“It’s 2017 and people are still defending R. Kelly”
That’s because it’s 2017 and people are still wasting their energy on what this man is doing. Don’t get me wrong, he’s been accused of some bad shit and has had some questionable behavior but this latest incident proves we gotta let the shit go. Monday, Buzzfeed reported that Kelz has been running a sex cult with women from 18-26 years old. Twitter lost their fucking mind! But at the same time why?
Reading the story, this isn’t some shit that has happened between 2002-2008, which was when his infamous sex scandal broke and resulted in his acquittal; apparently the first reported girl arrived to one of the mansions in 2011, after years of allegations and public opinion verdicts. In the story, Kelly has taken these women under the guise of helping them with their careers, only to, reportedly, have sex with them while recording it as well as other freaky shit.
Morally, what R. Kelly is doing is fucked up; but how many stories of young, impressionable women are taken advantage of by older music industry veterans. At least R. Kelly has legit success lol. But if this was somebody other than Kelly, then the story would be different. Given his history of messing with underage girls (i.e. Aaliyah) of course people are going to lose their shit when he gets with a female that’s over 18 years younger than him. In fact, the chick he was seen with in photos earlier this year, is said to be one of the women in the house.
By now, why are people even wasting their energy on what R. Kelly is doing when it’s not going to result in anything fruitful? Because he married Aaliyah when she was 14? Because he was allegedly on a tape peeing on an underage girl? This man sat in a court room in 2008 and could not be convicted on a tape that people had 6 years to watch. Why are people wasting their breath? For whatever reason, they are not going to convict this man for what he did. They have put prominent black celebs away with less proof but somehow R. Kelly has beat the system with remixes and incredible songwriting. As soon as that tape dropped, we grilled him for a little bit but it was just enough to ruin the rollout for his cursed-collab album with Jay-Z, called The Best of Both Worlds. Then he let his pen become his defense lawyer. Kelly jumped back with “The World’s Greatest” for the Ali soundtrack; next up was the Ignition remix; then it was Trapped in the Closet. R. Kelly was able to transform the court of public opinion into the backseat of a Chevrolet and fucked away half of the guilt people had for him.
Kelly hasn’t really been in the limelight for too much of anything in these recent years and rightfully so. Yet,it seems that every time he pops up, someone asks him about his statutory dealings, which is fair from a journalistic standpoint. He caught a lot of heat for walking out of that Huffington Post interview in 2015. However, do people ask Woody Allen about his incidents? How often does Roman Polanski get grilled on his crimes? There’s nothing wrong with pressing people on certain flaws, you feel they have to answer to but make sure you’re doing it across the board.
Back in March, I went to the R. Kelly concert here in Austin at Brass Hall. At the end of the show, a grown woman yelled if anybody had a cigarette because R. Kelly had made her wet. After the 20+ years of allegations and videotape, grown women are still turned on by his music, parents are still bringing their young daughters to meet him. It’s as if nothing has meant anything worthy of hindering his progress, other than his own faded relevance to the current state of music.
There’s a reason why my points may appear all over the place: We are caught in a weird space of trying to convict R. Kelly on his past to make up for the cool points he has received from us over the years. So it seems we are looking for anything to close the case on soemthing that should’ve already been closed on. Kelly has done nothing illegal in this situation other than take his apparently creepy behavior to a whole, 50 Shades of Grey type shit; with “older” women of course. But given that he has been through all of these allegations and still somewhat standing, nothing else can be done. That’s nothing to celebrate at all. R. Kelly the musician deserves whatever accolades he gets; but we have to wash our hands of R. Kelly the man and let him meet his own fate.