*When then accused child pornographer and sexual panderer, R. Kelly, went on trial in Chicago in 2008, he had three albums in the can ready for release. It took the jury only a few hours to acquit him of all charges. But even before his acquittal it was a surefire bet that the albums would fly out the can fast and even faster off the store racks.
Now fast forward a decade plus later, Kelly is back on the hot seat again. This time with the release of the multi-part docuseries, “Surviving R. Kelly.” This time Kelly is royally raked over the coals for his alleged underage sexual predatory mania, and various and assorted child and adulthood neuroses, psychoses, supposedly all aided and abetted by a fawning public and for far too many years by a legal system, star struck by his fame and money, that looked the other way.
But there’s no reason to think this this hit piece series on him will unravel his neat little celebrity fame and fortune empire. This means little to his legions of devoted fans.
Kelly and a handful of other influential R&B singers and rappers who are rich and famous beyond their wildest fantasies and who brand themselves with a criminal, thuggish image is still very much in commercial vogue. They exult the bad actor life style, thumb their nose at the establishment, and reinforce the sexually rapacious cardboard image of young black males.
‘SURVIVING R. KELLY’ DOCUSERIES PREMIERE BREAKS RATINGS RECORDS FOR LIFETIME
Kelly, and the others, know that the record industry can and will deftly parlay their sexual outlandishness and defiance into millions in record sales. Kelly brashly seized on the commercially prurient relationship he has with the record companies in one of his hit albums, “The Champ,” “Point fingers, throw stones, hate me. I’m clever enough to know that the industry needs me.”
It does. He owns a mansion and property in Chicago and Florida, was once spoken of in the same breath as Oprah and Michael Jordan among Chicago’s wealthiest black elite.
However, in the process, young black artists such as Kelly rekindle the vilest of racial and sexual stereotypes about young black males. Their artistic degradation has had especially dangerous consequences for black women. In Kelly’s case the victims of his sexual vandalism, as witnessed by settlements of other lawsuits against him for having sex with underage teens, were black women. And his sexually odious singles, “Feelin on Yo Booty,” “Bump and Grind,” and “Your Body’s Callin’,” were virtual invitations to sexually trash black women.
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