R. Kelly

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[edit] R. Kelly: the Singer, songwriter and producer

After his brush with controversy, Kelly returned to the studio to record his third album (his second solo effort). His 1995 self-titled album was another big success, selling over 5 million copies and spawning hit singles such as "You Remind Me of Something", "I Can't Sleep (Baby If I)" and his collaboration with legendary R&B group The Isley Brothers featuring Ronald Isley, "Down Low (Nobody Has To Know)". The album was hailed by some as the singer's most mature.

In 1995, Kelly found success as a songwriter penning hits for the R&B group Changing Faces and pop and R&B music stars Janet Jackson (producing the remix for Jackson's 1994 smash, "Any Time, Any Place") and Michael Jackson (penning and co-producing the single, "You Are Not Alone" for Jackson's HIStory).

[edit] The Best of Both Worlds

After being noted for singing hooks on hip-hop tunes by The Notorious B.I.G., Nas, Puff Daddy and Jay-Z, there were talks that his collaborations with the latter rapper led to what was supposed to be a history-making project as the rapper and the singer teamed up to record an album together. Released in 2002, The Best of Both Worlds debuted at #2 on the Billboard pop albums chart, but no music videos were shot for the album. Commercially, the album was a disappointment for both R. Kelly himself and for Jay-Z, who didn't want to be associated with the singer during his child pornography trial.

[edit] Sexual allegations

Image:Mugshot r-kelly.jpg Allegations of Kelly's sexual activity with underage girls go as far back as 1991, when several girls claimed to have had sex with him. In 1994, rumors surfaced that Kelly had married fellow singer Aaliyah, which both singers had denied in the past.

However, none of the prior reports reached the level of publicity that followed the release of a video tape in February 2002 that allegedly showed Kelly and a 14-year-old daughter of an associate, and niece of a former Kelly protege, engaging in sex. The tape, released by an unknown source, was sent to the Chicago Sun Times, the newspaper that broke the story. While witnesses have identified Kelly and the girl, the alleged girl and her parents have denied that she is the person shown on the tape.

Bootleg copies of the tape became widely available on the black market and over file sharing networks. The tape showed numerous sex acts, including the girl being urinated on. In June 2002, Kelly was indicted in Chicago for 21 counts of soliciting a minor for child pornography, seven counts of videotaping the acts, and seven counts of producing child pornography. These charges came after viewing the tapes showed that there was no actual sexual intercourse involved. Currently, Kelly still faces fourteen of the charges. In addition to those charges, Kelly was further indicted in Florida in January 2003 on twelve counts of possession of child pornography. However, the charges were dropped after the search that led to the indictment was ruled illegal. In 2004, allegations emerged that among Kelly's tapes was one including gospel singer Deleon Richards, the wife of Detroit Tigers baseball player Gary Sheffield.

There have been several other lawsuits against R. Kelly.<ref>E! Online</ref> A female dancer sued for invasion of privacy alleging secret taping of her private acts with him and allowing distribution of copies without her consent. Two other sex suits by underage girls were settled and he denied any relationship with either of them. Another woman sued him claiming he seduced her at age 16, got her pregnant, and forced her to get an abortion.

During the pornography controversy, Kelly's problems carried over into his own family. His wife, Andrea, sought a restraining order against him on September 2, 2005 claiming he physically and verbally attacked her on two occasions but rescinded her request on September 26. Andrea had been a backup dancer before they married and is the mother of his son and two daughters.<ref>[1]</ref> A trial date has still not been set [2] but it will feature a public showing of the videotape that allegedly shows Kelly performing sex acts with an underage girl.

[edit] Loveland

During late-2001 and early-2002 Kelly began working on the follow up to his album TP-2.com entitled Loveland. The album was scheduled to be released in November 2002, but like the BOBW (The Best of Both Worlds) project before it, it was affected by heavy bootlegging. Due to this, Kelly was forced to go back to the studio and record another album Chocolate Factory which was released in February 2003. The album did feature several of the bootlegged tracks - and many have cropped up elsewhere, as seen below.

