Capitalizing on a fellow artist’s death has been, alongside shooting smack and selling out to the Man, one of the most popular hobbies of musicians in the past decade. Courtney Love got the ball rolling in 1994; after ex-husband Kurt Cobain, in the words of our Fearless Leader, suicided himself, Love successfully mourned her way to unjustified record deals, piles of prescription drugs and “lots and lots and lots of money” after agreeing to release a Nirvana greatest hits collection.

In 1997, influential rapper Notorious B.I.G. was gunned down in his GMC Suburban, and Sean “Puffy” Combs stood atop the bloated corpse to propagate his own mediocre hip-hop lite to the world. And in the past year, The Who have completed one of their most successful tours ever after billing it a “tribute” to recently deceased bassist John Entwistle.

The asinine rationalizations such grave-digging artists offer—from commemoration of the artists’ work to mourning the loss of a close friend—don’t hold water when there is blatant self-gain involved. However, incessantly forcing the image of the deceased into public consciousness may be justified on some level if such an endeavor produces some positive social effect or if the late artists’ work was particularly worthy of greater recognition.

Puff Daddy may have been far too eager to let the world know that—when he wasn’t implicating himself in gun shoot-outs or dating Jennifer Lopez—he was at an altar with a rather corpulent black man on the cross. But regardless of Combs’ personal stake in his exploitation of Biggie’s death, it was an exploitation that produced positive consequences. The East Coast-West Coast rap rivalry and its participants suddenly came into the national spotlight, out of the manipulative hands of hip-hop rags that had helped fan the flames of enmity. Subsequently, the media began singling out individual rapper rivalries rather than reporting the more destructive regional disputes.

Yet the most culpable member of this distinguished list of grave-diggers is also the least cited. At some point in Missy Elliott’s long, esteemed career, she added “pimp for dead rappers” to her resume, and the general population neglected to take note. Unwittingly, Elliott makes an unambiguous case for her guilt in her newest single and accompanying video, “Pass That Dutch,” offering evidence of the shamelessness with which she regularly exploits her fallen peers.

The song itself is another characteristic Missy anti-radio single, a nonsensical anthem crammed with kitchen-sink samples. While past singles “Get Ur Freak On” and “Gossip Folks” found producer Timbaland exhuming his skeletal beats from India, his latest archaeological work has been in the tribal grounds of Africa. “Pass That Dutch” reverently travels on the same hand-clapping Diwali path recently trodden by dancehall artists Wayne Wonder and Sean Paul.

But the ultimate offense to the memories of the recently deceased is the complementary video. Director Dave Meyers opens the clip with a grainy black-and-white intro that has Missy yet again mourning the loss of Aaliyah, Lisa “Left Eye” Lopez and the other usual suspects. “Aaliyah, baby girl, I’ve learned to love those while they still awake,” she raps as the ghostly image of her close friend floats in a nearby picture frame. Elliott then asserts, “I know Lisa, ’Pac, and Biggie, and Jay, and Pun are still number one,” as the images of the late artists eerily float behind her. Later, she once again appears, along with her back-up dancers, in shirts embossed with Aaliyah’s face.

The sight of Elliott decked out in Aaliyah-imprinted clothing of late is not in and of itself unusual, but its continued presence two years after the singer’s untimely demise demands justification. The initial deluge of mourning should surely have passed by now, no matter how close a bond the two shared. The unflattering context of the recognition is also fairly confused; the image is used in a video whose chorus includes the lines “Pop that, pop that, jiggle that fat / Don’t stop, get it till ya clothes get wet.” Furthermore, if Elliott is indeed still grieving her friend’s passing, why does she continue to do so in a national, overtly commercial forum?

Another, more logical explanation is a wish to commemorate the late R&B singer’s body of work. Aaliyah had a beautiful voice, as any sane person, or ex-husband R. Kelly, could tell you. But no one would argue that she was a particularly significant or innovative artist of her time. Her songs were no more extraordinary than those of any number of inspirational, vocally gifted artists working in the genre at the time. Though Elliott likely realizes this on some level, she may have a stronger impression of Aaliyah’s potential than the average listener. But if this is the case, her decision to commemorate nothing more than Aaliyah’s fine facial structure in her music videos is an unusual one; a much more worthwhile effort might be to privately push for further release of any demos or unreleased material the singer recorded before her death.

A final rationalization to be offered for Elliott’s constant barrage of Aaliyah imagery and shout-outs is to recognize any social injustice that may have led to the loss. But the circumstances of Aaliyah’s death, unlike those of Biggie or Kurt Cobain, can hardly be regarded as a teachable moment. The singer was aboard a Cessna passenger plane in the course of a Bahamas music video shoot, when the plane crashed into the ocean, killing all of its passengers. No grand social force appears to have contributed to the death of Aaliyah, and the only potential message to be taken home from this event is a fear of flying.

So, by process of elimination, Missy Elliott’s motivation for the persistent use of Aaliyah’s image and persona in her songs and music videos can only be to cash in on the lasting public awareness of the singer, thereby gaining further recognition for her own work. Elliott may not expressly be aware of the driving force behind this blatant misuse of her late friend’s likeness, but in “memorializing” the loss of Aaliyah, Elliott has reduced a promising young artist’s memory to nothing more than a promotional tool.

—Crimson Arts columnist Ben Chung can be reached at bchung@fas.harvard.edu.