Aaliyah fans have been made lots of promises over the years, but it appears that the late star’s first posthumous album is finally on the way. In an interview with “The Geno Jones Show” on Monday (Jan. 3), Barry Hankerson, Aaliyah’s uncle and founder of Blackground Records 2.0; confirmed that her next album Unstoppable will arrive this month.
“Because of [the success of “Poison,” Aaliyah’s posthumous collaboration with The Weeknd], we think it will only get better with people such as Ne-Yo, Snoop Dogg, Future and Drake, one of her biggest fans,” Hankerson said. “Those are the features that will be on the record and that will be out in January.”
Hankerson added that the album was five years in the making and said the process was “incredibly heart-wrenching at times.”
“She wanted all of her music to come out,” he explained. “And I promised her — whenever a song wouldn’t get put on an album, I’d say, ‘Don’t worry, that song will come out.’ So, [Unstoppable] is fulfilling a promise I made to her.”
In a recent interview with Billboard, Hankerson also said that a Timbaland-produced song featuring Chris Brown will appear on the album, but Missy Elliott, one of Aaliyah’s longtime collaborators, will not.
“Tim is involved, but Missy isn’t,” he said. “Timbaland has openly told us that he would like to help us in any way he can and he’s already doing that. So, I hope that grows and grows back to the status that we had 20 years ago.”
Unstoppable will be released via Blackground Records 2.0, which finally shared Aaliyah’s catalog to streaming services last September. Watch Hankerson’s full interview below