Tracks possibly intended for Loveland album, which wound up on the bootlegged version include:

1. "Spirit" (ended up on Happy People/U Saved Me)
2. "All I" (as yet unreleased, but sampled by Mannie Fresh on his 2004 track "Lady, Lady")
3. "Leap of Faith" (ended up on Happy People/U Saved Me)
4. "Make Me" (ended up on Chocolate Factory under the name "You Knock Me Out")
5. "Fly" (extended opera influenced version of "I Believe I Can Fly" as used on the TP-2 Tour)
6. "The World's Greatest" (was already released on the Ali OST)
7. "(Step) In The Name Of Love" (ended up on Chocolate Factory in both original mix and remix, which was a No. 1 R&B hit)
8. "Love For Me" (renamed "Far More" and was availible on the bonus Loveland CD with the first pressings of Chocolate Factory)
9. "Somethings Never Change" (as yet unreleased, a very 1970's Stevie Wonder-like track)
10. "Forever And Ever" (a.k.a. "Marry Me" - ended up on Chocolate Factory under the name "Forever")
11. "You Bring Me Joy" (as yet unreleased, a soulful bedroom ballad)
12. "Make You My Baby" (track given to Joe and appeared on his 2003 album And Then...)
13. "Come to Daddy" (originally part of the BOBW tracklisting, unknown if this would have been on Loveland)
14. "Kiss You In Those Places" ( still unreleased, but appeared on original TP-3: Reloaded tracklisting, but not final album)
15. "More and More" (track given to Joe, was a single, and appeared on his 2003 album And Then...)

Other tracks including "Loveland", "Heaven I Need A Hug", "Raindrops", "What Do I Do" and "Apologies of a Thug" may have also been apart of the album, but wound on on the bonus CD that came with Chocolate Factory.

[edit] Chocolate Factory and Happy People/U Saved Me

Despite the controversies, Kelly moved on with his career releasing his first album since the allegations came up with Chocolate Factory in 2003. The album became a big success yielding the number two hit remix of "Ignition" and the top 10 single, "Step In the Name Of Love" as well as the top 20 single, "Snake." Despite the controversy, Kelly's success had continued not only with his own project but also with now-defunct boy band B2K when he produced the #1 hit "Bump, Bump, Bump". He nearly produced an entire album by frequent collaborators The Isley Brothers, titled Body Kiss, which became the group's first album in their career to debut at #1.

In 2004, he released a two-CD set, Happy People/U Saved Me. Happy People showcased sex-free secular dance tracks while U Saved Me was an inspirational album. Due to the album being released as a double CD set, the album sold over three million copies despite the modest chartings of singles "Happy People", "U Saved Me" and "Red Carpet (Pause, Flash)".

[edit] Unfinished Business

Kelly and Jay-Z released a follow up to the album The Best of Both Worlds in October 2004, Unfinished Business, which included eleven previously unreleased tracks by the duo. It debuted at #1 on the US Billboard albums chart. This release was timed to coincide with The Best Of Both Worlds Tour. The tour was troubled almost from the start with Kelly often showing to concert a couple of hours late. The singer, according to Jay-Z, often complained that the touring lights weren't directed towards him and often left during the middle of sets forcing the rapper to carry on with the set. Another night, Kelly ended a concert in St. Louis early and was later seen serving McDonalds food at the drive-thru. Another night during the concert, Kelly stayed in his tour bus for two hours before finally coming out to perform an uninspired set.

Jay-Z eventually removed R. Kelly halfway through the tour, after R. Kelly accused Jay-Z's entourage of attacking him with Mace or pepper spray. On April 25, 2006, it was confirmed that Jay-Z's childhood friend, Tyran (Ty-Ty) Smith confessed in a Manhattan Criminal Court to pepper-spraying R. Kelly and four of his bodyguards at Madison Square Garden in October 2004. Smith had been charged with assault, but was allowed to plead guilty to disorderly conduct for four days of community service. After the original incident, Jay-Z made Smith an executive of Def Jam Records. A Kelly rep said that Kelly's $16 million lawsuit against Jay-Z and Smith is close to a settlement.

