Today’s “Woman Crush Wednesday” is brought to us by thee incomparable music producer Mark Ronson, who’s currently on a promo tour for the release of his memoir Night People: How to Be a DJ in ’90s New York City.
One excerpt that’s gone viral stems from a recent Rolling Stone interview, where Ronson dives into the emotional and sonic impact of Aaliyah’s “One in a Million”—a track that, in his words, “fucked everybody’s head up.”
The DJ and production mastermind kicked off the Song Shuffle game with the classic Aaliyah tune, reflecting on how the album of the same name completely blew his mind the first time he heard it.
“I remember, I think the year that I started DJing, Aaliyah’s first single ‘Back & Forth’ came out. And it was a great party song and people loved it, but ‘One in a Million,’ it was from her first record working with Timbaland and Missy [Elliott],” Ronson explains. “Shit just fucked everybody’s head up because their production, this was like the future, her voice, the way she looked.”
He continued by recalling the first time he played the record at home, and how “terrifying” it felt to remix such a slow yet beautiful song into his sets:
“I remember … putting it on my record player and sitting on the edge of my bed. The 808s were like rumbling, I had these cheap ceramic tile floors, the bass was shaking, the crickets were singing, and then she comes in singing. It was so modern and crazy, like scary.”
