"Cats wonder why I act so strange," he complains on Double Up's opening track, The Champ. Another, more straightforward interpretation is that R Kelly has gone completely barking.
One theory is that the singer is playing a brilliant postmodern game, successfully manipulating his battered public persona to sell millions of albums. In addition, his 2004 gospel album U Saved Me unveiled a thought-provoking sideline in songs during which Kelly penitently asks forgiveness for unnamed sins. On his subsequent albums, he has done nothing to tone down his loverman persona: anyone else pleading "not guilty" to 14 sex crimes might think twice about presenting themselves as a "freak" enchained by their own insatiable desires, but clearly Kelly is not just anyone. On stage, he began performing before a backdrop of flowing yellow liquid (his management insisted this was meant to represent honey). "Shower down on me, wet me with your love," wailed the chorus, which, however you chose to slice it, is a funny thing to sing if you've just been accused of urinating on a 14-year-old. First, he released a track called Heaven, I Need a Hug. It's his bizarre musical response to the charges. It's not so much the 14 charges of soliciting a minor for child pornography he is facing - relating to a 2002 video that purported to show him engaging in sex acts with a 14-year-old girl (most infamously, urinating on her) - that has caused people to forget. M idway through the video for his current single, I'm a Flirt, Robert Kelly fixes the camera with a chilling glare: "Let me remind you," he sings, "that I am the king of R&B." It has certainly been easy to overlook that R Kelly was the master of a peculiarly lascivious brand of urban MOR, the kind of artist who duetted with Celine Dion.
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