dance moves spawned dozens of lesser imitators, and her fashion choices—the oversized jeans, the exposed midriff, the waist chain attached to the belly ring—became definitive late '90s style.

Her self-titled third album launched in July 2001. Though it was pitched against the difficult headwind of widespread online file sharing, Aaliyah managed to go platinum twice, thanks to singles like “Rock the Boat” and “More Than a Woman.”

Six weeks later, at the age of 22, Aaliyah was dead. She’d been shooting the music video for "Rock the Boat" in the Bahamas when her plane crashed immediately after takeoff. Carrying eight people and luggage, the plane was overloaded. Its pilot, Luis Morales, had obtained his license by falsifying his flight logs. An autopsy revealed traces of cocaine in his system.

Hankerson was devastated, retreating into a long period of grief. He made no public statements about her death. According to those who worked with him, he never really recovered.

In February 2002, seven months after Aaliyah’s death, Chicago Sun-Times reporter Jim DeRogatis received an anonymous videotape in the mail, showing a man who looked exactly like R. Kelly urinating into the mouth of a underage girl. DeRogatis, who had already been investigating Kelly’s reputation as a statutory rapist, immediately turned the tape over to the police. In a published transcript with the victim’s mother, DeRogatis later speculated on the identity of his source, using initials instead of full names: “I’m sure that tape came by B.H.,” he said. “He’s tired of seeing young girls get hurt.”

Hankerson had split with Kelly, acrimoniously, sometime in 2000. When I talked to DeRogatis recently, nearly 14 years after the infamous tape first leaked to the public, he recalled Hankerson fondly. “I always found him to be a man with a conscience who felt wrong by his niece,” he told me.