June 01, 2007 @ 1:01 pm

Unfinished Business

R Kelly: from VIBE's May 2007 cover story.

Five Years after R. Kelly's indictment on child-pornography charges, there have been plenty of allegations, denials, hearings, motions, and countermotions, but no sign of justice. As Kelly’s wife and brother turn against him, and as his fifth year without a trial comes to a close, R.Kelly keeps dropping hits, collecting awards, touring the world, and stepping in the name of love like it’s all good. VIBE investigates... It’s February 21, 2007. Bitter cold in Chicago. A champagne-colored GMC SUV pulls up outside the newly remodeled Cook County Criminal Courts Building on the city's Southwest Side. The door opens. Out steps R. Kelly, the notorious hometown hero. His four multiplatinum albums and three Grammy awards make him one of the most famous entertainers in the world. But his entanglements with young women - beginning with his scandalous marriage to the late R&B ingenue Aaliyah, who was then just 15 - have given the married father of three a reputation as a dangerous R&B lothario. The State of Illinois prefers another term: child pornographer. Kelly's dressed crisply and neatly: conventional black suit, white shirt, shiny black silk tie, his hair perfectly braided. There to greet him as he makes his way to the umpteenth hearing in his endlessly delayed child-pornography trial is. . . no one. Three of Kelly's private bodyguards, also wearing dark suits, flank him as he makes his way into the building that has now become a familiar stop. Back when he first started coming here for regular court appearances to answer child-pornography charges during the summer of 2002, crowds of fans would gather, waiting in front to shout, "We love you, R. Kelly." Yes, there were a few detractors (or "haters," if you prefer), but they were outnumbered by women swooning and shrieking his name, crowding in, just trying to touch him. Many loudly proclaimed his innocence. At one point, a school bus dropped off a group of young children who stood on the courthouse steps and serenaded him with renditions of his 1996 movie theme "I Believe I Can Fly" and his 2002 confessional "Heaven I Need A Hug." Kells has been needing that hug since June 5, 2002, the day he was indicted in connection with a 26-minute videotape in which he appears to be having sex with an underage girl. Bootleg copies of the tape (titled Rated R.Kelly Triple XXX, Vol. 1) have been big sellers on certain Web sites and street corners, but even after years of widespread circulation, the images remain as disturbing as ever. A young girl in a white shirt sits in a wood-paneled room with a hot tub, taking orders from a voice off camera. A man who appears to be a dead ringer for R.Kelly hands her some cash. She thanks him, then begins to perform fellatio as saccharine ballads by the Spice Girls and Backstreet Boys play in the background. In the next scene she stands there naked, gyrating her hips as the man moans appreciatively. Next she's straddling him and thrusting, then more fellatio. Then, he urinates and masturbates on her face, letting the fluids run down her body, pausing every so often to tenderly wipe her skin with a black towel. The girl lays still and moans quietly, her expression blank throughout. After the man finishes with her, she stands up and walks away from the camera's gaze, leaving the money by the hot tub. At various moments in the videotape, the man who strongly resembles R.Kelly appears on-screen, adjusting the camera to get the best angle — like he's done this before. He calls the girl by her first name and prefers that she call him "Daddy." The room, with its log-cabin walls, looks a lot like the "Colorado Room" in a mansion Kelly once owned on Chicago's North Side. GET MORE IN THE NEW ISSUE ON THE STANDS NOW!

Article tags: Unfinished, Business 

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