- I think it’s time for us
to address the elephant in the room.
- R. Kelly was the first
corporately sponsored p***phile.
Everybody knew.
- Once the sh** came out on R. Kelly,
Jay-Z fled the scene.
- The point was, he knew all the time.
- For 20 years,
Jay-Z refused to speak out against R. Kelly
but his former partner,
Dame Dash, won’t stay silent.
- Aaliyah is key to everything.
Aaliyah and I were very serious.
We talked about getting married.
So I knew exactly what went on.
She’d just be like,
“No, that’s a bad, bad man.”
- R. Kelly did indeed marry his protege,
the 15-year-old singer Aaliyah Haughton.
- Like, Aaliyah was like
the sacrificial lamb for all that.
- 22-year-old rising star Aaliyah
has been killed in a horrific plane crash.
- It’s a pain that you couldn’t understand.
- It changed you, it turned you into a monster.
- When Dame was at his lowest,
Jay committed the ultimate betrayal.
- I had so much trust in my brother
but he did things that I thought
he would never do.
So what you think I felt all these years?
- For 20 years, R. Kelly’s power protected him.
- At that time, we did not look hard enough.
- You remember Aaliyah’s album cover.
- “Age Ain’t Nothing But a Number.”
Sitting back there like perv master.
- I mean, I wasn’t there.
You know I ain’t have nothing to do with that.
- They made a song together
called “Not Guilty.”
Anybody that knows that
what happened to my girl that fu** with me
should not be fu***** with homie, period.
- Tell me about the relationship with Jay-Z.
You and Jay-Z formed
“Roc-A-Fella Records” in the 90s.
- Success.
- Are you and Jay-Z still friends?
- Well, you know, but there’s been things
where he’s been in business with people
that are against my honor code,
so because of that
I kinda have to keep a distance.
- As you hear all this other stuff
in the news with R. Kelly,
how does that make you feel about him?
- I was just shocked at
how long he got away with it
and how many people turned
and looked the other way,
how many people were still,
involved with him in any kind of way,
knowing all those things.
- Before R. Kelly,
Dame and Jay were inseparable
as they built an empire together.
- You’ve been Jay-Z
since the beginning, right? So...
- I mean, yeah. For about 10, 15 years.
- Jay-Z and Dame came from street money
to starting a label that...
nobody wanted to sign Jay-Z so
they created their own
and turned around and got him famous
to where he got a deal,
they got a deal at Def Jam.
- You know, we all know we’re a family
at Roc-A-Fella.
Jay’s my best friend.
- Aw.
- I’m not ashamed to say it.
- I love you, man! I love you, man.
- And we all know this, we’re close,
and that’s one of the reasons why we
so tight as a family.
- Dame always fought for Jay,
even when no one else would.
- I took it more personal than business
'cause I was fighting for my friends
and my brothers
as opposed to people I didn’t know.
- This is the man that came
into corporate offices
and when they was robbing us,
he made sure we got what
we were supposed to get.
- And we built this from nothing, nothing.
So there’s nothing that we can’t
see our way through.
- But when Dame met Aaliyah,
everything changed.
- She was one of those people
that if she did something first,
everyone followed suit.
'Cause she was a very forward thinker.
- Now, not only do you
have your self-titled album coming out,
we just heard that you have been
confirmed for “Matrix 2” and “The Matrix 3.”
- Yeah. Yes.
- Oh my god, congratulations.
- I feel so blessed
because everything that I’ve always wanted
is happening to me
and I just feel like I have so many places to go
and so many things to enjoy.
- But I’ve never seen anyone
that was going to affect the world like she did.
Despite the fact that she went through
a lot of bulls***,
still very innocent and not jaded.
- Aaliyah could see a different side of Dame,
but as they got closer
there was one thing in their way.
- Our intention at first
wasn’t even to be in love,
we were just really good friends
and we fell for real.
It was almost an accident.
My friend, Natane, brought me to this
photo shoot in LA
and it was called, like, “The It Girls”
and were talking about things,
about your soul and the evolution of your soul,
and that was where our connection came.
