Robert Sylvester Kelly is once more ubiquitous. He’s again found his way all over mainstream media, but isn’t there a difference between creating anecdotes within a stretch of time and being relevant?
As an unabashed fan of the ridiculousness that is R. Kelly, I can tell you that outside of his Facebook page, even I would have had no idea that last year’s album Write Me Back existed. It had some standard promotion: like this picture x number of times and we’ll release the next song. But that was about it.
Clearly this time around he didn’t take any chances: I haven’t seen Kellz in the news so much since he was in court for sexual offense. I’m aware that his crimes are also showing up in the media again, and that new facts are surfacing, but for the purpose of this article let’s go with Art over Artist.
Gaga released the Kellz-featuring “Do What U Want,” the title, cover, and concept of which each sound akin to “please feel this is controversial, please argue over whether this is pro-or-anti-feminist.” As far as I can tell, not a lot of people took the bait and even fewer bought Artpop, but that doesn’t mean the song and its SNL performance weren’t all over the place. I’d never have expected R. to appear anywhere with as few women as Saturday Night Live, but he’s really been going all out with this promotion.
Justin Bieber’s been putting out new music, so you’d better believe Kelly was featured on one of his weekly “Music Monday” tracks, “PYD” (Put You Down), last month.
There couldn’t have been a moment’s pause between Robert hearing of Nelson Mandela’s death and his prepping “Soldier’s Heart,” a song he had previously performed in Mandela’s South African home, for “Arsenio” that very night. You know, 24 hours after he played a woman like a cello (violin?) on Kimmel. Also on “Arsenio,” as well as Rolling Stone, he’s been displaying his ability to write sex songs with just a suggestion like “dolphins” or “ketchup.”
And the album itself, Black Panties, is a promotion for itself. Aside from the A+ play on words of saying “Black Panties will be dropping on December 10th,” the title is, for better or worse, memorable.
The guy’s got layers: on the one hand, about 60% of his autobiography Soulacoaster is pull-quotes and pictures—many of which are stock photos or extremely low-resolution Google-image-searched versions of his album covers (come on Kellz, you don’t have a Goddamn scanner?). When there is text, it’s comprised of pandering anecdotes (none of which mention his marriage to a 15-year-old and only briefly shoo away his trial from the early 2000s) that are so overly sentimental I had a hard time believing anything. So I’m thinking maybe he’s an idiot who made some money in the 90s and now has free reign to do whatever he wants. The overwhelming quantity of his work means that, like the proverbial clock, there’s always at least something to be appreciated.
But then there’s Trapped in the Closet. Okay, right off the bat, yes it’s ridiculous and has weak points. The hip-hopera is almost entirely sung over the same beat (and it’s a pretty great beat), a lot of the first few chapters have unsurprising or uninteresting twists like that a preacher’s secret lover is a man, or Bridget’s lover is a midget (…midget…midget). But when he created the second set of chapters, they got decent. He messes with the beat a bit (at one point sung by a gospel choir) and creates some genuine intentional comedy, making fun of Trapped’s own writing within the scenes. The third round of chapters expand on the story and introduces several more memorable characters (played by Kelly). The all-around quality and watchability goes up further and it’s clearly not accidental. In an interview, R. said that Trapped was an alien that got away from him. If this is true then maybe he doesn’t deserve the credit I’m about to give him, but it seems like he saw the appeal of the first chapters was campy, decided to take it from there, and actually made it work, Evil-Dead-style, which is almost never done. This makes him appear more on the calculated genius side of the spectrum. That he deserves more control over his projects because he does in fact know what he’s doing.
Some of his songs seem completely unaware and take himself too seriously, but there are far more that are outright parodies of himself.
In 2013, when a sentence starts with ‘R. Kelly,’ the listener is waiting to hear the punchline (or the charges). He’s not an easy guy to defend, but I think he understands this to an extent. And rather than go George Takei and embrace being the punchline, he still maintains a strong music career while indulging the schadenfreude and media circus. I call his career strong because 1) dude’s prolific: he’s got a Christmas album due out next year and has had three LPs over the past four years, and 2) the music is strong. You may not agree with the lyrics, but the beats, which he writes, are amazing. Regardless of the lack of g’s at the ends of verbs, the instrumentation in such songs as “Legs Shakin’” and “Feelin’ Single” is Top. Notch.
He’s not alone in having a career like this: is it any different from, let’s say, The Flaming Lips or Weezer, bands where the music has become a distant second to the wtf headlines that surround their names? While they don’t have quite the amount of press and omnipresence he has, that shouldn’t make him any more culturally relevant—from where I’m standing, a God-fearing, dyslexic, oversexed R&B singer doesn’t represent 2013’s America any more than 1963’s. So maybe he’s not important to the world beyond the scope of his own stunts—but if you choose to go down the Robert Hole (oh whoa I grossed myself out with that awesome pun), you’ve got enough material to last you for quite a while.