Aaliyah's story had barely begun before it was out of her hands.

But here we are—24 years after her untimely death in a plane crash at the age of 22—still unpacking her influence on pop culture.

"Sometimes, when it's just my mom and me kicking it, I say, 'I'm 22, and I've accomplished so much,'" she told E! News just months before she died on Aug. 25, 2001. "I just know I have to appreciate every moment."

Aaliyah's debut studio album, 1994's Age Ain't Nothing but a Number, has sold more than 6 million copies worldwide and was certified double platinum, buoyed by top-10 singles "Back & Forth" and "At Your Best (You Are Love)." 

The Brooklyn-born, Detroit-bred teen was a show business veteran already, singing at weddings at 8, performing on Star Search alongside Gladys Knight—who was briefly married to Aaliyah's uncle, record producer Barry Hankerson, in the 1970s—at 10 and taking the stage in Las Vegas at 11.

"I'm still in high school," Aaliyah noted in a New York morning show interview to promote her first-ever performance at the legendary Apollo Theater, while also beaming about her straight-A report card.

She wanted to go to college to major in music history and minor in engineering, she said, "but I do want to stay in this business as long as possible, 'cause I love it."

The artist, born Aaliyah Dana Haughton, called her brother and frequent writing partner Rashad her "best friend."

But most origin stories, no matter how inspiring, have their tragic chapters. Another early influence on Aaliyah's sound was R. Kelly, who produced Age Ain't Nothing But a Number.

The 58-year-old—who's serving a combined 31-year federal prison sentence for illegal sex with minors, producing child pornography and related crimes—was charged in December 2019 with bribing a government employee in order to obtain the fake ID that led to him marrying Aaliyah when she was only 15.

Kelly was 27 when he took the singer—whose fake ID said she was 18—to a hotel in Rosemont, Ill., to marry her on Aug. 31, 1994.

The union was annulled in February 1995 at her parents' behest. On Good Morning America in 2019, Kelly's attorney said the singer had said he had "no idea" that she was so young at the time.

When the bribery charge was tacked on as part of a broader racketeering case, the disgraced R&B singer was already facing multiple counts in multiple jurisdictions of sexual exploitation and abuse, the criminal charges coming in the wake of the 2019 docuseries Surviving R. Kelly.

Kelly's former tour manager testified during the singer's years-in-the-making sex crimes trial in Brooklyn that the "I Believe I Can Fly" singer gave a staffer at a Chicago-area welfare office $500 to help him obtain the bogus ID card. Prosecutors alleged that Kelly wanted to marry Aaliyah so that she'd be unable to testify against him regarding charges of having sex with minors.

By the time she was playing the Apollo, the marriage story had reared its head, but Aaliyah shrugged it off.

"I just ignored it," she said in an interview. "When you're in this business it comes with the territory that people are going to talk, and you really can't control what people are going to say. So I just really ignored it, you know, and let that roll off my back."

Vibe obtained the 1994 marriage certificate that falsely listed Aaliyah's age as 18 the following year, but Aaliyah's promising career was in no way derailed. Rather, her star only continued to rise.

Slant magazine, for instance, said that her cover of the Isley Brothers' "At Your Best (You Are Love"), off her debut album, "exhibited a restrained vocal and ear for harmony way beyond her years."

She wanted her second album to be "on the same wavelength as the first album," but planned to add more of her own flavor.

Aaliyah distanced herself from Kelly, leaving Jive Records for Atlantic Records and joining forces with producers Timbaland and Missy Elliott in the studio. The result was her 1996 second album, One in a Million, which has sold 8 million copies and was named one of the "essential recordings of the '90s" by Rolling Stone.

And all the while, Aaliyah remained on the mysterious side—a tactic that was easier to pull off then, before the demands of social media—often sporting sunglasses in interviews and never revealing too many personal details. (A controversial 2014 Lifetime biopic that almost starred Zendaya attempted to fill in some of the gaps and was widely panned for its efforts.)

But Aaliyah also had the brightest smile.

"I dress in my baggy clothes every day and I am a laid-back person, which is what I portray on camera," she explained to MTV News in June 1994. "I'm laid back, I'm mellow, kind of jazzy—I like the jazzy music. It's really not so much of a difference [between her personality and her professional persona] which is probably why it's so easy, because it really is how I am."

"Be yourself," she agreed. "That's the best way to go, really."

