By Terry Shropshire

Following the release of the recent Lifetime docu-series “Surviving R. Kelly,” over the past few days, pop culture has been deluged with a multiplicity of testimonies of the alleged chronic sexual improprieties of superstar singer R. Kelly. But few people know how the late beloved singer Aaliyah, who was portrayed in the film, felt about the singer.

Music industry veteran Dame Dash does. Dash had been silent for nearly two decades about what his former girlfriend Aaliyah really thought about R. Kelly.

Now we are able to get an inkling based on an interview Dash did with Kenyatta “The Hip Hop Motivator.”

Dash, a former business partner with Jay-Z at Roc-a-fella, explained why he never supported Kelly and it’s because Aaliyah was emotionally devastated after she emerged from that relationship. In fact, Dash said it was so hard for Aaliyah that she shut down talking about him.

Dame added that much like the female witnesses and alleged survivors who spoke on “Surviving R. Kelly,” it was hard for Aaliyah to talk, but she did say that Kelly was a “bad dude.”

“I watched some of it yesterday, and as a human I was tight. There was a girl and when she was trying to talk about it, she couldn’t,” Dash says during the interview. “And I remember Aaliyah trying to talk about it and she couldn’t. She would just leave it at ‘that dude was a bad man.’ I’ve been tight about this sh*t for years.”

Dame said he did not support his then-partner Jay-Z working with R. Kelly on the Best of Both Worlds collaborative tape after learning about Kelly’s child porn sex tape.

Dash also took his name off the project under Roc-a-fella at the time. Dash did, however, use his cut from the Jay-Z and R. Kelly project and poured into Aaliyah’s breast cancer organization.

Listen to what Dash has to say about Aaliyah and R. Kelly on the YouTube video interview below, beginning at about the 10-minute mark.

This article originally appeared in Rollingout.com.

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