Part One: R. Kelly: His Life, Times & Vicious Sex Cult

Does R. Kelly Have A Sex Cult? In episode 42, Robert is joined by comedian Teresa Lee to discuss the life of R&B singer, R. Kelly. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Hello friends, I'm Robert Evans, and this is once again
Behind the Bastards the Shore. We tell you everything you
don't know about the very worst people in all of history.
And today we have a special guest who we will
be talking about a special subject with the guest not
a bastard is Teresa Leela. You don't know I could

(00:23):
be a bastard? Well, I don't know what is the
technical definition like that? No mom? No dad? No mom?
What runaway? Dad's run away? Then you're a bastard, right, yeah,
if your dad's gone, yeah, yes, yes, Okay. Many people
don't use it for that anymore. Really, I made a
mistake of getting a bag of cookies right before this started,
and I was like, I'll just stack. But you can't

(00:43):
eat cookies on a podcast. You can't eat cookies on
a podcast. You know what you can eat air? I
was going to say the truth, Oh yes you can. Okay,
great transition, Look at those transitions. Really great. Today we're
talking about someone who we will be catching some fire
on Twitter for talking about what do you know about
R Kelly? Well? I don't know, like I know, I

(01:06):
think I know enough, like I know what was big news?
But I never decided to like open up the book
and deep dive into R. Kelly so that there may
be things that are surprising to me. But I will say,
just before this podcast, I was like, let me look
at all his songs again just to remind myself, and
I forgot that he's saying the space Jam song. So
so now I'm like, were you thinking playing that song

(01:29):
in my head? Well, outside of that, like, were you
ever a fan of his music? Do you remember any
particular albums that like. I never used to buy albums
as a kid, so he was sort of in his heyday.
His popular songs I would you know, play and sing
along to and dance too. But I I wasn't a
big album buyer until pretty much in the last couple

(01:49):
of years because I wasn't really allowed to as a kid.
I would say, yeah, I have similar experience with him
to wear Like, as a nineties kid, I heard a
lot of R. Kelly songs, but I liked I did
like a I didn't ever attribute it to him. It
was one of those things where it's like I like
this new song, Oh it's R. Kelly, But it wasn't
like I stand for R Kelly. He was just a
big part of like the soundtrack of the late nineties

(02:11):
and early auts in particular. I like that I'm a
Flirt song. I think does he saying I'm in love
with the bartender? Was like, No, that was definitely not right.
It's to te pain, that's right, Okay, So but his
air he's around that era. I feel like the tea
Pain songs were on the radio. R Kelly songs were
on the radio. Yeah, yeah, I mean he likes fun
to grind to that sort of thing. Definitely fun to
grind too. I think he has a couple of songs

(02:32):
with grind in the name. So let's hear about the
fact that he probably has a sex cult. Like he's
the kind of a child pornographer, right, isn't that a thing?
People like know him for pain on people. But wasn't
she also under age? Well be getting into that. It's
actually very tough to answer that question definitively. Like it's

(02:54):
one of those things like where pretty much everyone's like, yeah,
but legally he actually got off there was no right
because there's no proof. Wait, this does remind me real quick. Uh,
Speaking of r Kelly, the song I'm a Flirt when
I was. I wasn't. I was technically enerraged, but nothing
bad happened, but I was. I have to premose that

(03:14):
so people don't get uncomfortable. But that song. Remember I
worked at a Y m C A camp for a summer,
and I was like kind of talking to in the
way seventeen year olds do very innocently. Do we nothing
but to uh to like a twenty one year old
football player at Stanford and we Standford. Yeah we grinded
to that song fancy summer, But okay, you grinded kind
of in tribute to R. Kelly because technically I was

(03:36):
under age. I was seventeen years old. Yeah, I was
kind of like, oh, R Kelly, hey cool, get over
here and get maybe put yourself in a questionable position. Well,
if I understand right, seventeen is the age of consent
for grind dancing most of the Eastern seaboards. He was respectful.
I feel like it was he was like, let's see
how fa year ago and I will not push you

(03:56):
know what I mean? Like I feel like he was like,
it's it's crazy that that's the bar for being a
good guy. I'm not going to push it with this
teenage He definitely didn't put it stop to it, but
he went as far as I was comfortable and then
did not push it further. I gotta tell you, Teresa,
as a man, it is so easy to be a
good guy because it's it's just it's just don't assault people.

(04:20):
Like really, if you don't assault people like, I've done
a lot of shitty things, But as long as I
don't assault people are gas light them like I feel
like I'm sailing. I've gotten years without paying my taxes,
but none of that matters because the bar is just
below the floor these days. It's opposite a woman. If
you just start a sentence with I want, you're just
automatically a bit like, well, I mean, men never expressed

(04:42):
them smiling. Would you get me a cel I want
to celsius double flip off. Well, we should probably get
into the story now. Yeah, okay, but I'm sure there
will be a lot more fun conversations about gender politics.
I know that's what the it's really tunes in for.

(05:03):
Robert Sylvester Kelly was born in Chicago on January nineteen
sixty seven. His dad was absent from the get go,
and his mother, Joanne raised him and his three siblings.
She was a school teacher and a committed Baptist. Writing
later in his autobiography Solo Coaster, Kelly Sorry, there's a
little yeah, his auto solo Coaster like a roller exactly. Yeah.

(05:29):
We will be hearing that title regularly and it will
never not make me die just a little bit inside,
just a little bit. But and the thing that I
hate to admit is I kind of like the layout
of the book. Does it look like a roller coaster? No, no, no,
it doesn't. It's just like it's just neat. I've never
seen an autobiography like Kelly clear. No. It's a lot
of visuals, Like he put a lot of thought into

(05:51):
how he laid out his autobiography, and it's one of
those things you get this throughout the story. It sucks
Like it's when someone like Harvey Weinstein, who's like a
piece of ship, but like I can't point anything great
he did, Like he's just a piece of ship who
was tied to some good movies. R. Kelly is like
a really good artist, Like he's one of these people.
He's in like the running for the best R and

(06:11):
B singer of all time, and he's like he's legitimately talented.
So like as you go through, Like as I'm reading
his autobiography with its ridiculous, stupid name, I'm like, oh, wow,
this guy's got a real good talent for layout. And
then I'm like, oh yeah, and he's molesting children. Fucking Christ.
It's frustrating. I don't know, maybe it's not, but I mean,
he bought someone else, probably laid it out. I don't know.

(06:33):
I feel like he's he's he's that kind of I
think he's just too controlling to let someone else lay
out his autobiography. But we'll get to that too anyway.
I'm we're a paragraph fast solo coaster. Yeah. So, in
his autobiography Solo Coaster, Kelly recalled that on the rare
occasions he asked his mom what had happened to his dad.