We developed a real friendship
but it was always apprehension
'cause other people were trying to get at her.
And then, you know, I guess Jay
was trying to get at her as well
and I didn’t know.
He was sending flowers
and he was courting her.
- 'Cause the rumor originally
was that were connected to Jay.
- Exactly. Jay and I were hanging out a lot.
He’s my homie, we have a lot of fun together,
but we never dated like that.
I’mma leave it at that.
- So you have a boyfriend in your life?
- It’s personal life.
- That’s personal?
- That’s the personal life.
I don’t really discuss it.
It’s hard, when you’re in this business
you become a public figure,
you know what I mean?
And everything you do belongs to the public
and that’s fine,
but there’s parts that you wanna keep for you.
- Dame knew how important
Aaliyah’s privacy was
because she’d been under attack
for her last relationship five years earlier.
- Hip hop star R. Kelly did indeed
marry his protege, the 15-year-old singer
Aaliyah Haughton.
- That was a headline.
That was something talked about
like it was normal.
- Did y’all ever talk about it?
- We talked about it up to the point
where it hurt.
- As Aaliyah opened up to Dame,
he learned just how dark
the relationship with R. Kelly had been.
- We were out on the road with Aaliyah.
On a tour bus,
there really aren’t any confined spaces,
so it just so happened
we were all laying in our bunks
when the door flew open on the bus.
- What did you see?
- Things that an adult
should not be doing with a child.
- Dame would do anything to protect Aaliyah,
but his partnership with Jay
put him in a difficult position.
- You ever have beef with R. Kelly
while you was with Aaliyah?
- She just wanted it left alone.
So that’s the thing that people would be like,
when Jay was doing videos with him,
I was supposed to be in the video
but I’d be like,
“Yo, what do you want me to do?”
And she’d be like, “Don’t start nothing,
just don’t be in no shots with him.”
And she didn’t wanna deal with the bulls***.
Like, the things that had happened in the past,
she told me leave it alone.
I would have to respect
her wish no matter what,
and her wish was,
“Leave it alone, let me heal,
let me rest, let me, I’m in love,
let’s just enjoy this.”
- As their relationship grew,
everyone around them could see
how much Dame and Aaliyah
meant to each other.
- You know, the thing was she was gone a lot,
so the time that we had together, I mean,
it was like we appreciated it.
- They were in heaven.
Nothing from the outside
really got in their way.
And she was so happy. She was so happy.
- It was like the first kinda time
that she had found this kind of
peace and happiness,
and the same thing for me.
I didn’t know what being in love was,
I didn’t even understand what that feeling is
and I was able to really achieve that with her,
so now I know what it feels like.
- So you were in love with her?
- Yeah. Completely.
- What was your last conversation with her?
- I didn’t want her to do the video.
- Which video?
- She was shooting a video in Miami.
- Yep.
- And I had my son and my nephews with me
and, you know, she was very supportive,
so I was like,
“All right, I’m gonna come down there,
I’ll bring the kids,
make a vacation, work, the whole nine.”
Remember she used to babysit you?
- Yeah. It was a lot of fun with Aaliyah.
- But when Aaliyah told Dame
that she had to fly to the Bahamas
to finish the video,
he was desperate for her to stay.
- I told her, like, I didn’t want her to go.
And that’s kinda fu**** up
'cause that was one of the reasons
why she was in such a rush to get back
and even when she got on the plane,
she didn’t like the plane.
So one of her last texts was,
“I don’t like the plane.”
And I literally was like,
“Don’t get on.”
- Damn.
- I literally was like, “Don’t get on it.”
And if I’d have been an asshole that day
and really stood behind what I believed in,
she wouldn’t have got on that plane.
- Hollywood lost a rising star
with the death of 22-year-old
R&B star Aaliyah.
- Tell me about that day. Where were you?
- I was getting my hair cut
and I was waiting for her.
She was trying to get back really quickly
because we were trying to see each other.
