One of the easiest things for me to do is to stop fucking with somebody. Like if you show me traits that let me know who you are and I don’t agree with them I can pretty much block you for the rest of my life and not think twice about it. This skill was developed over years of begging to be in the lives of people that I cared about despite their actions showing me the opposite. Maybe it was the lesson I needed to learn at the time, and if so I am eternally grateful. There is a short list of people that I feel I literally need in my life, and fortunately Robert Sylvester Kelly is not one of those people.
While I had labeled Sylvester a living breathing monster back in 2002 this did not stop his music from still being a part of my life. Whether it was in the form of older recordings, or his continued inclusion in the world of Hip-Hop/R&B. I would always strongly voice my opinions on the horrible nature of his actions, and that argument only strengthened over the years as I was presented with detailed articles and interviews with various victims. The Surviving R. Kelly documentary was not my first deep dive into the nastiness of this man, but it did make me reflect on my history as it related to his music.
The eras in Sylvester’s career seemed to coincide with the eras in my life in such a way that unbeknownst to me, he was possibly the most prominent male R&B voice during every major stage of my upbringing.
1992 She’s Got That Vibe: I was 9 years old and just formulating my true appreciation of music.
1993 12 Play (Album): The overt raunchiness of this alone was enough to attract the ears of all ages even if it was just out of curiosity. The matter was possibly intensified by every older cousin or friend that I was allowed to be around were playing and commenting on it non-stop. Meanwhile, as overtly sexual as the lyrics were, “Your Body’s Callin”, “Seems Like You’re Ready” and “Bump n’ Grind” were instant classics and played in extremely heavy rotation on all urban radio stations and music video channels. I still remember an older cousin going wild in front of a tv screen as he did the butterfly in the “Bump n’ Grind” video.
1995-6 Self-Titled (Album): In the same years that I more than likely genuinely started to pursue girls he dropped “You Remind Me of Something”, “I Can’t Sleep” and the MASSIVE hit “Down Low”. Not to mention what I would describe as the most culturally penetrating R&B song of the entire decade of the 90’s “I Believe I Can Fly”.
1997: The anthem for dropping all subtlety in a relationship “I’m F***ing You Tonight”
1998 R. (Album): is a double disc that would have him releasing a string of radio singles almost every three months for an entire calendar year. This is my entire freshman and sophomore year being influenced by proposing that we go “Half on a Baby” or heeding the cautionary tale of “When A Woman’s Fed Up”. This last song is also where I first noticed his talent at making people lock in on his lyrics. He has an entire run of what sounds like improvised lines at the end of this song that continue as it fades out that he somehow made just as important as any other part of the song including the chorus. This is all while writing and featuring on other people’s hits to include Sparkle’s “Be Careful” and Michael Jackson’s “You Are Not Alone”.
2000 TP-2.com: Not only was this is biggest R&B album of the year, it was the soundtrack to nearly all of my earliest escapades as a sexually active teenager. It is engraved into memories that I will keep in my mind until the day that I die. I have no choice in the matter.
Everything after this release was either post-Sex Tape or less noteworthy. The Best Of Both Worlds comes to mind. Its cancelled promotion and tour because of the tape also come to mind. His veer toward wholesome line dancing older aunty fodder is also memorable mostly because it looked like a thinly veiled attempt at a rebrand amidst the allegations. Then there was the remix to Ignition… Making exceptions for this song is probably my least proud moments as it relates to music. He released one of the greatest party songs of all time and I gave it a pass for just that reason. I hope this speaks more towards the fact that 80% of my life at the time centered around partying. Despite what I had seen with my own eyes, I made an exception to allow a monster to gone ahead and break me off with a preview of a remix.
I'm not even gonna mention the Mr. Biggs collaborations....
Was I this weak or was that song that strong?
This type of reflection is similar to what I assume many fans also had to do with Michael Joseph Jackson. While Joseph was around for my whole life, and I even shed tears when he passed away, my relationship to his music and legacy was always more reflective than in the moment. By the time I can fully remember enjoying his music he had already reached the New Jack Swing Era of his career. Yes he was huge, but no one will argue that what he offered from the early 90’s on was anywhere close to iconic as what he accomplished in the 80’s. This is to say that I have memories of enjoying Joseph’s music, but it was less often was tied to specific moments in my life because not only was his image wildly tarnished during my formative years but most of my favorite songs and moments were all either before I can remember or before I was born.
Strangely one of my favorite Joseph moments during the years that I can remember weren’t necessarily his actions, but that of a cast of actors hired to play him. The Jacksons: An American Dream is probably my favorite miniseries of all time. I would venture to say that I watched a VHS recording of it so many times that it could make you wonder how I still had pretty good grades in school. I was in on every line, dance move, dramatic scene and afro wig.
