There’s no doubt that R. Kelly was and still is the King
of R&B. He’s written and produced hits for himself as
well as a slew of artists such as Michael Jackson and
Aaliyah, which we’ll get to later. For whatever reason,
many people that have amassed success over the
course of their careers eventually find themselves
involved a scandal, although it could just be one of
those things that comes along with the territory.
For R. Kelly, his childhood was the onset of feelings of
shamefulness when he began being sexually abused by
a close female family member. He told the interviewer,
Chris Heath, that he forgives his relative for putting him
through that, but then he offered a very chilling
perspective on the situation as a now, 48-year old man.
“As I’m older, I look at it and I know that it had to be
not just about me and them, but them and somebody
older than them when they were younger, and whatever
happened to them when they were younger,” Kelly
explained. “I looked at it as if there was a sort of like, I
don’t know, a generational curse, so to speak, going
down through the family. Not just started with her
doing that to me.”
If this is the case, then based on R. Kelly logic, he
wouldn’t that mean he’d ultimately inherit the role as
perpetrator? GQ’s Chris Hill thought so too and he
asked, “Well, if that passes down, why didn’t it pass
down to you?” The Pied Piper of R&B, a name that he
shockingly answers to, compared that generational
curse to the generational curse of poverty. “I decided
that I’m gonna stop that curse. I’m not gonna be broke,
like my mom was broke, my uncles were broke, my
sisters didn’t have money, my cousins on down.
Generational curse doesn’t mean that the curse can’t
be broken.”
GQ : So what did you have to do to break a generational
curse? To make that not be you?
K : “Well, it’s really not about breaking it. There’s things
that you don’t want to do that you’re not gonna do. It
was just as simple as that. I want to be able to be a
father to my kids, where I’ve never seen my father, but
my kids can see me whenever they want, so that was
broken. [He and his wife Andrea divorced in 2009, and
in practice, for reasons he suggests are beyond his
control, he rarely sees his three children.] The poverty
part was broken. And I feel the child-molestation part,
that definitely was broken. But of course you gonna be
misunderstood because you R. Kelly, and the success
and things get mixed up in the music, and people take
the words you sing in your songs and try to pound that
on your head and say, ‘Ahh! You did do it—look what
you just wrote over here.’ ”
It’s obvious that he did break the curse of poverty, but
there seems to be some half-truths embedded his
claims. Back in 1994, R. Kelly had just met new artist,
Aaliyah and began working on her album Age Ain’t
Nothin’ But A Number. Months later, a marriage
certificate dated August 31st, 1994 popped up in
Rosemont, IL showing that Robert Kelly and Aaliyah
had just got married. It also stated that Aaliyah was 18
when she was actually just 15, meanwhile Kelly is
sitting at a smooth 27.
Interviewer, Chris Heath, had asked Kelly what he saw
in Aaliyah, musically, when he slaw her for the first time
to which Kelly responded:
K : “Aaliyah? I heard first of all this soft voice, but
very…a lot of charisma. And I saw her as a star the
minute I heard her sing and dance. Saw her dance.
She wasn’t the greatest dancer, but the dance moves
she was doing were different than the other dancers
that I’ve seen on television. And I said, ‘This girl’s
gonna be a star, whether I work with her or not.’ ”
GQ: Obviously the two of you became very close.
K : “Yeah. Yeah.” How would you describe that? “Uh, I
would describe it as best friends. Deep friends. As far
as we both loved music and wanted to be successful.
She’s a Capricorn, I’m a Capricorn, my momma a
Capricorn, her daddy’s a Capricorn, you know. It was
just so much in common with each other.”
GQ: And these are difficult questions but would you
say you were in love with her?
K : “Yes. I would say I loved ‘liyah.” But “in love”? “Well,
there’s a lot of ways to be in love with a person. I was
in love with my grandfather, you know. But yeah, I
would say I was in love with Aaliyah just like I was in
love with anybody else. But in a different, friend TYPE
of way.”
GQ: And she was in love with you?
K : “I would think so. Absolutely. I would say that.”
GQ: As you know, people know that there was a
wedding ceremony and you got married.
K : “Well, because of Aaliyah’s passing, as I’ve always
said, out of respect for her mother who’s sick and her
father who’s passed, I will never have that conversation
with anyone. Out of respect for Aaliyah, and her mother
and father who has asked me not to personally. But I
can tell you I loved her, I can tell you she loved me, we
was very close. We were, you know, best best best
best friends.”
GQ’s Chris Heath could not let R. Kelly go without
asking him about his infamous trial in which he was
charged with child pornography back in 2002. It took
six years for the case to go to trial and instead of the
singer crumbling under the stresses of his trial, he
released one of his biggest commercial hits Ignition
(Remix). Despite all that he was being accused of, why
did so many people still chose to support him, unlike
the persecution that Bill Cosby is enduring? The singer
implies that his success is directly related to the fact
that people never believed the accusations in the first
place. The interview lowkey claps back though. Check
out what they had to say:
GQ: I don’t think there’s many people who believe that
wasn’t you in the videotape.
K : “You say you don’t what?”
GQ: I don’t think there’s many people who believe you
weren’t in that videotape.
K : “You don’t think it’s many people?”
GQ: I think everyone thinks that it was you.
K : “Even the ones that buy my albums?”
GQ: Yes, absolutely.
K : “And sell out my shows and buy the tickets?”
GQ: Yes.
K: “So what do you think they think about that?”
GQ: I think people really like your records, and they
think they don’t have to hate you.
K: “So you think my records overwhelm what they think
about me?”
GQ: In truth? Absolutely. For instance, when the
accusations first emerged and you were first charged,
you came out with “Ignition”… And, to be blunt, the
record was too good.
K: “That’s an opinion. That’s your opinion.”
GQ: You asked my opinion.
K: “The record was so good that it overwhelmed…?”
GQ: Yes. That’s what I think.
K: “I don’t think so. I don’t think so. I just think those
people didn’t believe that nonsense. That’s what I
think. And they said, ‘The hell with what other people
are saying—we love R. Kelly, we believe R. Kelly, he
was found innocent, he’s moving on with his life, he’s
not letting that tear him down.’ I believe that’s what it
was.”
GQ: Well, the trial didn’t happen until years after that.
And no one is found innocent. You were found not
guilty. But when they interviewed the jurors who would
talk afterwards, they pretty much all said that it was
you in the video.
K: “Well, then, why didn’t they find me guilty? They
loved ‘Ignition’?”
GQ: No. They didn’t find you guilty because they
couldn’t be sure that the other person in the video was
who the prosecution said it was, and hence they
couldn’t be sure that person was underage. That’s why
you were found not guilty.
K: “Well, to be honest with you, man…however,
whatever, whenever. When a person is found not guilty,
they’re found not guilty. And it doesn’t matter if it’s a
murder case, it doesn’t matter what case it is, when
they’re found not guilty, they’re not guilty. And I think
that a lot of haters out there wanted to see me go
down.”
Source: TMZ
