“Rock The Boat” by Aaliyah

Succinctly put, Aaliyah’s “Rock The Boat’ is a bona fide bedroom pleasure song. And its motif, as the title implies, is based on the singer using metaphors for an intimate encounter which are related to boating. So for instance when she advises the addressee to “stroke”, let’s just say she’s not literally referring to stroking a canoe paddle. In fact considering the video and all, this was perhaps the most-sensualized song Aaliyah released during her brief career.

Facts about “Rock The Boat”

“Rock the Boat” was written by Aaliyah’s regular collaborator, Static Major as well as the track’s producers, a duo known as Keybeats (Rapture Stewart and Eric Seats).

An interesting side story of this song is that Eric Seats himself wasn’t overly fond of the instrumental. In fact at one point he was on the verge of deleting it. However, Major took a liking to it, and “Rock the Boat” is the result.

And the track did wind up being one of Aaliyah’s notable hits. For example, the reason the song was released as a single is because it was receiving significant radio airplay even beforehand.

Moreover it has been noted that Aaliyah herself fought on behalf of getting “Rock the Boat” released as a single. And this was because the executives in charge of the project were rather prioritizing releasing the tracks that were produced by Timbaland.

And the track did go on to fare impressively on both the Billboard Hot 100 and UK Singles Chart. Moreover it charted in nine other nations outside of the US and UK.

“Rock the Boat” was officially released by Aaliyah’s management on January 15th, 2002.  It was the third and final single from her final album, which is entitled “Aaliyah”. This was just a few months after Aaliyah herself passed away in a plane crash. In fact she and the eight other people who died in the incident had just finished shooting the music video. Said video was helmed by director Hype Williams and it was filmed in the Bahamas. And after the tragedy, one of her labels was initially hesitant in terms of releasing the track.