Dame Dash Defends Being in R. Kelly’s “Fiesta” Video, Says Aaliyah Told Him ‘I Don’t Want to Start Any Trouble’
Dame Dash is defending his appearance in the video for R. Kelly’s “Fiesta (Remix)” with Jay-Z, his fellow Roc-A-Fella co-founder.
The video for the Hot 100-charting 2001 single, followed one year later by Kelly and Jay’s joint project The Best of Both Worlds, has long been brought up as point of contention given that Dash and Aaliyah, who died later that same year in a plane crash at the age of 22, were in a romantic relationship at the time. In a video shared to his America Nu Network channel this week, Dash answered a question about his involvement in the video, noting that he’s previously discussed this issue before providing what he says is “the truth” about the situation.
“So when Jay was proceeding to still do business with R. Kelly, I went back and told Aaliyah like, yo, they’re still doing projects, they got singles together, they’re shooting videos,” Dame said in response to the question sent to him by Baller Alert. “I don’t wanna go to the video. I don’t wanna have any part of it. And what she told me was, I don’t want to start any trouble. It would probably trigger more attention on it. I just wanna heal. I just wanna leave this alone and get as far away from it as possible. I don’t wanna hear about it.”
Dash continued, “I’m really happy with our relationship in this moment and where it’s going. Just don’t be in any scenes with him and don’t take any pictures with him. So you can ask anybody that was on the set, and they could lie and we could go back and forth about it, but I stood in the trailer. When it came [time] to do the shoot, I did my shots with Jay or whoever. I was not in one scene with R. Kelly and you’ve never seen me in a picture with R. Kelly, at least [not] after I met Aaliyah.”
Dame has indeed discussed this in the past, including in a 2019 interview with Nick Cannon. In that interview, available in full here, he also suggested Aaliyah had encouraged him not to take action over Kelly, an ex-employee of whom testified in 2021 that he had bribed his way into facilitating a secret marriage between the two. At the time of this marriage, Aaliyah was reported to have been 15 years old. Kelly, now behind bars, would have been 27.
“Put it like this, I remember having a conversation with Aaliyah and I was like, yo, tell me what happened,” Dame told Cannon in 2019. “And she just couldn’t. … She said, leave it alone.”
Due to this, Dame further expressed to Cannon, he was unable to “bring awareness” to the situation, which he says inspired him to instead embark on what he described as a “silent protest.”
More recently, Dame spoke about his disapproval of Jay and Kelly’s collaborative relationship, which also resulted in a second joint album, 2004’s Unfinished Business. According to Dame, he was “surprised” that Jay pursued these projects.
“It’s morally wrong to do a project with someone that we know raped my girl or raped anybody for that matter,” Dame said earlier this month in another America Nu Network video.
In July, it was reported that Kelly’s legal team was working to have his sex crime convictions thrown out. The effort was built around the PROTECT Act of 2003, with lawyers arguing that the Bush era legislation shouldn’t apply in this case. The PROTECT Act, per Bush’s remarks upon signing, was designed to ensure “the protection of America’s children.”
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