R. Kelly: I didn’t do this stuff

NEW YORK: R&B superstar R. Kelly, 52, has denied allegations he sexually abused women and girls in his first public comments since being indicted last month.

“I didn’t do this stuff. This not me,” Kelly told

saying he was “fighting” for his life in an interview set to air yesterday. Excerpts were released on Tuesday.

He dismissed the allegations against him as rumours.

“Whether they’re old rumours, new rumours, future rumours, not true,” said Kelly, who became upset and emotional during the interview.

Kelly pleaded not guilty last month in Chicago to 10 counts of aggravated criminal sex abuse.

The sex acts are alleged to have occurred between May 1998 and January 2010, according to prosecutors.

Kelly has been accused of sexual misconduct before.

In 2002, he was charged after allegedly filming himself having sex with a 14-year-old girl. He was tried and acquitted of child pornography charges in 2008.

Now he says his reputation is being used against him.

“People are going back to my past, okay? That’s exactly what they’re doing. They’re going back to the past and they trying to add all of this stuff now to that. To make all this stuff that’s going on now feels real to people,” Kelly said, according to the

CBS transcript.