(06:54):
This was her response, don't say nothing to me about that,
No good son of a bitch, because the minute he
found out I was pregnant with you, his coward ass left,
disappeared in the wind. Didn't want to have anything to
do with either you or me. Kelly goes on to, right,
I remember my mother's eyes on one of those days,
close to blood red as the anger grew and grew
while she talked about my father as if he was
the devil himself. I remember my eyes getting baby blood

(07:14):
red too, because what my mother loved I loved, and
what she hated I hated baby blood red. I don't
know that's not a color baby blue as a color
baby baby blood, well, I mean maybe if you kill
a lot of babies, Oh there you got, Yeah, he's
got babies on the mind. I mean, I imagine a
baby's blood would be a different color because the baby
has not been subjected to all the same adults eating

(07:35):
solid foods yet exactly. So maybe if you've seen a
lot of baby blood, it sticks on. This is part
of why I think he wrote it to no ghostwriter
is going to be like baby blood red. That sounds
like it came out of our Kelly's head. Um. It
was that day, that moment that I decided to hate
my father, not knowing really what hatement or having a

(07:56):
clear understanding of love. She told me on that day
never to mention him again. I'm your mother and your father,
she said. I promised her that I'd never talked about
him again, and I never did. Yeah, Well that's that's
that's his background. Robert Kelly grew up very poor as
family lived in the projects on the South side of Chicago, which,

(08:17):
according to the song Bad Bad Leroy Brown, is the
baddest part of town. In his autobiography, Kelly vaguely refers
to his childhood home as being filled with numerous older women,
and it's unclear how many of them were related and
how many of them are just around, but it seems weird.
It seems weird, and Kelly's telling of it, when my
mother wasn't around, the woman ran a little freer. As

(08:38):
I crept up in age, I found myself more curious
and sometimes aroused, and I was ashamed of being aroused.
He says he was eight when he first saw people
having sex, and the story he tells is kind of baffling.
He comes upon this couple getting it on, and they
see him and basically give him the okay to watch,
like look at him and yeah. On one occasion, I
think later than this, he was handed a camera and

(08:58):
asked by a couple having sex to take their pictures
while they were having sex. Um he recalls that the
photographic technology impressed me more than the sex. Maybe he's
like repressed some of them. That's sad. Yeah, I know. Well,
I mean it's it's one of those things you got
to start with, like why do people do like? That's
another thing with like Weinstein. I don't know enough about
his like childhood to know, like was he abused a

(09:20):
bunch as a kid to that have an impact on it.
Not that that mitigates bad behavior, because most people who
are abused, people who write that, people who go both ways.
But this makes you understand what comes next a lot better.
So like this kid, he's never going to have an
easy time coming up. What's appropriate and what's normal is
off right from the get go. Yeah, age eight seems

(09:40):
to have been a crowded hour for young Robert Kelly.
It's the year when he first watched people fuck, first
photographed people fucking, and it's also the year in which
the love of his life died. Yeah. Here is a
quote from his autobiography Solo Coaster. I love love. There's
no one on earth more romantic than me. I've been
in love with love ever since I can't remember. I've

(10:01):
always loved the idea of having a girlfriend. I love
the closeness, the sweetness, holding her hand, kissing her cheek,
whispering words of affection, and hearing her say that she
feels the same about me. My first girlfriend was named Lulu,
and she was so special though we were only eight
and it was puppy love. I believe she was my
first musical inspiration when it comes to love songs. So,
according to r. Kelly, Lulu died brutally that same year

(10:22):
when he was eight. At eight. Yeah, they were out
playing near the river and she fell in and bashed
her skull open on some rocks. Roberts watched her die,
uh and was as traumatized as you'd expect. That's about
the most traumatizing thing I can imagine happening doing eight
year old Yeah. Um, yeah, it doesn't get much worse
than that. There's like little foot seeing his mom die

(10:43):
and having your eight year old girlfriend bashed your skulling
on some rocks. They're right up there. So this trauma
was compounded several months later when Robert Kelly fell asleep
in front of the TV and woke up from a
quote crazy dream about threes company to find one of
his older female relatives fondling him. Yeah. He's never given
a name for this woman. But she appears to be
someone who is still around in his life. He has

(11:05):
not told his other family members who this was, and
when Chris Heath, a writer for g Q, interviewed him
about this later, he said, quote, I remember it feeling weird.
I remember feeling ashamed. I remember closing my eyes and
keeping my hands over my eyes. I remember those things,
but I couldn't judge it one way or the other fully, So,
Kelly says this mystery relative continued to molest him until

(11:25):
he was roughly fifteen years old. She was not the
only adult to go after child. Robert, a trusted male
friend of the family, once asked Kelly to masturbate in
front of him. He offered to pay r Kelly later
said it was a crazy, weird experience, but not a
full blown experience because it didn't go down contact sexual. No.
A visual, absolutely a visual from him showing me his
penis and all that stuff, which is whether or not

(11:47):
there's contact. That's something he's kind of negotiating. That's the
thing that survivors do, is like negotiating or maybe or
thinking all this experience isn't valid because because people have
quote unquote worse. He didn't touch me. So it was
like I should be like these feelings maybe are invalid,
but they're all valid, because as long as you cross
the line, it's you know, that's molestation an assault. Yeah,

(12:09):
if you're a child and an adult comes up to
you ask you to masturbate and pulls out his genitals,
that's a sexual assault, use of their power. So he's
got a rough upbringing, and this is not all of it.
Robert Kelly was probably shot when he was thirteen. It's
hard to know for sure what happened because he's not
exactly a totally reliable narrator here. For years he told

(12:30):
interviewers he had been shot by thugs who wanted to
steal his huffey and his autobiography. He claims the bullet
was his, just a stray round from some gunfighter drive by,
though one of his close associates apparently told the Chicago
Sun Times that Robert shot himself during a botched suicide attempt.
This person says Kelly's version of the story is a
lie invented to cover up the suicide attempt. Most reports
say he has a bullet in his shoulder, though, and

(12:52):
if that's true, it does kind of make me think
it was probably more likely a stray round than suicide,
but I don't really know. You wouldn't shoot your shoulder.
Definitely very hard to miss as you want to, and
even if you missed, it probably wouldn't be like your heart,
like blow your jaw. And he was like, i'll do
it here. What it doesn't hurt? Yeah, because little Wayne
shot himself and like the back or something like that. Yeah,

(13:13):
there was just a gun and a couch and he
was playing accident. Yeah, yeah, it was an accident with him,
I think. So hard to say, but it looks like
he probably got shot too when he was thirteen, either
a suicide or tempt to just destroy a bullet because
he lived in a rough part of town. Whatever the truth,
it's really clear that Robert Kelly had a very very
rough childhood. Uh, not an upbringing I would risk on anybody.
But it was not all an R rated version of

(13:33):
a Dickens novel. He had a teacher, Lennon mcclin, who
recognized his nascent musical talent early on and nurtured it.
She convinced him to sing Stevie Wonders Ribbon in the
Sky for a high school talent show, Kelly's first performance
in front of an audience. He said about it later,
quote that night, it was like being Spider Man being bit.
I discovered this power. I knew I had something. Then
Ms mclinn got Kelly on TV for the first time,

(13:55):
singing at a Christmas tree lighting ceremony in Chicago. Now
Robert had no matt head for math or reading, and
it actually sounds, from what he says, like he might
be dyslexic. It sounds like mclin was instrumental and convincing
his mom and him that in essence, he should throw
all of his effort into singing, into performing, because that's
the thing he was clearly best at. Uh and that
definitely the right decision. Kelly started busting on a subway

(14:18):
as a teenager. On one particularly good day, he made
four hundred dollars. So he gets into performing and realizes like,
this is something he's got a crazy talent for. So
as a young adult, he began booking more formal gigs,
and it was during one set at a backyard barbecue
at age twenty four that R. Kelly was first discovered
by the industry. Wayne Williams, who worked for Jive records

(14:39):
just happened to be at that barbecue. Quote. I was
inside the house and Robert was performing outside. I saw
this guy who had all the steps down real choreographed.
You could tell he put a lot into it, which
is something you don't usually see, especially at a backyard barbecue.
It was the eye of the Tiger. I'm not sure
if he means that R. Kelly was singing the Eye
of the Tiger, or if he was responding more generally
to like he was kung fu. He was rising up