[edit] Trapped in the Closet

Kelly, who has sometimes referred to himself on record as the Pied Piper of R&B, had a pop hit in a collaboration with rapper Ja Rule and singer Ashanti titled "Wonderful". He released a new album titled TP-3: Reloaded in August 2005, which heralded back to his classic 12 Play period. In April 2005 Kelly released the long awaited "In The Kitchen", well-known among fans attending his live shows. The song was intended to be the album's lead single and received major radio airplay for a couple of months, but Kelly eventually decided to leave it as a buzz single after the song's failure to top the R&B charts. It was quickly followed up just weeks later with his "Trapped In The Closet" mini-opera, which rapidly climbed, and then quickly fell, the R&B and urban culture charts nationwide.

After the novelty success of the five-chapter song, which Kelly had likened to an audio version of Desperate Housewives prior to its release, Kelly revealed that he was working on parts six through ten of the song. They were released to radio later in the summer, in a similar fashion to how the first five were released, and Kelly promising to tie up some loose ends that the first five left. Another song off the album was a duet with rapper The Game titled "Playas Only", which despite an earlier climb failed to ignite the charts, quickly dropping off as fast as it peaked. At the MTV Video Music Awards on August 28, Kelly notably gave a six minute long lip-synched performance of his "Trapped in the Closet" suite, which was given mostly mixed reviews.

Kelly was confirmed to be on a charity single hosted by singer Michael Jackson on the single, "I Have This Dream", which is to pay tribute to Hurricane Katrina victims. There were rumors as to Kelly's involvement in the song. Several articles stated Kelly was producing the track while other articles said that he's one of the performers. It has yet to be released. Kelly was recently on his own solo tour entitled, "Mr. Show Biz presents: The Light It Up Tour."

[edit] Trivia

• R. Kelly had the most Billboard Top 40 hits of any male artist during the 1990s with 15.
• In 2005 VH1 voted "You Remind Me of Something" by R. Kelly as one of the "Top 50 Most Awesomely Bad Songs, Ever".
• R. Kelly's "Bump & Grind" stayed at #1 on the Billboard Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Singles & Tracks chart for twelve weeks making it one of the longest-running #1 hits on the chart since the chart's reinstation to Billboard in 1965. It was the longest-running #1 hit in 1994.
• In 2003, comedian Dave Chappelle made a music video on his comedy show parodying Kelly's sex scandal. In the video titled "Piss on You," which contains elements from Kelly's "Ignition (Remix)" and "Feelin' on Yo' Booty," Chappelle depicts Kelly as having a urine and scat fetish. Kelly is shown pouring from a bucket labeled "R. Kelly's Doo Doo Butter" and spraying liquid from a can labeled "R. Kelly's Urine." Minutes later in the same episode, he played the "Piss on You Remix," a parody of "Ignition (Remix)."
• In 2002, MADtv also produced a music video parody featuring Aries Spears as Kelly singing of his ability to "get away" with statutory rape. The video, a parody of Kelly's "The World's Greatest," features Kelly flirting with a several teenage girls and preparing to make a sex tape with them. An additional joke, was that the video was labeled as being directed by Roman Polanski.
• In 2005, the animated Adult Swim series The Boondocks dedicated an entire episode, "The Trial of R. Kelly", to parodying the singer's alleged crimes.
• In 2005, again, MADtv produced a music video parody about his urban opera Trapped in the Closet titling it "Trapped in the Cupboard."
• In the South Park episode Trapped in the Closet, R. Kelly appears at Stan's house singing his opus trying to get Tom Cruise to come out of the closet. A returning gag with Kelly is that, like in the song, at any given time Kelly will pull out a gun causing every one to panic. At the end of the episode, instead of coaxing Cruise out of the closet, Kelly joins him and sings "now I'm in the closet too."[3]
• In 1997, Kelly signed a contract to play professional basketball for the Atlantic City Seagulls of the USBL.

[edit] Discography

For a detailed listing of albums and singles, see R. Kelly discography.

[edit] Albums

[edit] Singles

[edit] Grammy awards

• Best R&B Song ("I Believe I Can Fly")
• Best R&B Male Vocal Performance ("I Believe I Can Fly")
• Best Original Song from A Soundtrack ("I Believe I Can Fly")

(all were won in 1998)

[edit] External links

• R. Kelly at the Internet Movie Database
• MTV News: The R. Kelly Reports. (with Illinois charges)
• VH1 News.
• Florida charges.

• Fansite / Message Board

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