Aaliyah and The Weeknd bring fans something deceptively sweet to devour with their new collab “Poison,” which was released on Friday (Dec. 17).
The Princess of R&B and the dark prince of R&B join forces on the track, which arrives ahead of Aaliyah’s posthumous studio album due at a later date via Blackground Records 2.0 and EMPIRE.
The Weeknd previously sampled Aaliyah’s 2001 Billboard Hot 100 top 20 hit “Rock the Boat” on “What You Need” from his 2012 compilation album Trilogy. Fans were finally able to hear the original sample when The Weeknd released his debut 2011 House of Balloons mixtape on streaming services this spring to commemorate its 10th anniversary.
But House of Balloons wasn’t the only project between these two superstars that recently made its way onto digital service providers (DSPs). Barry Hankerson, Aaliyah’s uncle and Blackground Records founder, explained in depth to Billboard this summer about how he and EMPIRE partnered together to put Aaliyah’s entire catalog on streaming for the first time ever. Much of Aaliyah’s music has been left off DSPs for more than a decade following her death in a plane accident on Aug. 25, 2001, when she was only 22 years old.
In the Billboard interview, Hankerson hinted that The Weeknd wouldn’t be the only superstar featured on the upcoming album of new Aaliyah music, since he name dropped Drake, Future, Ne-Yo, Chris Brown and Snoop Dogg.
Listen to “Poison” below.