Will R Kelly‘s music face the consequences?
Criminal conviction may do to his music what years of allegations couldn’t
Will a criminal conviction do to R Kelly’s music what years of ugly allegations couldn’t? It’s unlikely that Monday’s moment of justice — when a federal jury in New York found the 54-year-old R’n’B superstar guilty of all nine counts in a sex trafficking trial — will mean much for his fans, given all the awful things they had learned already, some observers say.
“The lines have already been drawn,” said Jem Aswad, deputy music editor for the trade publication Variety, who has been covering R Kelly for 20 years. “The people that are going to listen to R Kelly’s music are still listening to it. I don’t think a guilty verdict is going to change their minds.”
Still, advocates hope the criminal conviction brings a moral reckoning. Tarana Burke, founder of the #MeToo movement, understands how irresistible the music of R Kelly can be for people who grooved to songs like Ignition, but said, “People should just have a second thought about the message that it sends.”
Kelly had long managed to avoid professional consequences amid decades of reports of sexual abuse of young women and children, from his illegal marriage to R’n’B phenom Aaliyah in 1994, when she was just 15, to a 2002 arrest in which he was accused of recording himself sexually abusing and urinating on a 14-year-old girl.
DOWNGRADED
The #MeToo era and the 2019 docuseries Surviving R Kelly saw his music downgraded by streaming services and subjected to boycotts, and Kelly dropped by his label, but it still remains widely available and draws millions of weekly streams.
The Grammy winner, once called the King of R’n’B, has had a dozen albums reach platinum or multiple platinum status. His biggest hits include I Believe I Can Fly and Bump N’ Grind. His popularity took a hit as allegations mounted in the past five years.
Kelly’s audience is also aging, and he’s unlikely to make any new music, with a long prison sentence a possibility and more prosecutions awaiting in other states.
It could be that time alone may do what convictions, allegations and boycotts couldn’t.