Halleloo! Drag Race's Season 9 Premiere Broke TV Records

Aja is a queen who always makes an impression. Whether it was giving epicly quotable sound bites, leaping from boxes, or serving up her unique blend of banje-harajuku realness on the runway, this New York queen is a force to be reckoned with.

While she’s already snatching focus in the first two episodes of the new RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars season, it's been a moment that many fans — and Aja herself — once thought would never happen. Much was made of Aja saying in a 2018 interview with Them that she was no longer using the term “drag 1ueen” to describe herself. “I've been working on my burlesque and my live music, and I don't really have the drive to dance and flip flop and be doing dips and ‘Is she gonna jump from there?’ It's just not something I want to do. It's something that is part of me, but it's not something that I'm carrying into the future, so I’m kind of leaving the term behind,” she explained at the time. Many interpreted this as her leaving drag behind and, unsurprisingly, it led to the usual fan backlash.