(15:01):
to the challenge of his rival. Kelly began working with
Barry Hankerson, an agent with real standing in the music industry.
Hankerson got him signed with the band Public Announcement. Tersa
I'm gonna show you a picture of the band Public Announcement,
and I just want you to tell me what you
know about their music based on this picture. Uh, that's
it looked kind of almost like a like a boy

(15:23):
bands stance, you know, Yeah, but there's a woman in
the middle. There's a woman in the middle, so it's
a little off from that. But otherwise all the guys
look like boy band. I imagine there's some dancing involved
and very nineties hairs, like hair touching, slicking back, kind
of like nodding at the camera and pointing that sort

(15:43):
of thing. And R Kelly is wearing what looks like
the nineties ist windbreaker. Has ever been purchased Windbreakers? Yeah,
he was on the cutting edge of that Windbreaker trend. Anyway,
they dropped an album and it did pretty well, but
Kelly almost immediate the outgrew public announcement. He released Breaker
and the wind Breaker. I mean we all kind of

(16:05):
outgrew the wind Breaker. He released his first solo album,
twelve Play. In wondering what the name twelve play means. Yeah,
it definitely isn't alluding to his his challenge. Oh jeez,
that's even dark. That's really dark. That's what I thought
of first. I mean, it's still messed up. According to

(16:27):
the Chicago Sun Times, quote it's because Kelly quote claims
that while other lovers might give you four play, he
gives you three times more. That's just like okay, all right.
I mean he's not good at math, so I mean
you gotta give it to him. He put math in.
He nailed the math. Yeah, there you go, especially for
his first album. You know, youve got to Conquer your fears.

(16:49):
He has math and words mixed up tracks on the
album twelve Play includes such subtle titles as Bump and Grind,
sex Me and this is my favorite. I like crotch
on you? What I like? All right, you gotta you
gotta love how just like, Okay, you're really not hiding

(17:10):
anything there, buddy, Like I like the crotch on you.
Crotch is not a sexy word, Like it's not. It's
almost like I feel like crotch just sounds I don't know,
it sounds like it's like like it's not. I don't
relate it to sex, even though it's pointing to your generals.
I relate it to like, I don't know what, I
really just g I would think of jeans because of crotch,

(17:30):
but I think of like dirty jeans and like someone
who didn't do their laundry. That's what I think of
what I think of crotch. No couple in the Throws
of Passion have ever said, bring that crotch on it.
That would not It's just not an attractive word. Yeah,
it's like something that Taylor tells you, the crotch of
your jeans or something that you're right, Okay, so ridiculous

(17:51):
as it sounded, Twelve Play became the number one R
and B album in America for nine straight weeks. Huge
success and apparently a great R and B album. Solo album, Yeah,
this is a solo album. Um. I don't know much
about R and B, but the one thing pretty much
everybody seems an agreement on is that at his stride, R.
Kelly was a hell of an R and B singer,
so his career exploded after twelve Play came out. He

(18:15):
owed much of his success to his agent, of course,
Barry Hankerson, And it just so happens that Mr. Hankerson
had a niece, a fifteen year old girl named Aliyah
Dana Houghton. She had musical ambitions, a buttload of talent,
and shelah. Yeah, this is that Aliyah. She soon started
working with her uncle's top musician, the incredibly talented Robert Kelly.

(18:35):
He wrote a number of songs for her and acted
as a producer on her first album, Age Ain't Nothing
but a Number. Kelly wrote that title too, Yeah, I'm
not surprised. In interviews at the time, Alia talked about
the many, many long hours she and R. Kelly put
in together to make the album. They're both perfectionists, and
this led to numerous late night spent in close proximity.
The album was a hit, selling more than three million copies,

(18:57):
and according to some people who know about R and B,
it was revolutionary in a number of ways in that genre.
I can't comment on that, but that seems to be
the consensus. However good the album was, it also led
to something even less savory, or I guess, exactly as
unsavory as that title would suggest. Almost immediately after the
album dropped, Robert and Aliah were married at that most
stereotypically romantic of destinations, the Sheraton Gateway, Sweets and Rose Weight.

(19:21):
They got married, Yeah, they sure did. She was fifteen.
He was, oh god, yeah, that's not okay, that's not okay.
I don't remember this. I don't think we're being proved
to be like, I'm fine with someone dropping a song
called I like the Crotch on you. You know that's
your own thing. Here, we've got something not okay. Were
they married for a long time? No okay? Because I
was like, I do not remember this. How was this

(19:42):
not the thing that made him? Because he wasn't big enough.
He was. This was big news. This was there was
like a controversy over this that extends to today because
again Aliah was fifteen, and that's a thing. You can't
be a twenty seven year old married a fifteen year old.
It's not legal. So um Sometimes in a lot of
states you can actually marry at that age, but your

(20:03):
family has to consent. And Elia's family had no idea
any of this was happening. In fact, the wedding was
a secret. The world only found out about it because
several months after the fact, Vibe published the marriage certificate,
which listed Aliah as eighteen. So fraudulent marriage certificate, big problems. Now,
the whole episode is somewhat murky and unclear, and there
are a number of different narratives as to what precisely

(20:24):
went down. G q's account of things is based heavily
on the memory of Demetrius Smith, a somewhat shady character
who worked for Kelly at the time he said this quote.
The week of the marriage, Smith recounts being in Miami
on tour with Kelly and how Kelly explained that he
had received a distraught phone call from Eliah saying she
had run away from home, believing she was pregnant. Smith

(20:44):
says that Kelly was then given some specious advice that
he could protect himself from the legal ramifications of the
situation by marrying her. Smith's account of what happened next.
During a break in the tour, Smith and Kelly flew
together to Illinois. Smith procured a fake state idea for
Eliah from a friend in the Public Aid office, and
they got a backup I D through someone they knew
it Federal Express. That night, after the ceremony in a

(21:04):
suite at the Sheraton Hotel, Kelly and Smith flew back
to Miami to resume the tour. So is it it?
I mean they were trying to like do the paperwork
by getting married to make it legal, but then they
use fraudulent I DA. So it's the whole thing isn't legal.
So what's the point of that. I mean a couple
of things. Number one, keeping your head. This before the Internet,

(21:25):
so the odds that someone would find this were lower.
But if the marriage is null, if there it was
built up. Yeah, So that means Snow says, at all,
the whole thing isn't all they were hoping nobody would notice. O, God,
when did she come out with Are you that somebody?
Because there's tons of random baby noises in there that
I'm like, what the fund is this? And I just
kind of just part of it. But now I'm like,

(21:47):
was it was a secret message? Like was she like
I'm pregnant? It might have been. I think that was
after she was because if that wasn't from her, she
she lived into like twenty four, so that wasn't her
first album. That's not on ag Ain't nothing but a number? No,
that was with rome I think it was the movie
Romeo Must Die. Oh then, yeah, that would have been
way later an adult. At that point, she was sort

(22:07):
of trying to slip in the the story of her
it's hard to say what happened. There's just one guy's relation.
But she didn't have the baby, right, I don't think so. No, No,
she did not um and we don't know if she
was actually pregnant. Again, this is like one person's version
of the story and yeah, I don't know this guy
is reliable. Yeah, and we we don't really know what

(22:28):
went down because there were you know, Alia's parents found
out and made them you know, they annulled the marriage
and everything, and there was like a big legal settlement
where he reportedly paid like a hundred dollars is like
a token thing, and then like they both agreed not
to say anything about this, and like no one said
anything about it in the years since. So we don't
know what went down. But what I do know is

(22:51):
that there are some fine products and or services that Theresa,
You're just gonna love to hear about. Oh, I love
the ad. Yes, ads, we're back. We're talking about Aaliyah
and R Kelly's very short lived and super illegal man.

