RedEye exclusive! Our one-on-one interview with R. Kelly
Kyra Kyles on 12.30.10 at 8:15 AM | no comments
R. Kelly Getty images File
R. Kelly is in his element, striding around the log cabin-inspired living room of his Olympia Fields home about an hour south of downtown Chicago.
Wearing black horn-rimmed glasses, a velvet jacket and a starchy green bow tie, he's making sure every person in the room--music industry insiders, friends and other guests--is holding a glass of Champagne at this party to celebrate his new concept album, "Love Letter," which dropped earlier this month.
The record is a significant departure from Kelly's signature style, swapping his over-the-top baby-making music for a chaste, romantic approach closer to the soul numbers he admired growing up.
In the dim lighting, Kelly even looks like an artist from a bygone era. The art on his album, in which Kelly wears formal attire and sings into vintage microphones, makes one wonder: Has the singer who brought us "Ignition" done a complete U-turn from the hits that made him famous and stoked his scandalous reputation? Is the Kelly who titillated us with the Jerry Springer-esque, soapy "Trapped in the Closet" gone for good?
The answer is not so simple, RedEye learned during a one-on-one interview with the notoriously media-shy Kelly during his holiday party last week.
"I feel like it's time for me to show the world who I am," said Kelly, who barely has spoken to the media since his 2008 acquittal on child pornography charges.
"Sometimes, people record my words and they misquote me," he said of his tenuous relationship with the media. "They make me look different than I am. I like to talk to people. I'm very approachable. I'm not just this person who does nothing but work and am this mad scientist in the studio."
But the mad scientist definitely has been at work. For the past two years, Kelly said, he has been trapped in a "musical time machine," re-creating the '50s and '60s era of soul he admired growing up.
The result, "Love Letter," is being lauded by critics and fans alike. It's near the top of several Billboard charts, second only to Michael Jackson's posthumous release, "Michael," in the R&B and Hip-hop category.
In addition to a "Love Letter" tour set to launch in about three months, Kelly told RedEye he will release the already recorded "Love Letter 2: The Next Page" within the next year. He also has more plans for the "Trapped in the Closet" series of songs and videos.
Kelly, who has collaborated with Jay-Z, Fat Joe and others, said he briefly fretted that "Love Letter" "would make me look old or out of date," and alienate the rap artists who have worked with him in the past for his radio hits.
"Don't get me wrong; I love hip-hop and I love hip-hop artists," Kelly said. "I call what's on the radio now the meat and potatoes of music. But we need to add the vegetables."
Kelly is one of the few artists who could credibly make a vintage album such as "Love Letter" and still achieve impressive sales, said music producer Vince Lawrence, a longtime friend of Kelly's who also attended the party. Lawrence, who has worked with Beyonce and Whitney Houston in his 25-year career, said "Love Letter" is more reflective of Kelly's real-life personality than his image as an R&B bad boy.
But getting music audiences to accept a different image of Kelly may be an uphill battle, despite the singer's effort to engage them directly through Twitter.
Kelly's pop culture image took a severe battering in 2002 when he was charged with child pornography in connection with an alleged sexual encounter with a minor.
Though Kelly was found not guilty in 2008, his reputation has not fully recovered, according to the results of a popular celebrity likability poll conducted in October. His celebrity marketing appeal on a scale of 0 to 100 sits at 20, according to e-Poll Market Research spokesman Randy Parker, who added that Kelly is considered "creepy" by 39 percent of survey respondents, a number exceeded by only three other musicians: Marilyn Manson, Amy Winehouse and Alice Cooper.
Yvette Caslin, executive editor of Atlanta-based entertainment magazine Rolling Out, said she's not surprised that Kelly, whom she considers a music legend, still is stigmatized.
"I think [Kelly] is more of a Rick James," Caslin said, referencing the deceased, substance-abusing, notoriously womanizing funk star. "I think artists like will.i.am or even Akon are getting the attention Kelly would be getting if not for the scandal that follows him." Jermaine Hall, editor-in-chief at Vibe magazine, said Kelly can rise even higher in pop stature through this current album and stepped-up social networking.
"Younger fans don't know his entire catalogue or his personality because he hasn't been out there as much," Hall said. "This is the chance for newer fans to get to know who he is."
Who he is, Kelly told RedEye, is a "musical director." He compared himself to Steven Spielberg, saying that while "Love Letter" is a dimension of his persona, he also will continue to cultivate his image from the "Chocolate Factory" and "12 Play" albums.
Kelly smiled as he recounted that, like "Love Letter," "Trapped in the Closet"--the multi-chapter cult hit that evolved to include a little person, triangulated extramarital affairs and a pimp with a stuttering problem--once was considered a career risk.
"The label didn't want me to do it," Kelly said. "But look how that turned out." [email protected]