- The small, twin-engine Cessna
erupted into a fiery nosedive
just minutes after leaving the Bahamas
where Aaliyah was shooting
an upcoming music video.
- Her mother called and she said she had,
Fatima had called and said
that there was a plane crash
and Aaliyah was in it
and once I heard, I knew it was true.
- My cousins and I all heard it
and there was, like, 10 of us,
we were just all crying down the line,
and then I saw my dad and
he was just devastated.
I actually never saw him that low.
I feel like emotionally he had hit rock bottom.
It was probably, like,
one of the worst days we ever had.
- You also said that her death,
it changed you, it turned you into a monster.
- Yeah.
It made me fearless,
'cause I know what real pain feels like
and I’ve dealt with it.
There can’t be nothing worse than that.
- We actually have video at her funeral
where you’re very emotional.
Remember that day?
- I don’t revisit it often because it hurts,
but a lot was going on in that moment.
I mean, I still had to get myself
together and fight
'cause there were things that were going on.
- Dame barely had time to grieve
when just five months after Aaliyah’s death
Jay-Z did the unthinkable.
- Just the idea of having a
whole album with myself
and R. Kelly was just an amazing prospect.
Best of Both World Tour’s
coming to a city near you.
- Best of Both Worlds t-shirts,
drawers, condoms.
Everything.
- How do you deal with that,
when someone you respect does some sh**
that you don’t fu** with at all?
You gotta remember,
once I knew Aaliyah I knew everything.
So yeah, if me and you cool
and you know that I got a girl
that your man r**ed
and I tell you and you, like,
you’re gonna still work with him,
what you gonna feel?
So what you think I felt?
- Even as new allegations came out,
Jay looked the other way.
- Kelly is accused of videotaping himself
having sex with an underaged girl.
Prosecutors maintain the girl in the video
was as young as 13 when it was made.
- I mean, I wasn’t there,
you know what I’m saying?
Like, I know that.
I know I had nothing to do with that.
- That’s crazy to me.
- Your partner! Your company!
- Yo, he’s not my partner.
Look how my partner played me.
You calling him my partner?
Publicly, that man did a record
with that ni**** that r**ed my girl
and then went on a tour with him.
But I had to look the other way.
And because my girl said,
“Leave it alone,” I left it alone.
- You left it alone.
- Period.
- Dame couldn’t break his promise to Aaliyah
but his anger was spiraling out of control.
- Rumors of a growing rift
between Jay-Z and Dame Dash.
The Roc-A-Fella CEO was caught crashing
a marketing meeting
at parent company Def Jam,
accusing executives of trying to cut him out.
- This is treacherous!
- You can email me, Damon.
- I’m telling you.
I’m sick of this sh**.
I seen all y’all yesterday.
Why nobody told me about a
marketing plan about Jay-Z?
How’d y’all call a meeting
about Jay-Z without Roc-A-Fella?
There ain’t even nobody
from Roc-A-Fella in here!
- No, we gotta reschedule, man.
- What the fu** you mean
you’re gonna reschedule?
- We’re gonna reschedule, man.
- What you mean, you’re gonna reschedule?
- Dame.
- Yeah, get the fu** out!
You’re not a leader.
You don’t know sh** about my culture.
You don’t know sh** about Jay.
- Dame was struggling to hold on
to the one thing he had left,
so he didn’t see what was coming.
- They don’t give a fu**,
that’s all they do is exploit.
So they tryin’ take our franchise from us.
- You know about the “Scarface” party
and all that?
- No.
Jay’s performing for that?
- Yeah. He is performing.
- There you go. He’s performing.
- Jay-Z is moving on from Roc-A-Fella Records
and former partner Dame Dash
as he steps into his new role
as president and CEO of Def Jam.
- It’s not a beef, it’s just growing.
And sometimes growing means growing apart.
It’s just a part of life,
it’s a part of growing up.
- Do you know what’s crazy
about that meeting?
In my heart,
I had no idea that Jay set that meeting up,
but he set that meeting up.