THIS is possibly what made me disregard Joseph allegations enough to keep listening to his music. It wasn’t that I didn’t think he was a sick individual. It was that I had bought in on the Jackson family as a whole so much up to a point that when it came time for me to make an informed decision on the man, subconsciously I might have tried to avoid taking a loss on all of the time I wasted being a fan. It sounds ridiculous, but as a teenager being presented with the allegations against Joseph, I am sure that I believed he had been sexually inappropriate with young boys. For some reason that didn’t equate to not listening to his music. It equated to exactly what it would from your average college aged American boy. Laughter, jokes and head shaking.
His interviews didn’t help stop any of the laughter. Dave Chappelle and Chris Rock didn’t help stop any of the jokes. His erratic behavior didn’t help stop any of the head shaking. This was a person that I had dressed up as for Halloween, so it wasn’t difficult for me to label him as monster. But the greatest soundtrack to Halloween was still playing in the background, and it ain't the Monster Mash.
As a 35 year old man and fan being presented with both of their behind the music legacies I am not nearly as torn as any of the earlier paragraphs might make me appear. As cliché as it might seem, having children of my own (a son and a daughter) might’ve amplified my distaste for all things associated with their personal lives, but it was never the determining factor. I had come to the conclusions I’m currently at long before either of their new documentaries had aired or my children being born. The only thing that either of those docs did was intensify the disgust. But the real question would be why did it take me this long to hit the mute button on either of these artists when the I never once believed their innocence and had been presented with their own shaky testimonies in real-time live on television?
1993: I’m on a car ride with my parents from South Carolina to Maryland. Out of nowhere my parents start this conversation.
Mom: Jermaine do you know what molestation is?
Me: Yes…
Mom: Like what Michael Jackson with those children.
Me: Yes mom. I know.
I had heard of things like this from “very special episodes” of television but Joseph was my first experience of seeing someone accused in real life. Just like every music video he would debut during that time period, this video was sent out to every outlet in the world. It's far stranger in retrospect considering the charges against him. This would surely sully the jury pool for his trial, but then again, he was most famous person in the world. There would not be a single person selected that would not know who Michael Jackson was in 1993.
It made no difference because despite such a public scandal this case was settled out of court for 23 million dollars. I am not saying that when someone settles they are guilty, but for something so damning in the public eye you would think proving your innocence would be the goal. The shakiness of the proceedings didn’t seem to be enough to convict anyone of anything, so my confusion would be why pay money at all for false allegations?
1994: I had a huge crush on Aaliyah so this whole run right here makes me so shocked. Not because I didn’t know about this stuff, but because I was too young to grasp how wrong all of this truly was. That means that there were grown men and women allowing this to happen in plain sight, but treating it like a headline instead of something disgusting and criminal. Vibe magazine even published a copy of their marriage certificate when she was 15. BET allowed this joint interview of them dodging questions of their relationship. I actually remember this interview. Why were we allowing this insanity?
2002: Sylvester gets arrested for child porn charges connected to video tapes one of which leaked to the public that show him urinating on a young girl. This is the beginning of the piss jokes along with part of the cementing of Dave Chappelle’s legend as a comedy genius. In retrospect it was definitely no laughing matter considering the victims and their ages. That sketch will forever be etched into the minds of all people of a certain age. He used Sylvester’s catchiness into a long lasting joke about peeing on sex partners. To be fair the age of the partner was never focused on in the song, but the age is the only reason this story had criminal charges connected to it. It was no secret what this all meant. Dave only addressed the age of the victim in his stand up special the following year. By then he had perfected the way to navigate the issue in the right way to get a laugh from an eager audience. Was it still insensitive? Probably. But being sensitive was never Dave’s job.
Welcome to 2003. This is where the vortex of these two people collides in such a way that we should’ve just put both of them on a boat, shove it off port, and hit it with a flaming arrow. Both of these guys are in rare form at this point. Between Sylvester literally wearing a mask declaring himself the Pied Piper, and Joseph granting full access to his goofiness for no good reason I don’t know how I made it to 2004. Maybe I never did. This might be a fever dream Jacob’s Ladder scenario in which I am laying on my dorm room floor dying from watching these interviews and stories in real time.
2003: Mixtapes were a big part of my college experience. I frequently went to the parking lot in front of my student union at North Carolina A&T and bought mixtapes off of tables from random African guys. They also had bootleg VHS’s of movies, and for a while they were also selling the R. Kelly sex tape. I never realized how wild the early 2000’s were where until I thought about that last sentence. They were selling what was allegedly child pornography with a famous adult featured right next to camcorder footage of the movie Barbershop.
One day curiosity got the best of me and I purchased one of those tapes for what was probably five dollars. I didn’t have a class for another hour so I went back to my dorm room and popped it into my VCR to see whether the allegations were true. I watched it. I saw R. Kelly. I saw a very young looking girl. I saw everything he did to her. It made me physically sick. It literally made my stomach turn. I turned it off and went to my class.
I don’t remember if it was a busy day in class, but I do remember sitting down and everybody was just chatting. So I asked loudly to everyone there “Did y’all see the R. Kelly tape yet?”…. It was silent. A couple of “nahs” and silence like they wanted to know what it was like. Here’s how I remember responding:
“It was disgusting yo’…. Like it was really him... And that girl look like she was like 12. It made me sick. Like my stomach hurts right now… That shit is real man. R. Kelly is a fucking monster….” Then I got up, left the class and went back to my dorm. I let another friend watch it, and I’m pretty sure I never asked for it back. I only saw it once and that was enough. Sylvester is a fucking monster.
