Damon Dash believes one decision could have changed a life.
The Roc-A-Fella Records co-founder appears on The Talk Tuesday and opens up about Aaliyah's death. Dating at the time of her untimely passing, Dash tells the co-hosts that had he been with her on that fateful day, his girlfriend and R&B legend would still be alive.
"Well, there is no chance that if I was there, we would have been on that plane. You know what I'm saying? So, it would have never happened that way," he explains, telling the co-hosts that he felt that plane she boarded—and ultimately crashed in—was unsafe. Unfortunately, however, he couldn't be with her in the Bahamas because he had business to tend to in New York.
The "Rock the Boat" songstress and her boyfriend had both been in Miami before she decided to film the music video in the Bahamas. Dash, who had his son and nephews with him at the time, had to fly back to New York to go to court, so he couldn't travel to the island. But he made it clear to her that he didn't want her to take that trip.
"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.' And I was like, 'Don't get on it.' And she was just like, 'You know, I gotta do it,'" he recalls. "It was a complicated situation, but she had to go do that video. So you know if I was there, I would have made sure that that jet that was supposed to be for her, the G4, she would have been on that."
Seeing in hindsight how unsafe the plane she boarded was, Dash tells the daytime talk show hosts that he would've traveled differently. "I wouldn't have gotten on that plane, you know what I'm saying? So it probably would have been different. But you know, everything happens for a reason," he says.
"You know, and what doesn't kill you makes you stronger and you just gotta deal with the cards that life deals you."
Aaliyah and the others on the flight died in a plane crash shortly after takeoff on Aug. 25, 2001. She was 22 years old.
Look back at the star from a 2001 interview with E! News.