R. Kelly does whatever the hell he wants, to such a compulsive extent that you
wonder if he has ever even considered what anyone else thinks about
him.
In 2007, with a child-pornography case swinging against him, he
released "Sex Planet," a song that included the couplet Girl, I promise this will be painless/We'll take a trip to the planet Uranus.
Sure, he'd been accused of urinating on a 15-year-old girl, but that in
no way discouraged him from penning, elsewhere on that album, the lyric
Just as soon as she go to the bathroom, player, I'ma holler at her.
But this complete lack of self-awareness is also why Kells will go down
as one of the most complicated, fascinating and adventurous pop stars
of all time. For the past 20 years, he has defined and grandly
re-imagined R&B as a genre ready to accommodate concept albums (Trapped in the Closet) and stand-alone chart statements such as "I Like the Crotch on You." Hats off.
Catch him Saturday with Keyshia Cole and Marsha Ambrosius at the Sprint Center.