It was in character, then, not to rush out album No. 3 merely to ride a wave of excitement. Instead, she took a moment to graduate from high school in 1997 (maintaining that 4.0), made her acting debut on the Fox police drama New York Undercover, became a face of Tommy Hilfiger, performed the Best Original Song nominee "Journey to the Past" from Anastasia at the 1998 Oscars, and in 1999 earned her first Grammy nomination, Best Female R&B Vocal Performance, for "Are You That Somebody?" from the Dr. Dolittle soundtrack.

Then it was on to her first movie, the 2000 revenge thriller Romeo Must Die, costarring martial arts whiz Jet Li, a sleeper hit that earned $91 million at the box office worldwide.

The New York Times called Aaliyah "a natural."

Romeo Must Die also birthed what turned into Aaliyah's first No. 1 hit and most well-known song, "Try Again." She earned another Grammy nomination for Best Female R&B Vocal Performance and won two MTV Video Music Awards, for Best Female Video and Best Video From a Film.

"Try Again" was also a track on Aaliyah's years-in-the-making self-titled third album, which she primarily recorded in 2000 in Australia, where she was playing the titular queen in the big-screen adaptation of Anne Rice's Queen of the Damned, costarring Stuart Townsend as the vampire Lestat.

Aaliyah dropped on July 7, 2001, boasting what the artist proudly felt was a more mature neo-soul sound than the albums she had put out as a teen. It sold 187,000 copies in its first week, marking the biggest week of her career.

Less than two months later, Aaliyah was gone.

She was in the Bahamas shooting scenes for her "Rock the Boat" music video when she warily boarded a twin-engine Cessna 402-B at Abaco Islands' Marsh Harbor Airport to fly back to Florida on the night of Aug. 25, 2001.

"Down to the last BlackBerry [exchange] that we had, before she went there, she was like, 'I don't like that plane,'" Damon Dash, her boyfriend at the time, recalled on The Real in 2016. "And I was like, 'Don't get on it.' And she was just like, 'I gotta do it.' You know, it was a complicated situation but she had to go do that video."

The plane, which investigators later determined was carrying as much as 700 more pounds than it should have been, crashed and burned just a few hundred feet from the runway after takeoff.

Eight others were killed along with Aaliyah, including the pilot, Luis Morales III; makeup artist Eric Forman; hair stylist Anthony Dodd; security guard Scott Gallin; stylist Christopher Maldonado; Douglas Kratz, director of video production for Virgin Records; and Blackground Records execs Keith Wallace and Gina Smith. An autopsy found that Morales had traces of cocaine and alcohol in his system.

Aaliyah's parents later settled a wrongful death lawsuit against the companies involved in operating the plane for an undisclosed sum.

But the loss rattled the music world far and wide.

"We've been friends since '96," singer Monica told Rolling Stone hours after the fatal accident at what turned out to be a somber PowerHouse Festival in Anaheim, Calif. "She was an easy person to like. I want her family to know we're here for her as artists, but this is bigger than the music industry. She was very talented, but more than that, she was a good person."

Ludacris was onstage when he found out, and he broke the news to the audience.

"It's numbing," Ja Rule told Rolling Stone. "I got the news before I went on and I didn't want to believe it, but I guess if you're saying it, it must be true. It was definitely in the back of my mind as I was out there though. I loved baby girl. She was a sweet person."

Aaliyah, which had debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 before sales flagged, shot right back up to No. 1, a 595 percent jump in sales.

"She was a very happy person," Hype Williams, director of the "Rock the Boat" video, told MTV News a few days after the accident. "She had nothing but love to give to others and she selflessly shared much of who she was. I don't know if anyone really understands that about her. She had these incredible, graceful qualities as a person. I don't know if her fans know that about her."

Alas, Queen of the Damned, when it was released in February 2002, was damned upon arrival.

"Because of the tragic aspects of her death, most audience interest will be in Aaliyah, but her largely nonspeaking part is more like a modeling assignment than actual acting," noted the Los Angeles Times. Aaliyah was "the real victim of this dreary mess," wrote the New York Times, which gave another shout-out to all the promise she showed in Romeo Must Die.

But that was only her second movie ever, after all, and there were supposed to be many more opportunities to show what she could do on screen. 

On Aug. 25, 2002, exactly a year to the day after the crash, Jay-Z was performing at DTE Energy Music Theater in Detroit when he paused the music shortly after 10 p.m.

The lights went down and the lighters came out as "Try Again" played over the speakers. He joined his Roc-a-Fella co-founder Dash at the back of the stage for the moment of tribute. 

"We love you," Jay-Z said. "We miss y'all."

See Aaliyah's memorable life in photos:

For the latest breaking news updates, click here to download the E! News App