"He is guilty of self-confessed violent crimes against women such
that we should break his albums, burn his tapes and scratch up his CDs
until he acknowledges and apologizes and rethinks his position on The
Woman Question."
— Pearl Cleage, Mad at Miles
No apology was forthcoming. A year after Pearl Cleage openly criticized
Miles Davis for his gender politics, Miles Davis, the definitive black
male genius of the 20th century, and an American cultural icon, was
dead. Cleage had taken Davis to task for his raw and uncut confessions
-- gleeful descriptions -- of physical violence against black women in
his autobiography Miles (1990). I've thought a great deal about
Cleage's Mad at Miles (1990) as I've considered my own
relationship to the music of R Kelly, the Chi-town bred R&B "genius" who
was indicted in June 2002 on 21 counts of child pornography. In January
of this year, Kelly was indicted on 12 additional counts in relation to
the initial investigation. The indictments stem from a series of video
tapes in which Kelly is purported to have sex with girls as young as
thirteen. In February Kelly released his sixth CD Chocolate
Factory. As I consider reviewing the disc, I can't help but think of
myself a criminal (critical) accomplice.
Throughout his career R. Kelly, now 36, has been haunted by rumors of
his rapturous relations with under-aged girls. His brief marriage to the
late Aaliyah in 1994 -- she was 15 at the time -- was the most visible
proof of those rumors. In late 2000, allegations against Kelly became
public as two different women alleged that the adult Kelly had sex with
them when they were minors. Both women were students at Kenwood Academy
in Hyde Park, which Kelly also attended as a teen. Kelly settled a suit
with another accuser in 1998. By the time the videotape emerged in
February of 2002 -- on the eve of Kelly's performance at the opening
ceremonies of the Salt Lake City Olympics -- a clear pattern had
emerged: R. Kelly was likely a pedophile and a child pornographer.
Immediately folks went into celebrity-surveillance mode, as Kelly's
music, movements, and mediated messages were subject to intense
scrutiny. Many urban radio outlets were at the center of the frenetic
coverage as program directors were faced with decisions over whether to
continue to play Kelly's music. When stories about Kelly's problems
surfaced in 2000, Todd Cavanah, the program director at Chicago's
WBBM-FM, admitted that "we play hit songs from hit artists that our
audience likes, and R Kelly is one of them." (Chicago Sun-Times,
22 December 2000). Cavanah's tone was very different when Kelly was
indicted two years later: "Child pornography is not a funny thing and if
[Kelly] is indeed guilty, I don't want to be the radio station that
keeps playing his music . . . so we are definitely not going to play R.
Kelly." (Chicago Sun-Times, 7 June, 2002). In contrast, Marv
Dyson, general manager at WGCI-FM (also in Chicago) offered that "he's
still innocent until proven guilty, and I guess he's going to have his
day in court. That's still our position, and we will continue to play
his music, at least as of this moment." (Chicago Sun-Times 7 June
2002)
When bootlegged videos of R Kelly Exposed began to appear on the
streets of major cities and various links to the "R. Kelly sex video"
began to circulate throughout the internet, it was clear that folks were
more interested in the R. Kelly angle, than the well-being of the young
girl(s) in the video. Lost in the exchange of dollars among websites was
the fact that those folks who sold and bought R. Kelly Exposed or
who forwarded and opened internet links, were also trafficking in child
pornography, and in some ways were no different than Kelly. Such
oversights are likely to occur within a culture that valued Kelly's
celebrity over the lives of the young black girls who accused him
of having sexual contact with them.
The issue of race was easily glossed over in much of the coverage of
Kelly's sexcapades. Mary Mitchell was one of the few commentators who
addressed the significance of the racial identity of the girls as she
posits that "as long as [Kelly] is being accused of having sex with
underage black girls, the allegations will draw a collective yawn". In
contrast she writes, "what would have happened had Kelly gone to an
affluent area like Naperville or Winnetka to recruit choir girls…had
Kelly been accused of touching a golden hair on just one girl's head, he
would have been put under the jail." (Chicago Sun-Times 14
February 2002)
And this was part of the irony that I considered as I began to write
about R. Kelly's Chocolate Factory. What if Kelly had been Justin
Timberlake or Eminem? Would the conversation fall back so easily into
one where a white man mistreated and exploited (raped?) a young black
girl because of his racist views of black women? Damn skippy. Cleage
addresses such a reality in Mad at Miles as she wonders aloud
"what if Kenny [G] was revealed to be kicking black men asses all over
the country . . . what if Kenny [G] wrote a book saying that sometimes he had
to slap black men around a little just to make them cool out and leave
him the fuck alone." For Cleage, the idea that black folks would close
ranks around folks who harmed other black folks is unconsciounable, be
those folks black or white. Defending her stance Cleage writes,
"scratching up CDs and burning cassettes. Pretty right wing stuff I
know, but what are we going to do? Either we think it's a crime to hit
us or we don't. Either we think our brothers have to take responsibility
for stopping the war against us or we don't."
No apology is forthcoming. Released on February 18th, R. Kelly's
Chocolate Factory sold over 550,000 copies in its first week,
making it the number one recording on the Soundscan chart for the week.
As a longtime fan of Kelly's music I was one of those who purchased the
recording. Three of the songs were originally slated for
Loveland. The latter recording was scrapped because of
bootlegging. I was forwarded a bootlegged copy of Loveland in
early 2002 and listened to it frequently as it was the most mature and
sophisticated music of Kelly's career. A favorite of mine was "Step in
the Name of Love", a tribute to the Stepper-Set culture of Kelly's
native Chicago. As innocuous as Kelly's "I Believe I Can Fly" or the
"Electric Slide", the song quickly became a favorite of my four-year-old
daughter. Very often the two of us could be heard chanting "step, step,
side to side, round and round, dip it now, separate, bring it back, let
me see you do the love slide" while bumping down the highway. But
recently after my daughter asked to hear the song again, it struck me
that if she was ten years-older, I wouldn't even want her in the same
room with R. Kelly. Suddenly it was all clear to me. No review is
forthcoming.
— 8 April 2003