(23:15):
Literally she was short lived. Well yeah, yeah, she died
in a plane crash and she was like anyway, Um,
the settlement between Aliah and R Kelly, we don't again
know exactly what went down, but it's supposedly included a
promise from Aaliyah not to sue R Kelly in the
future due to quote emotional distress caused by any aspect

(23:37):
of her business or personal relationship with Robert. She also
agreed not to sue for quote physical injury or emotional
pain and suffering arising from any assault or battery perpetrated
by Robert against a person. Again, we don't know what
went down. We don't know what all was getting bandied about.
It was like, uh, he was like, its pre me too,

(23:58):
but like he already knew. It's like he was like, Okay,
this kind of ship will come out later, so I'm
just gonna totally cover my basis. Well it's it's it's
not even like pre me too. Me Too is just
people finally getting angry about this. This whole thing where
like rich people has always been happening for sure, but
like the NDAs were more like, oh, I feel like
it came from a lot of the men who make

(24:21):
people say or silence women. A lot of it in
the past came from like, oh, I don't want it
to hurt my reputation. But the fact that he was
already like, I know that you're going to go through
emotional trauma that might not surface until ten years from now,
and then you might want to talk about it. He's like,
hold up, you don't know you're gonna have this, but
I know because I've been through it, So don't talk
about it. Oh shit, Okay, Now that I feel like
he probably went through it and that's why he knows

(24:43):
that there's gonna be I don't think a lot of
men in the past were like, you're going to have
emotional trauma. I think they're just like, I don't want
to get caught. I didn't even catch that, but I
think you're right. Yeah, that's really insightful. It's kind of dark.
I mean, it's it's both sad because it's like he's
a victim or survivor himself, but also there's a cycle
and he's perpetuating it. Yeah. I think you're I think

(25:04):
you're really onto something there. Uh So. Neither r Kelly
nor Aliah have ever provided more detail about what went
down or the reasoning behind that weird settlement. In nine
Aliyah filed to expunge the marriage certificate from the county
court records. The most detail she ever gave in an
interview was with the Chicago Sun Times in nineteen ninety four,
where she said, Hey, don't believe all that mess. We're

(25:25):
close and people took it the wrong way, but that
was again, like right when it happened. Alia died in
a plane crash in two thousand one at the age
of twenty four. R Kelly has said almost nothing about
her in the two decades since her death. He doesn't
even mention her name once in his autobiography, Solo Coaster.
There is, however, a disclaimer at the beginning that notes

(25:45):
certain episodes could not be included for complicated reasons. That's
probably a reference to the court settlement. During that two
sixteen interview with g Q, Kelly described Aliyah as his best,
best best friend, which seems odd for someone he left
out of his autobiography, but in probably was legally restricted
from doing so. In R Kelly released his second solo album,

(26:06):
just titled R Kelly. Three songs on the album reached
number one on the R and B charts. Song titles
include Down Low, Nobody Has to Know a Little on
the Knows. On December, R Kelly was sued for ten
million dollars by Tiffany Hawkins, a high school student with
ambitions for a music career. She claimed she met Kelly

(26:27):
when he talked to her choir class. Her teacher, Miss mclenn,
loved having Kelly come over to talk to her new students.
Kelly seemed to have loved flirting with the literal children
in these classes. I'm going to quote Jim DeRogatis, the
indispensable reporter on the R. Kelly allegations here, I'm gonna
probably butcher this guy's last name. But how do you
think that de ro gaddis de de ro gaddis. That's

(26:54):
what we're gonna land on. Probably should have checked that
when I was reading about R. Kelly for eleven hours.
Quote asked about the charges in the Hawkins lawsuit that
Kelly had sexual relationships with some of the freshmen and
sophomore girls from mclen's choir, The teacher says, I don't
know what he did outside of school, but in the
school there was no hanky panky if they were involved
in that. The sad thing is it takes two to tango.

(27:15):
Oh no, it doesn't take to not a full person.
You under yeah, you're really not. You can't be part
of it too. When you're not not a full going adult.
You teach teenagers. You know they're not real people, yet
you know that you teach them. It's like if you
put a puppy in a box and you're like, well

(27:36):
he didn't get out, and it's like, well that's different.
You have more power. You're a big person. Hawkins claimed
your sexual relationship with Kelly started in nineteen one, when
she was fifteen. In four she says Kelly ended the
relationship when she turned eighteen. Hawkins slit her wrists immediately afterwards,
a suicide attempt that she thankfully survived. Um Also, in

(27:59):
nineteen ninety six, while Kelly was settling the lawsuit over
the teenager he allegedly molested into a suicide attempt, he
met an adult lady, Andrea Lee. Lee was a choreographer
and a dancer who had worked on his tour. Andrea
and Robert married and eventually had three children. There are
a few signs that the marriage was something less than
super romantic. The pair were almost never photographed together. People

(28:21):
close to Kelly told the Chicago Sun Times that Andrea
was required to knock before entering any room in their
house while her husband was home, and in two thousand three,
several of Andrea's relatives complained to the Chicago Sun Times
that they weren't allowed to visit their daughter at the
home she shared with Kelly or talked to her on
the phone. So consider that whole paragraph just you and
see a bit of foreshadowing. What does he say in

(28:42):
his autobiography better Sola Coaster? But what Sola Coaster? Okay
a year later or sorry, a little later. In nine,

(29:04):
which was a very full year for our Kelly, he
ran into legal trouble again when he was arrested for
battery in Lafayette, Louisiana, after a fight between himself, his entourage,
and three random dudes at the basketball court for a
local gym. Now he gets a pass on this one
from me, because why would you go to a gym
basketball court if you didn't want to get into a
fist fight with somebody in their entourage. True, what happens

(29:25):
on the court stays on. Nope, that's probably not true. No,
it is. If there's one thing jim basketball courts, therefore,
it's fist fights with famous people, and that's a sacred
that's a sacred thing. I letuld say, as long as you,
I mean, to a certain degree, you don't want to
beat someone's face to a pulp. But if there's a
little bit of fighting on, like if it's more like
closer to wrestling on a on a on any court

(29:47):
of sport, as long as when the game ends you're
shaking hands, patting each other's back and saying good game,
then I think it's a little okay. But I think
if that's real aggression that's carried on past the game,
then you're like, oh, that was a real fight. I
think it all depends on whether or not someone has
an entourage, because if there's an entourage, there's no option
but to have like a really showy, choreographed fist fight.
It's like a gang. We don't really have the big

(30:09):
goal of West Side story gangs the way. I don't
even know they ever really did do those dancy dancy fights.
But now I feel like you got fight on the court.
I imagine if I ever got into a fight with
Aston Kutcher, he would have a dancing and singing entourage
that I would have to fight my way through first.
But yeah, despite all of its ups and mostly down,

(30:30):
it on a high note for Robert Kelly. The movie
Space Jam was released in December of that year, permanently
delighting my former boss Daniel O'Brien and making our key
a household name. His hit song I Believe I Can
Fly was basically everywhere for like six months. It was
the number two song in America. I was like eight
at the time, and a tremendous number of my early
memories involved hearing r Kelly's voice over the shitty speakers

(30:51):
at a Blockbuster or Piggy Wiggly or what have you.
Also a bad man, Michael Jordan's so well, I don't
know much about Michael Jordan. Ben not a nice guy.
No comment until I do the digging on him for
the Michael Jordan episode. Kelly's mother died in March of
nineteen seven. This was a devastating blow to the self
described Mama's boy, as it would have been for anyone.