- As Jay-Z left Dame behind,
people couldn’t understand
why Dame was stuck in the past.
- Dame is abrasive,
Dame burned a lot of bridges.
- I burn bridges so I don’t have to go back.
- I think that Dame is bitter now
because Jay-Z is a fully mega-star brand,
married to Beyonce.
Aaliyah is gone.
- Will you please let Aaliyah rest?
Will you let her die?
- Even as Dame tried to move on,
he couldn’t let go of his pain over Aaliyah.
- Everything that scared me
is losing people I love,
and everyone that I’ve really loved I’ve lost.
So what it’s made me be the animal that I am
is that I don’t wanna sit down
and think about the things that
are hurting me.
- Your secrets are about things
you don’t express to people.
- When it comes to feelings,
you don’t get to go around the feelings,
you have to go through them.
- The question is how.
- When an explosive documentary
exposed R. Kelly,
Dame came face-to-face
with the pain he’d been holding back.
- Allegations made by
more than a dozen women
in the “Surviving R. Kelly” docuseries,
accusing the singer of holding them captive,
brainwashing them.
Prosecutors say three of his
alleged victims were minors.
- I think I can’t really
talk about being abused.
It’s like, brings back memories
and it’s very painful
to have to talk about it again.
- I wish that Aaliyah’s family would speak
because I think there are so many
young Black girls who’ve been hurt
that what it would mean to know
that Aaliyah was hurt that way too.
- I can’t stress to you enough
how people are still suffering
behind things that went on 20 years ago.
- You know, I watched some of it yesterday,
as much as I could tolerate.
There was a girl,
and when she was even trying
to talk about it, she couldn’t.
- Yeah.
- And I remember Aaliyah
trying to talk about it
and she couldn’t.
- Executive producer of “Surviving R. Kelly,”
Dream Hampton, says the music industry
is still protecting the R&B star.
- Everyone keeps looking the other way,
period.
Everyone has all these morals and principles
but when it behooves them,
they look the other way,
and I’m not cool with that.
The test of honor isn’t convenient.
Honor is when it’s inconvenient.
- And this time Dame had to face his pain
so he could do what was right.
- It’s time for us
to take responsibility for empowering
and looking the other way all those years.
- Aaliyah’s former boyfriend, Damon Dash,
is one of the first celebrities
to publicly speak out against R. Kelly.
- If, like, people would’ve protected Aaliyah
so many other girls wouldn’t have got touched.
Like, Aaliyah was like the
sacrificial lamb for all that
'cause she didn’t deserve none of that.
So this energy isn’t anger,
this is energy for change.
I wanna change the way
we look at rehabilitation
from trauma, which is a prison.
I wanna change the way we heal.
- After 20 years,
Dame’s fight for Aaliyah finally got justice.
- Singer R. Kelly
sentenced to 30 years behind bars
after his conviction on racketeering
and sex trafficking charges.
- This is a significant outcome
for all victims of R. Kelly,
and especially for the survivors.
- By remembering Aaliyah’s lessons,
Dame built the legacy
that mattered most to him.
- What do you wanna be
remembered as, man?
- As a warrior. I fight for what I love.
- Dame Dash is launching his own streaming
platform focused on health and healing
and the entrepreneur
is also expecting a new baby
with fiancee Raquel Horn.
- I saw all the things I was missing,
so, you know, what’d you think I’d rather do,
be on a yacht, pouring champagne on a girl
or taking my daughter to get a cupcake?
There’s nothing better than taking
your daughter to get a cupcake, you know?
There’s nothing better than
watching your baby smile.
- With his family by his side,
Dame honors Aaliyah’s memory every day.
- There hasn’t been one day
since she’s passed, not one,
in the 20 years
that I haven’t either heard her name,
heard her record, or seen a picture of her.
Every single day, she’s present in my life
and I feel lucky for that.
- Every year, the legend grows
and you’re a part of that legend.
What do you think that people
should remember about her?
- She was just, she was the coolest.
She still is. She was magic.
I never thought I’d see that magic again.