R. YOU NUTS? Singer belts out off-key sympathy for Cosby
HE DON’T see nothin’ wrong with a little bump and grind. Even for Bill Cosby. Tone-deaf R&B crooner R. Kelly hit a sour note by expressing his sympathy for the fallen funnyman.
“Well, my opinion on that is, I don’t know what happened,” Kelly told GQ magazine in a wide-ranging interview.
“I’m a fan of Bill Cosby’s from the ‘Cosby Show.’ Of course. Who’s not? And for me to give my opinion on something that I have no idea if it’s true or not, all I can say is that it was a long time ago.
“And when I look on TV and I see the 70-, 80-, 90-year-old ladies talking about what happened when they were 17, 18, or 19, there's something strange about it. That’s my opinion. It’s just strange.”
When pressed further, Kelly, whose real name is Robert Kelly, dismissed the whole scandal as “strange” and “something we can’t explain.”
More than 50 women have come forward with detailed allegations they were drugged and sexually assaulted by the “Cosby Show” star.
The 78-year-old Cosby is now facing his first criminal charge over an alleged 2004 rape of a Temple University employee at his suburban Philadelphia home.
“Bump and Grind” singer Kelly has had his own share of sex scandals.
The star, 49, has been dogged for years by rumors he had sex with underage girls. A jury found him not guilty in 2008 in the most notorious of the cases, involving a 26-minute sex tape with an unidentified young woman who appeared to be a minor.
The auteur who came up with “Trapped in the Closet” has long denied that the man on the tape is him.
Kelly said he is still giving Cos- by the benefit of the doubt.
“If God showed me that they were telling the truth, I would say that's wrong. I don't care if it was a zillion years ago,” Kelly said.
“But God would have to do that, because God is the only one can show me that. No man can tell me that. No woman can tell me that. And when you wait 70 years, 50 years, 40 years, to say something that simple, it’s strange.
“You know why I say that is because it happened to me, and it wasn’t true.”
Last month, Kelly stormed out of an interview with the Huffington Post when a reporter pressed him on his sex scandals.
“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,” said Kelly. “And I think that a lot of haters out there wanted to see me go down.”
When I look on TV and I see the 70-, 80-, 90-year-old ladies talking about what happened when they were 17, 18, or 19, there’s something strange about it. That’s my opinion. It’s just strange.