(31:13):
Shortly after this, Robert announced on stage with a gospel
preacher that he had given himself over to Jesus. His
autobiography contains numerous religious references. He's been very consistent about
the importance of faith to him over the years. Uh yeah. R.
Kelly's desire to get right with God, however, did not
inspire him to get right with the Justice Department. In June,
he missed his key ring on the battery case over

(31:35):
that basketball court fight. He wounded up having to settle
out of court with the men for an undisclosed sum.
The next month, settling with people for undisclosed sums of
money would grow to become R. Kelly's number one hobby
over the next twenty years. In he settled his lawsuit
with Tiffany Hawkins, the teenager he attempted suicide, reportedly for
two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. The settlement came four

(31:57):
days after Hawkins delivered a horrifying seven or deposition, and
in a way, it was too little, too late. News
of Kelly's escapades with Hawkins began to leak. A young
woman who had been prepared to testify about being in
the threesome with Hawkins and Kelly Wall Hawkins was under age,
told the Chicago Suntimes quote, I'm not trying to down
him because I honestly think it has to be a sickness.
Looking at pictures of me and Tiffany when we were

(32:19):
a freshman boy, we were ugly little girls compared to
what he could have had, So I didn't understand why
he did what he did. Oh and that's also like sad,
sort of trying to justify and make things feel normal,
like as a survivor. I feel like she's also like
trying to explain or you know, make it move on
without being stuck in the moment. Yeah, I'm not gonna

(32:40):
I'm not gonna judge her for that. But it is weird. Yeah.
That whole article was published in two thousand. It includes
a lot of really unsettling information. Quote. According to Hawkins's lawsuit,
Kelly had sex with underage girls in his apartments at
nine s Wabash North Harbor Drive in other locations in Chicago.
In response to ss from Hawkins's attorneys, Kelly admitted that

(33:02):
he employed Hawkins as a background vocalist and periodically gave
her small cash gifts and approximately fourteen hundred dollars in checks,
but he denied having any sexual contact with the girl.
Um Now Hawkins friend who was prepared to testify, I
did make it clear that R. Kelly did not force
himself on her sexually. He treated us very well, she said.
We got anything we asked for, but we weren't going
to ask for much. A pair of air Jordan's or

(33:23):
a hundred dollars was a lot of money to us.
I still love R. Kelly's music. I don't hate him,
she added. He reminds me of a boyfriend who hurt
you that you still love. He hurt me by not
helping me out and telling me to drop out of school.
He told me and Tiffany both. If you want to
be serious about the music, you have to be at
the studio and not at school because school isn't going
to make you a millionaire at sixteen. That's like a
dream to us to work with R. Kelly, so we

(33:44):
listened to him. I think it's a sickness. Yeah, I mean,
that's rough. She's definitely negotiating with herself and there's no
you know, right or wrong from a survised point of view,
because it's like how she feels. That's how she feels,
and you know, sometimes to move on you have to
the narrative in her head. It doesn't mean it's wrong,
you know what I mean? Like it clearly he crossed
a line from an objective point of view, but from

(34:06):
her point of view, I don't think we could fall
her for wanting to think of him fondly, because otherwise
she has to move on with her life feeling like
this bad thing happened, which it did. But it's okay
if she wants to live her life feeling a little
bit more normal. And it's also it's uh, you know.
The bargain he put these young women in was essentially
the way he was making the think of it as like, Okay,

(34:29):
parts of this may be creepy. I may not like
parts of this, but like other parts are to her
good get to be a millionaire, even if she felt
like she consented, or maybe he didn't ever, maybe he
didn't ever quote unquote force himself, but just by nature
of him being an adult and then being kids and
him treating them that way already, she's like grooming them
to feel like they owe him. And I would argue

(34:51):
that even if they'd both been eighteen, the money here
would have been an element of force, not that he
was offering them, but because the conversion. Yeah, it's coercion
of like if I put up with us for a while,
then I'll have a career in the music industry and
I'll never have to worry again. You know. He's definitely
abusing his power. Yeah, yeah, in a couple of ways.
Like his power is like an older man who's wiser

(35:12):
in the world than these fifteen year olds, and his
power as a gatekeeper to celebrity. But there's also like
there's so much new. I mean, bottom line, it's wrong,
you know, he crossed the line. Bottom line that was
I want to preface that, but I also want to
the nuance of like someone he was a survivor as
a kid, and part of him, maybe that like the

(35:36):
part that you know he never dealt with, maybe wanted
to rewrite a little bit. So maybe he did treat
them really well and didn't force them in a in
a way to kind of rewrite like what if when
this happened to me, it was sweet and kind and
they didn't force it, So in a way he may
have been trying to rewrite his own path. That way
still bottom line wrong and there should have been more

(35:57):
resources in place to help him get through his trauma
so that he knew how to probably deal with it.
But there is a world. But maybe like maybe he
thought treating them well and then going to sex would
kind of be like, oh, there can exist a relationship
that's uh yeah, because he's trying to justify what happened
to him. Yeah, he's not like most people who do
really bad things, and I doubt he's going into this

(36:18):
was like no, I think the way he wanted to
sort of put some sort of meaning to what happened
to him and and make it feel like it wasn't
so bad because in his mind, he's like well, if
I could have a relationship with kids that feels even
or in his mind it's even like he's like they
like this, then that can mean maybe when I was
a kid, it wasn't so bad. Like he's trying to

(36:40):
rewrite a little bit what happened. Yeah, I can see
something like that going on in his head. I can
see that being like a way to sort of deal
with like crush your conscience a little bit because you
start to be like this is fun up doing er
shame about himself. Yeah, yeah, or his actions in this
particular instance, well, let's read the next paragraph. In two
thousand one, Tracy Sampson sued Robert Kelly for bringing her

(37:02):
into an indecent sexual relationship when she was just seventeen.
She claimed she was treated as his personal sex object
and quote, he often tried to control every aspect of
my life, including who I would see and where I
would go. Her case was settled out of court for
an undisclosed sum. Kelly was sued in successive months in
two thousand two, once in April and againd in May
by two different women. One claimed he impregnated her while

(37:24):
she was under age. Another claimed he'd filmed a sex
tape of them without her knowledge or consent. According to
the BBC quote, the recording was allegedly circulated on an R.
Kelly sex tape sold by bootleggers under the title R
Kelly Triple X. In both of these cases, R Kelly
settled out of court for undisclosed sums. I feel like
that song tracks should have been called age is just

(37:44):
an undisclosed sum. That's really good. That's really good both
of these women found in d A's. I found a
telling quote, though, from a BuzzFeed article that interviewed a
lawyer who's been involved with several of R. Kelly's settlements.
Chicago attorney Susany Logan's claimed to say how many settlements
she has negotiated with Kelly before lawsuits were ever filed,
but she said they were numerous, and recently included one

(38:06):
for a seventeen year old aspiring singer from Chicago's West
Side who was said to have been part of Kelly's
inner circle. So it seems like for every one of
these cases I've read, there's many, many, many others that
never proceeded to trial because the victim just went to
Kelly straight away and they worked out a settlement. So,
like the people were talking about on this are probably
not the only people who could come forward with allegations

