A couple of months ago, Blackground Records released a “new” Aaliyah song featuring her frequent collaborator Tank called “Gone,” to the record label’s streaming app, BLKStream. Today, the song has at last moved to traditional DSPs, along with the announcement of a “3D holographic experience” provided by the Meta Quest app Soapbox. Essentially, it’s a VR music video/concert in which you can watch Tank’s avatar sing to a wall of screens displaying various Aaliyah performances from her all-too-short life.
Depending on your take on things like this, this is either really exciting, or kind of disheartening. But if “Blackground 2.0” won’t let Babygirl rest, at least they didn’t trot out some gross AI-generated hologram to do a tour or something like that (please don’t).
The record, and its technologically-forward rollout, isn’t the first time Aaliyah’s label has pushed a controversial extension of the late singer’s legacy. In 2021, her voice was paired with The Weeknd’s for a new single, “Poison,” which would have been the first single from an all-new album featuring contemporary performers like Drake and Future. However, the album was never released, and as of 2024, the label still hasn’t issued any kind of explanation, although it insists it’s still “coming.”
You can check out “Gone” above and watch the holographic experience via Soapbox.