I Refuse - Legacy

Legacy

Along with her budding film career, the album was a part of Aaliyah's breakout year in 2001. Allmusic's Steve Huey cites it as her "most accomplished album" and writes that it "completed the singer's image overhaul into a sensual yet sensitive adult." The publication's senior editor Stephen Thomas Erlewine calls it "a statement of maturity and a stunning artistic leap forward," as well as "one of the strongest urban soul records of its time." BBC Music's Daryl Easlea views that it made Aaliyah's "two previous, not unaccomplished albums ... look like exercises in juvenilia". In The Rolling Stone Album Guide (2004), music journalist Keith Harris asserts that "Aaliyah had grown from studio puppet to a powerful R&B archetype—a more self-aware Ronnie Spector for a time that requires more self-awareness of its young adults."

Prior to her death, Aaliyah had planned to embark on the largest concert tour of her career in support of the album. Her recording sessions for Aaliyah produced many leftover tracks that were posthumously archived by Blackground and mostly left unreleased due to internal conflict and legal complications between the label, Aaliyah's family, and producers. The compilation album I Care 4 U was released in 2002 and featured six previously unreleased songs from the sessions.

Aaliyah's re-emergence with the album had coincided with a period of peak activity in R&B during the summer of 2001, as well as the popularity of neo soul. The Guardian cites Aaliyah as "the pinnacle" of R&B's "golden age" during the turn of the century. The newspaper's lead critic Alexis Petridis writes that, in a year where "the real innovation happened in the world of hip-hop and R&B", Aaliyah recorded "the most exciting music of her career." The Guardian's Rebecca Nicholson opines that "Timbaland hasn't come close to creating anything as sonically stunning since" and attributes his subsequent commercial success with Justin Timberlake and Nelly Furtado to the album. Jon Caramanica of Vibe calls the album's music "daring in construction, gorgeous from conception ... damn near post-R&B", and writes that it "may be the best soul album of the young millenium, even as it redefines the category." Eve Barlow of Q credits the album for "creating a blueprint that can be heard across pop music today" with acts such as Beyoncé Knowles, The Weeknd, and The xx.