(38:27):
if they hadn't already gotten paid and signed an n
d A. You know, it's like with a Weinstein thing.
Literally the month after those two cases, Robert Kelly was
charged again, this time with filming illegal sex videos. This
is the R. Kelly case. You've all heard about the
p tape because the actress in this tape that was
circulating underground was allegedly underage. Kelly was charged with twenty
one counts of making child pornography. So the backstory of

(38:51):
this one is a little bit interesting. So we're gonna
peer back for a little bit to November of two thousand,
when Kelly released the album t P two to a
number one debut on the Billboard Albums Chart. Uh. It
featured two number one R and B hits I Wish
in Fiesta. It also featured songs like the Greatest Sex
and Feeling on Your Booty. Uh. The album reviewer for
the Chicago Sun Times was Jim DeRogatis. He wrote this

(39:13):
about it. One minute he's grabbing his privates and bragging
of being like a real freak. The next he's drawing
on his gospel roots and once again paying homage to
his dear departed mom on the lush and touching single
I Wish Prince, Marvin Gay, and Al Green all showed
that in the right circumstances, sex and prayer can be
the same thing. Kelly has yet to combine the two
in one song, so he has yet to make the
transcendent record he's been promising throughout his career. His lyrical

(39:35):
shifts from church to street corner are still so jarring
that they can give you whiplash, So you can tell there.
DeRogatis hardly came into the Kelly case as a hater,
but it was probably this review that would contain the
seeds of Robert Kelly's downfall, or at least probable downfall.
One of our Kelly's assistants read the review and sent
this letter to Derogatas you wrote about R. Kelly and
compared him to Marvin Gay, Well, I guess Marvin Gay

(39:56):
had problems too, but I don't think they were like Roberts.
Robert's problem is younger. I've known Robert for many years,
and I've tried to get him to get help, but
he just won't do it. So I'm telling you about it,
hoping that you or someone at your newspaper will write
an article about it and then Robert will have no
choice but to get help and to stop hurting people
he's hurting at. This is one of his assistants. Yeah,
so we will talk about what comes this later, but

(40:19):
before we get back to the r Kelly sex tape.
You know what's better than a sex tape that is
probable child pornography? This is not a good ad. Plug boy,
were inspiring anything? Celsius the only energy drink currently on
this table that's also not involved at all in r
kelly sex alleged sex crimes. Here's some other ads that

(40:41):
paid us. We're back, uh, and we've just been slammed
into our first free real ad of the day for
diet Mountain Dew, the only caffeinated beverage currently in my hand,

(41:04):
because I didn't want to make another coffee. Why are
you holding a skateboard? Because Rao, do the do the
sound of a half pipe? I thought you're gonna say,
do the sound of a hang loose? No, there's no
sound of that. You just got to put it in
your voice. I can hear it when you when you
do the the hand gestures yeah, you're hanging loose. There's

(41:25):
no way to do that sign without sticking your tongue out.
It's required. It's the law. Speaking of the law, let's
talk about R. Kelly charges of child pornography making when
we when we last left off Jimmy Rogas at the UH,
I will be pronouncing differently almost every time we talk

(41:45):
about him. Reporter at the Chicago Sun Times, I had
just gotten an anonymous letter from one of Kelly's assistants,
being like, R. Kelly's got a real problem with young
people and somebody needs to do something about this. So,
as a journalist, getting a letter like that is a
legally prickle leafing. Anytime you're considering breaking a story that
would accuse somewhat of multiple felonies, you've got to be
on guard. A letter like that on its own is

(42:07):
not super journalistically actionable. Running the letter alone would not
be the best practice, so nothing happened at first. This
may have prompted the person in Kelly's orbit to push again.
A videotape was sent to the Chicago Sun Times by
some anonymous person. The tape showed Kelly having sex with
an extremely young person. Because this was super likely to
be evidence of a crime, and because if it was
evidence of a crime, it would also be child pornography,

(42:29):
the Chicago Suntimes went to the cops. The police could
because how isn't that if you even look at it.
That's so if you get sent a video like that,
you have to call the feds. Yeah, you have to
immediately bring him well, and I think they go to
the local. I'm not sure if they go to they
go to the cops, certainly not with child porn um.
So but the police opened up an investigation, but there

(42:50):
really wasn't much that they could do um because they
didn't have like, you don't know the age of the person.
You don't know for sure that this is our Kelly.
You just have these claims. So they kind of wait
for a little while, and you know, somehow, you know,
right around this time, tapes of R. Kelly. Bootleg sex
tapes of R. Kelly with young women start floating around.
There's multiple tapes. They are not all underage people. Kelly

(43:13):
apparently has sex taped, his sex taped regularly, so somebody
in his orbit was leaking these not just to the press.
I have not watched the R. Kelly P tape, but
this is when the R. Kelly P tape that's famous
gets out into the world. So people were watching because
I remember hearing the news and I guess people so
people are watching it. But if you watch it, isn't
that they weren't all child pornography. Okay, but it wasn't that.

(43:37):
I don't know much. I just remember I didn't even
know she was on age. I remember there was a
P tape and the dungeon and then there was like
a dungeon. Yeah, yeah, and that's part of this house
and stuff. Yeah. So whoever started sending these anonymous tapes
to the Sun Times eventually got fed up that nothing
had happened yet. This person left another video in Jim
Druggets his mailbox. He sent it to the police as well,

(43:57):
and they were finally able to make an i D.
They found a source who claimed to recognize the young
woman in the video as her niece. She basically was
able to name the kid and, like Kelly says, the
first name in the video. So the police were pretty
sure that they had the right person, and so the
cops give the Chicago Sun Times the go ahead to
publish their first story on the matter. That's terrifying. I mean,
I know they're just investigating. They have to do their job,

(44:18):
but that's terrifying to have to, Like your sex tape
is not only getting leaked, but then people are like,
do you know this girl? And like asking your family members. Well,
they weren't going straight to Kelly at first, No, they weren't.
They asking she recognized the girl as her niece. Yeah,
they That means her honor uncle watched the sex tape
to identify her. They probably saved, like had just a

(44:38):
cliff up the girl's face or something. I doubt they
played the whole tape for this lady, but like they
heard a first name, and I think they narrowed it
down because they had some Like they feel like they
have enough that the police charge him with twenty one
counts of child pornographyz because the aunt of this girl
claims she would have been around fourteen at the time
of the filming. So R Kelly, who had just performed

(45:00):
at the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics, was forced
to respond personally, quote, it's not true. All I know
is this I have a few people in the past
that I fired, people that I thought were my friends.
That that's not my friends, it's crap, and that's who
we're going to treat it. The reason these things are happening,
I really do believe, is because of the fact that
I didn't fall back as far as blackmail was concerned.
I didn't give them any money. So our Kelly was

(45:23):
indicted for a child born on June five, two and two.
He pled not guilty the next day and posted bail
using seven hundred and fifty hundred dollar bills. Once he
got back from court, he immediately violated a court order
by singing at a kindergarten graduation ceremony, wait, like single
dollar bills that way? I was like, what he just
has just to be a petty like no, why no,

(45:46):
he just had a shipload of Oh my gosha, that
makes sense. Yeah, So at this point the grinding wheels
of the justice system set into motion. Jury selection did
not begin until June of two, six years after the
charges were filed. This is not normal, as an MTV
article pointed out at the time. Quote in the last
six years, Michael Jackson was charged, tried, and acquitted of molestation.

