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" I’ve had a wonderful amount of success and done a lot at 22, but there’s a lot more I want to do. "

" What's good in having money and being famous if you can't share it with others less fortunate than yourself? "

" I would like to make a bigger impact on the world by giving back, and using my celebrity to raise money for people who need it most. "

" I don't mess around when it comes to my work – it's important. That's when I will definitely put someone in their place. "

“ If God gave you the talent, you should go for it. But don’t think it’s going to be easy. It’s hard! ”

" Being in this business, I accept that there are positives and negatives but having a strong family base and a belief in God enables me to weather the storms. ”

“ It’s hard to say what I want my legacy to be when I’m long gone. ”

“ That’s why I work every day. Ev-er-y day. I want to knock people out. ”

“ There is always a bit of pressure to do a good album – to do good work, period. ”

“ I’m a total performer. ”

“ People are gonna look up to me because I’m young, black, and female. ”

" I want longevity. I don't want to get out there and run myself ragged and spread myself thin. "

" I think it's important to take a break, you know, from the public eye for a while, and give people a chance to miss you. "

" I see myself as sexy. If you are comfortable with it, it can be very classy and appealing. "

" I began to work the stage and get the audience into it. I also learned how to have fun out there. It is something I will never forget."

" There are certain things I want to keep to me. I don’t discuss my private life. "

" When a fan comes up to you and says I love your music, there’s nothing better than that."

" You have to love what you do to want to do it everyday. "

" I’m the interpreter. I’m the one who takes your words and brings them to life. I was trained to sing and dance and laugh, and that’s what I want to do. "

" I don’t think about my previous success. I’m happy that the work I’ve done has been very successful. "

" It’s in how you carry yourself. I’ve always been a very mature person, and I’ve always known what I wanted. And I go after it no matter what. "

" I want people to remember me as a full on entertainer and a good person. "

" All I can do is leave it in God’s hands and hope that my fans feel where I’m coming from. "

" I stay true to myself and my style, and I am always pushing myself to be aware of that and be original."

" I’m a survivor and I can handle anything. I’m very confident about that. "

" I don't want to abandon one work for the other, and I don't think I need to sacrifice anything to put my all into either one of them."

HommeGirls Pay Homage To Aaliyah in New Magazine Article

By Sandy

Tuesday, June 22, 2021 - 14:22

Repost via @hommegirls: "The HG Hommage: Aaliyah. With her music and beautiful tough-girl persona, Aaliyah was light years ahead of her time. Now—20 years after her death—her sound and style are more relevant than ever. Emil Wilbekin recollects in Hommegirls Vol 5, on newsstands and Hommegirls.com now.

Photographs by @dhagren
Story by @emilwilbekin"

After 20 years Aaliyah will be featured in a new magazine article from HommeGirls who pay tribute to Baby Girl through photographic images by Eddie Otchere and former Vibe magazine editor Emil Wilbekin. We will most certainly be copping! 😍❤ Huge thanks to @ultimate.aaliyah for the tag! 😊 (SN: Hopefully they correct the mistype on her surname as it's 'Haughton' not 'Houghton' 😩)

Here's a synopsis below for more details...

We started HommeGirls with a very specific agenda in mind: to create a style magazine for women who love menswear. Less than two years later, that platform has very quickly morphed into a gathering place for anyone who identifies with the HG spirit—which turns out to be way more expansive than we had originally imagined. Don’t get us wrong, we will always love a beautifully tailored jacket, but it’s the energy (and not the clothes) that makes a HommeGirl.

We recognize that energy in the Teddy Girls, whose smart, neo Edwardian look was a response to the austerities of life in London during the second world war: the Teddy Girls tore up the style rule book and their ration cards both. We were excited to discover Ken Russell’s portraits of this little documented subculture. Long overshadowed by their male counterparts, they might very well be the OG HGs.

We see it in June Newton, who while faithfully serving as her husband’s model, muse and accomplice for more than 50 years, quietly established herself as an important photographer in her own right. (Pardon our French, but it’s gotta take some balls to be Mrs. Helmut Newton for all that time.)

We see it in Aaliyah, to whom we pay special hommage in this issue with a heartfelt piece by former Vibe editor Emil Wilbekin. As this issue came together, we kept circling back to the late singer who died tragically in 2001 at the age of 22. Her fearless tomboy style somehow permeates every shoot. But underneath the low-slung jeans, the scant sports bras, the XXXL windbreakers and team jerseys, and the ever present men’s underwear waistband grazing her seemingly always bare midriff, it’s Aaliyah’s gutsy spirit that gives her true HommeGirl cred.

And we recognize it in the new generation of HommeGirls like our cover star Rosalía, the self-described Barcelonina Boss Bitch, who throws some serious curve on our cover. Rosalía’s music defies genres, languages, boundaries (dance, she tells us, is the perfect soil to grow a paradigm of inclusion) and as writer Alessandra Codinha notes, she herself practically defied gravity on the shoot with Cass Bird. The energy around Rosalía is undeniable, and definitely HommeGirl.