Music mogul Damon Dash said in a new interview that he could have prevented his late girlfriend Aaliyah’s untimely death at age 22.
It’s been 15 years since the Princess of R&B unexpectedly died in an August 2001 plane crash in the Bahamas. Now Dash, 44, who was in a relationship with Aaliyah at the time of the tragedy, has claimed that the “Try Again” singer would still be alive if he had been in the Caribbean with her.
“There is no chance that, if I was there, we would have been on that plane,” he told The Real host Jeannie Mai, who asked Dash if there was a possibility that he could have been on the ill-fated aircraft. “So it would have never happened that way.”
Prior to his April 19 appearance on the talk show, Dash talked about Aaliyah on a recent episode of the VH1 reality show Family Therapy With Dr. Jenn, saying her death turned him into “a monster.”
The Roc-A-Fella Records cofounder went on to explain that he warned Aaliyah against going to the Bahamas, where she filmed the video for her sexy track “Rock the Boat.” Dash revealed that the young recording artist also had reservations about traveling to the tropical locale.
“She told me she was going to the Bahamas, and I was against it, like, ‘Yo, don’t go.’ And then down to the last — we had the Blackberry — down to the last Blackberry that we had, before she went there, she was like, ‘Yo, I don’t like that plane,’” Dash recalled on The Real. “And I was like, ‘Don’t get on it.’ And she was just like, ‘You know, I gotta do it.’ You know, it was a complicated situation, but she had to go do that video.”
Aaliyah wrapped shooting for “Rock the Boat” early and decided to leave the Abaco Islands one day ahead of schedule. Instead of hopping aboard the G5 that the pop star and her crew originally intended to use to fly back to the States, they took a smaller jet — a choice that led to one of the music industry’s biggest losses.
“If I was there, I would have made sure that that jet that was supposed to be for her … she would have been on that,” Dash continued. “I wouldn’t have got on that plane, you know what I’m saying? So it probably would have been different. But you know, everything happens for a reason. You know, and what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger and you just gotta deal with the cards that life deals you.”
A few years later after Aaliyah’s death, Dash married fashion designer Rachel Roy. The couple divorced in 2009 after four years of marriage and share daughters Ava, 16, and Tallulah, 7. He also has a son, Damon Dash II, from a previous relationship.
Watch the video above.