(46:07):
Phil Specter was charged and tried for murder, and due
to a mistrial, who have to do it all again?
Lit Kim was charged, tried, and convicted of a conspiracy
and perjury, and she even found time to shoot a
reality show while she served her sentence. So all that
happened while R Kelly's case was waiting to actually go
to trial. Now, delaying this case was very definitely a
strategy used by R Kelly's defense. They probably figured that

(46:28):
since his alleged victim was expected to take the stand,
it would be better optics if she were in her
twenties rather than still a teenager when she had to
do it. So, first off, they waved Kelly's right to
a speedy trial, which would have required the case to
take place in four months or the charges wouldn't have
to be dropped. They also filed thirty some odd pre
trial motions, all of which demanded a response from the
prosecution and usually led to an argument in court. This

(46:51):
always delayed things further. There were also some freak happenings
that disrupted matters. The judge fell off a ladder and
injured himself. R Kelly's appendix burst lawyer died fell off
a ladder. There's some weirdness around the judge in this case.
We'll get to some more of that later. During the
six years while he waited, Robert did not exactly shut
up and just sort of hunger down. Like a month

(47:14):
after the charges were filed. Here at least a single Heaven,
I need a hug, which was basically his plea of
innocence in the court of public opinion. Here's some lines
from Heaven, I need a hug. And as for Robert,
here's what I need to do. Get rid of them
clowns and get myself a whole another crew. Media, do
your job, but please just don't make my job so hard.
Somebody please pray what I'm talking about. I'm still young,

(47:35):
trying to figure it all out. Heaven, I need a hug.
Is there anybody out there willing to embrace a thug? So, yeah,
he needs a hug. He's using his music as a
way to get i mean people get on his side.
It's powerful tool. The question of his guilt or innocence
is actually a semi regular theme in r Kellyes music.

(47:56):
For example, in the album Chocolate Factory, during a ten
minute mini opera our, Kelly finds himself at the gates
of Heaven. St. Peter denies him for his sins, but
then Jesus absolves him. The same scene apparently plays out
in the album Loveland as well in the middle of
a twenty minute remix of I Believe I Can Fly.
So it's a regular reoccurring theme in Kelly's music. His

(48:16):
career continued to chug along in the early aughts, but
even his work wasn't free of drama. In October of
two thousand four, he and Jay Z released their second
collaborative album, which did predictably well. They started touring together
and things were not smooth. During a performance in St.
Louis on October twenty three, Kelly left the show after
getting into a screaming argument with the lighting technicians. He
actually left the venue, drove to a random McDonald's and

(48:39):
spent hours serving food to customers through the drive through window. Yeah,
the Chicago Suntimes this coverage sheds a little light and
how Kelly's people's fun this It's weird. Kelly's attorney, Ed
Ginson confirmed reports Monday that Kelly headed from St. Louis's
Savath Center to a McDonald's restaurant that had closed but
which he persuaded to reopen for the entourage traveling on

(48:59):
his bus. Then he decided he wanted to work the
drive through. Gainson said it was on the radio. People
were running out of their houses to have R. Kelly
served them. Kelly is a big McDonald's fan who has
stopped and worked at the drive through windows of McDonald's
restaurants before. In a primetime live interview that air in October,
he talked about frequent visits there with his late mother.
We'd go to McDonald's almost every morning. She drink her

(49:20):
cup of coffee. She'd wear this cheap lipstick and she'd
leave this red lipstick around the cup. Kelly said that, well,
first of all, to McDonald's have been so big that
that's not even a thing you associate with McDonald's. It's
just a household. It's just like going to the store,
you know what I mean to be like he started people,
it's like if you were a small brand, it would
be and R. Kelly was just decided to work for
you for a day, like that would be the biggest

(49:42):
thing that happened to you. But that's so big you're
just like, you don't even associate that with the brand.
I feel like this has to have been a franchise
e though, because I feel like McDonald's corporate if some
if they didn't ask, like she we had this guy
who's being indicted for child pornography drive, I feel like
the allowed to go in to eat. Well, yeah, but

(50:02):
I feel like Ronald McDonald would probably be like, yeah,
we don't want that kind of work in the window. Yeah.
It was some like local franchise owner who was like,
well it would be good business McDonald's and St. Louis. Yeah.
I feel like would you have gone if you were
there at that time, like knowing what's going on, but

(50:23):
like he's not found guilty yet, Like, as a normal person,
would you be like, I'm gonna go get food from
the r Kelley at the drive through? You know what?
I'll say this as someone who was born in St.
Louis and who has been there a number of times
in my life. If I was going to get handed
French fries by a child pornographer, I would expect it
to be at a McDonald's and St. Louis. Yeah, that's

(50:46):
the kind of thing. Looking back, I'm like, oh, on principal,
I wouldn't want anything to do with him. But I'm like,
if I was there at that time and someone was like, dude,
RKelly is handing out burgers down the street, I mean, like,
I'm gonna be totally honest, I probably would drive through,
Like I don't. Like, I'm not saying that's the right
thing to do, and you can like whatever come at me,
but I'm being honest. I think I would have gone. So, okay,

(51:06):
let me let me only posit this to you. If
like mel Gibson, No, because I don't care about mel Gibson.
I don't like it would have to be someone you
care about. I guess I don't care about our Yeah,
what is the difference. Maybe the public opinion thing did
make a difference him singing about himself because I'm like,
you know what I mean, like he seems more human.
I mean he was super popular though too, I mean
already outside of all this, So I don't know. I

(51:26):
think if it was someone like, Okay, William Shatner is
a famous person I love who I'm sure has done
horrible things that I just haven't heard about him. He
has to look at it, look but he just looks
like a character actor who like plays that. I think
you could be told. We don't know if if any
member of Hollywood has killed someone from money, it's Bill Shatner. Okay,

(51:51):
I'm saying that right now. I have no evidence of this,
completely unsubstantiated. It here first, if any a list star
is a hit man, it's it's Bill Shatner in his
younger days, when he was a lumberjack, that classic Canadian
stereotype of the lumberjack slash. Would you get handed burgers
by like a serial killer? No, but if, like I

(52:14):
want and I knew it, I think a lot of
people would do it. If Robert Durst was handing out
burgers people, people would go. But I don't think I
would want to. I don't want a killer to look
me in the eye ever, because it's like I don't
know how they choose their victims. Like if they know
my face, I might be dead intention you know what
I mean. Like I don't know, maybe one day they'd
be like, I remember that face, so just randomly I'll

(52:35):
just kill her, you know what I mean. I don't
know anyway, Sorry for derailing is Nellie from St. Louis
what is Nellie from SAT. I have no idea anyway,
because I give other artists from s where I landed.
As if, like Bill Shatner was on trial for some
terrible crime and he was on his way to court
working at a McDonald's, I would try to get some

(52:56):
McNuggets from from William Shatner. You would, I would? I
think I would. So. Yeah, that that's your answer is
I can see why people would do this. Uh So
quite the digression. On October twenty nine two, a few
days after Kelly's night at McDonald's, Guy R. Kelly's stopped

(53:16):
a performance in Madison Square Gardens, saying a fan had
waved a gun at him. He wound up in a
fight backstage was one of jay Z's people and got
pepper sprayed. He went to the hospital. There were a
shipload of lawsuits and the tour collapsed in on itself.
Um so. On July two thousand five, during pre trial
proceedings in Kelly's court case, a twenty one year old
woman testified that the girl in kelly sex stape was