2003: By the time “Living With Michael Jackson” came out, nothing could shock me about this man. All I could do was laugh. He admits to sleeping in bed with underaged children and blames the media at every turn. To the point that me and another friend regularly blamed the media when anything bad happened in the dorms.
Him: Man the water is cold in the shower.
Me: It’s the media. The media made the water seem cold. ***in my MJ voice***
But the wildest thing that stuck to me was his shopping spree for some of the most ridiculous things you could think of at the Venetian Mall in Las Vegas. Everything from gemstone globes to gold plated chess sets. He’s literally just pointing at wildly expensive items everywhere saying “I bought that, and that, and I want that…” Joseph if you bought all of these things why are they still in the store? Joseph why are you buying all of these things? Oh and Joseph, WHY THE HELL ARE YOU SLEEPING WITH LITTLE BOYS?!?!?!?”
This was the beginning of fans starting to write off quotes straight from the man that they wanted to defend. If you had them describe it, the media was twisting his words. If you’d have me describe it, their love for how his music made them feel was twisting their minds.
Still 2003: Here is where this shit spirals into “Nigga you have got to be kidding me territory.” I know this isn’t a laughing matter but to be clear I was in college during all of this. Also, I was past the point of needing to be convinced either of these two had serious issues. At this point I was just surprised at how far either of them would be allowed to go in public before they’d get shutdown. Unfortunately, that distance appeared to be to the moon and back.
As a follow up to the documentary that made him look like a bed sharing lunatic he did an interview on 60 minutes.
Joseph looked the respected journalist Ed Bradley in the face and said these words out loud on camera:
Ed Bradley: As we sit here today, do you still think it is acceptable to share your bed with children?
MJ: OFCOURSE.
Michael answered that shit like a certified Bond villain. I don’t know how a 19 year old wasn’t supposed to laugh at that shit for weeks. It’s like the joke is on me. I can’t be the only person seeing this. Come on y’all!!!!! I know he made Lady In My Life but that should only get you so many passes.
After that last answer there is no way that Ed Bradley didn’t gather his Joseph vinyl and set it ablaze in his backyard. He was so defeated by the end of this that I’m surprised he didn't become the first man besides Joseph's father to punch him in the face.
2008: R. Kelly is acquitted of all of his charges… How? I have no idea. But he’s free. Mind you, this is six whole years after his initial arrest. How this got dragged out for this long is beyond me. I do remember people suggesting identifiable body marks/moles were removed in those years to make him look less like the person in the video despite the video being shot in his damn bedroom. Either way, he’s free and clear to do what he wants, and he decides to do an interview on BET presumably to clear his name in a way that an acquittal couldn’t do.
THIS IS HIS FIRST INTERVIEW AFTER THE TRIAL AND IT WAS QUICK.
Toure is asking this nigga the most basic of questions. He’s basically letting Sylvester drive the conversation in any direction he would like. Sylvester apparently doesn’t have a license. Ignition is a lie. This nigga drove the interview straight into a ditch.
Toure: Do you like Teenage Girls?
Monster: (thinks hard about the question and makes the face featured above)
“When you say teenage… How old are we talking?!”
Stereotypes and generalizations are normally so ridiculous. To assume all or most of a type of person fall under strict categories of behavior, habits and beliefs strictly based on race, or environment is detrimental to how our society perceives itself. With that said, I am a firm believer that 97% of black people watching this shit live made the exact same face as Toure for about 2.86 seconds.
He proceeded to say he has 19 year old friends…. And that these stories all come from people that were fired so don’t believe them. Nigga were they fired because they caught your nasty ass?
Mute button.
Why is it so difficult to just hit the mute button after all of this stuff? I don’t know. I can be honest. Part of me has tried to rationalize me not pushing the button yet. I’ve made some arguments that have been good for conversation but questionable in practice. I still listen to the Jackson 5 and most Joseph songs. I asked my wife one day “What if I only listen to songs from MJ where he is the age of the accusers or younger. Is it ok if it’s music so far back before he became what he became?” It’s something to talk about, but it even feels nasty to type it out.
There’s no rationalizing Sylvester. All his shit is muted at this point. The one and only exception I made for a lot of years was the Ignition (Remix). Now even that is off the docket.
Part of the reason this mute button feels so necessary to me is because I’ve basically done the same thing to Kanye’s music. I hear his old songs and I just feel like all of it was a lie. I just lost the desire to hear him lie to me no matter how fire the production is. It lost all of what made me love the music. Maybe this is part of why I was so slow on hitting the mute button on these two (at least Joseph). He was such a force he made me love his music in a way that I still felt the love despite his nastiness. It's sad. It’s a personal flaw. It’s a conflict that I and many others have to deal with.
“Where You Are” still slaps though and he was only 14 so…
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