(53:36):
fourteen when the video had been filmed, saying it quote
it was the summer after eighth grade. The judge did
not considered Yeah, that's bad, right, eighth grade sounds so
much younger than four. Yeah, fourteen sounds I mean, it's
still bad, but eighth grade really drives at home what's
going on here? The judge did not consider this enough

(53:56):
and threatened to toss out the court case unless a
more afirmative I D could be made. Two months after this,
Robert's wife, Andrea filed for an order of protection against
her husband. She claimed that she had asked him for
a divorce and he'd hit her. She rescinded the order
shortly thereafter, but they went up getting a divorce in
two thousand eight. Anyway, we will hear from Andrea a
little bit at the end of all this. Back in

(54:18):
February of six, while everybody was still waiting for the
Kelly trial to start, Robert Kelly's brother, Carrie or kill A. Kelly,
came out with a DVD filled with allegations against his sibling.
Among other things, Yeah Killer Kelly claims that R. Kelly
offered him fifty thou dollars in cash and a record
deal to pretend to be the man on the tape.
He also alleged that his brother was abusive to his wife,

(54:40):
and had a problem with underage girls. None of that
seems out of the pail. I will say that the
credibility of killer Kelly's allegations is somewhat put into question
by the way that he chose to drop this bombshell
one A DVD is not the most credible way to
present Alex title page and like Bonus Features, couldn't find

(55:02):
the title. I found it. It It was published by Drama
Magazine with an H in the word drawing, So it's
again I'm gonna guess he got money for this. The
age came before the d trauma Trauma, Yeah, so maybe
it was all a cynical cash grab. That said, it
is consistent with all the other allegations that have been made,
and it wouldn't be the weirdest thing in the world

(55:23):
if R Kelly tried to have his brother take the
fall form Now, even under the cloud of legal funckory
looming over him, Robert Kelly had continued to release albums
that continue to be gigantic hits, and this is important
to note and part of why Kelly's fans defend him
so vociferously. R Kelly has been the biggest name in
R and B throughout most of this. In May two seven, R.
Kelly gave an interview to Hip hop Soul magazine. In

(55:45):
it he said, I'm the Ali of today. I'm the
Marvin Gay of today. I'm the Bob Marley of today.
I'm the Martin Luther King or all the other grades
that have come before us, and a lot of people
are starting to realize that now. In February of two eight,
a couple of months before jury selection began on the trial,
Regina Daniels, Kelly's longtime spokeswoman and the person who had
officially denied the allegations of his wrongdoings to the press

(56:06):
for like a decade, left his employ with her husband,
George Daniels. In the interview, George explained, he crossed the
line with my daughter. It didn't get to the extreme
of that the sex tape video, or else I wouldn't
be here if you know what I'm talking about. The
reason I'm that I'm talking about this. It's not just
for me, it's not just for my wife, it's not
just for my daughter, but it's for other fathers and mothers.
Because it doesn't have to be a superstar. It could

(56:27):
be the dude on the corner. There are guys who
sit around and give your child a couple bucks to
go to school and then wait until they get a
little older, and then they set that trap that's grooming. Yeah, yeah,
it's grooming. And this is now again. The husband and
his spokeswoman, uh, both of them would work for him
coming out and saying this. A lot of people in
his orbit have come out later with allegations. On June two, eight, R.

(56:52):
Kelly was found not guilty by a jury of his peers.
The prosecution star witness, the woman in the tape, never
took the stand. Jim DeRogatis, the Chicago Suntimes reporter who
broke the story, took the fifth and did not testify.
I think some of it is that he might have
had to admit that he'd seen the tape, which would
have been legally scary, and he also had some like
worries that he would be required to give up like

(57:13):
sources and stuff like that, so he did not testify,
which is always a fraught thing for a journalist in
a court case. There's a lot of reasons that would
be complicated. Four days later, judge gone through a post
trial party at a bar to celebrate the end of
the case. He invited the defense, the prosecution, court workers,
and reporters. One of those reporters people, do it happened

(57:35):
this time? Is that I've never heard of this before. Like, hey, guys,
like rat party and the people who are everybody prosecution defends,
let's all get on, get down. Its so bizarre, it's
really weird. But one of the reporters who was present
says that it was a hoot and that everyone there
was loose and relaxed. So that's nice. Oh, you almost

(57:56):
put me in jail. Let's all party a part. I
don't think Kelly went. I'm gonna guess maybe that was
the judge's hope that he'd get to party with R.
Kelly again, there's some weirdness with the judge. Yeah, some weirdness.
Uh So R Kelly was not guilty, and if he
were truly innocent of all of the allegations against him,

(58:17):
this story might have ended there. But this is not
the sort of podcast where we talk about wrongly accused people.
Um So, in the years since R. Kelly was declared
not guilty, things have only gotten darker and a whole
lot creepier. All of that will be coming to you
the listener on Thursday, and we dropped part two of
the working title has been R Kelly, what the hell man?

(58:42):
How are you doing? Okay? I didn't realize that you
were going to leave me on a cliffhanger. Then I'm
gonna leave you on a cliffhanger, so I'm not going
to know that. That's when the airhorns should have kicked in.
I don't like the defense that people say of like, oh, well,
great artist, blah blah, were here all the time, great artist,
and you know what we're gonna do, not not off
their art. Yeah. I think it would have helped public

(59:03):
opinion if when someone's under trial for tild pornography that
they're forbidden to put out art, because then people can just,
you know, fine, appreciate the stuff that came before, but like,
we don't need to continue liking the guy. We might
it might be true he's talented, but like, while you're
on a trial for something bad, you shouldn't be allowed
to put out any more of your art. That's a privilege,

(59:25):
it's not a right. Well, I mean, when you're on
trial but you're not guilty, like you can't stop someone
from putting out art when they're innocent until proven good.
But I think that because then puts people in a
position where it's like, well, that's so good, we should
just listen to Well, why don't we just stop having
it that we don't have to be like it's so
good in defending it. I think there's you have some
water when you're trying to get people to be like, hey,

(59:46):
this guy has been accused of a bunch of heinous crimes.
Let's all boycott is music. I think that's fine, But
I think like the government can't go and be like
you don't get to make music. Yeah, you're right, because
then when someone isn't guilty, they can it can be
used against them to silence them. But pesky civil rights man,
I don't know justice. Whoa Theresa? You want to plug

(01:00:07):
your plug doubles? Yeah, sure, I've got a podcast it's
all about secrets. I've gotta get you on Sometimes. I
love secrets, any secrets a very open book, but it
doesn't have to be a scandaliust secretch is something you've
not talked about, you know, on stage or whatever, already
did podcasts about. It's called you can tell Me Anything,
comedians confess something they haven't told anyone. It's really fun.

(01:00:28):
You can find it on Instagram at Tell Me Anything Pod,
and I'm on Twitter at Larissa t. Yeah, I'll have
to be on I'll talk about the time I firebombed
that oil Derek or something. I'm Robert Evans. This has
been Behind the Bastards. You can find us on Instagram
and Twitter at at Bastards pod. Uh by shirts and
cups and cell phone cases and uh commercial drilling equipment

(01:00:50):
all at our Tea public store behind the Bastards Tea
Public check it out. You can get our branded stuff
on your m X eight Earthcore Cracker, which is one
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shouldn't be lying about commercial drilling equipment. We're gonna have
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you can get stickers. You can find me on Twitter

(01:01:11):
and I right, Okay. You'd find the sources for this
episode on Behind the Bastards dot com. Uh. We'll be
back on Thursday with the story of r Kelly's alleged
sex cult. Uh and until then, podcast