Latest / DISGRACELAND / R. Kelly: Superstars, Super Predators, and a 20-Year Reign of Sexual Terror

Transcript

R. Kelly: Superstars, Super Predators, and a 20-Year Reign of Sexual Terror · DISGRACELAND

0:00
Speaker 1: All right, guys, welcome into another episode rewind episode of Disgraceland.
0:04
Speaker 1: Appreciate you being here. This one. We're going back to
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Speaker 1: June fourth, twenty twenty four, when we released our R
0:11
Speaker 1: Kelly episode. This is a long time in the making,
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Speaker 1: and you know, honestly, we could have done ten episodes
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Speaker 1: on this story. It's a very hard story to tell
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Speaker 1: in thirty minutes, but I think we did a pretty
0:24
Speaker 1: good job. R Kelly's in the news lately. He's formally
0:27
Speaker 1: asked the President to pardon him. If that happens, my
0:33
Speaker 1: head will explode and you'll be hearing from me shortly afterward.
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Speaker 1: But until then, enjoy this rewind episode of Disgraceland on
0:41
Speaker 1: our Kelly. This episode contains content that may be disturbing
0:46
Speaker 1: to some listeners. Please check the show notes for more information.
0:51
Speaker 1: Disgraceland is a production of Double Elvis. The stories about
1:07
Speaker 1: r Kelly are insane. He openly groomed teenage victims while
1:12
Speaker 1: on trial for child pornography, a trial based on sex
1:16
Speaker 1: tapes that were once sold at Tower Records. He wrote
1:20
Speaker 1: a song designed to help Michael Jackson turn attention away
1:23
Speaker 1: from his own troubling allegations. A song he wrote while
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Speaker 1: he was illegally married to a fifteen year old, a
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Speaker 1: marriage that would eventually bring about his downfall, but not
1:35
Speaker 1: before R Kelly went on a twenty year reign of terror,
1:39
Speaker 1: all conducted in plain sight while he was one of
1:42
Speaker 1: the biggest artists in the world. And I know some
1:46
Speaker 1: of you don't want to hear me say this, but
1:48
Speaker 1: this all happened while R Kelly made great music, wedding
1:53
Speaker 1: playlist music, backyard barbecue music, music made for Saturday night
1:58
Speaker 1: bumping grind sessions, and Monday morning church services as well.
2:03
Speaker 1: Very much unlike that loop, I played a few at
2:05
Speaker 1: the top of the show that wasn't great music. That
2:09
Speaker 1: was a preset loop from my melotron called bad Trip
2:12
Speaker 1: in Zuma MK one. I played you that loop because
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Speaker 1: I can't afford the rights to Lollipop by Lil Wayne
2:21
Speaker 1: featuring Static Major. Why would I play you that specific
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Speaker 1: slice of auto tune double entendre cheese? Could I afford it?
2:31
Speaker 1: Because that was the number one song in America on
2:34
Speaker 1: June thirteenth, teen thousand and eight, And that was the
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Speaker 1: day R Kelly was acquitted by a Chicago jury of
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Speaker 1: fourteen counts of child pornography, a decision that enabled another
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Speaker 1: decade plus of abuse before the singer was finally brought
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Speaker 1: to justice. On this episode, mental and physical abuse, sex tapes,
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Speaker 1: and illegal marriage. A reign of terror in the downfall
3:00
Speaker 1: of R and B. Superstar and super predator R Kelly,
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Speaker 1: I'm Jake Brennan. In this his Disgrace Slat, the singer
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Speaker 1: stood next to a huge buffet of Chinese food in
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Speaker 1: the recording studio's lounge, nervously rehearsing a greeting for the superstar,
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Speaker 1: who was due to arrive any minute. The greeting had
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Speaker 1: to be just right. The superstar was already an hour late,
3:45
Speaker 1: and who knew what kind of mood he would be
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Speaker 1: in when he arrived. The wrong greeting could throw off
3:50
Speaker 1: the whole session. Then the singer's dream of music stardom
3:54
Speaker 1: would be over, a dream that was so close to
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Speaker 1: coming true, because any moment, the superstar was going to
4:01
Speaker 1: walk through that door, and then he and the singer
4:04
Speaker 1: were going to record a song together. Of course, the
4:08
Speaker 1: singer heard the rumors. Everyone had claims that the superstar
4:13
Speaker 1: had sexual relations with miners. Sure, he hadn't been convicted
4:17
Speaker 1: of anything yet, but right now. At this moment, his
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Speaker 1: reputation was hanging by a thread. The superstar needed a hit. Suddenly,
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Speaker 1: there were footsteps in the hallway and the singer's nerves
4:31
Speaker 1: were vibrating. The studio door swung open, revealing nothing. The
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Speaker 1: doorframe was empty, and then bounding into the room came
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Speaker 1: not a man, but a fully grown chimpanzee. The singer
4:48
Speaker 1: stood frozen as one hundred and eighty pounds of pure
4:50
Speaker 1: chimp muscle darted forward like a lightning bolt. The animal
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Speaker 1: stopped on a dime inches in front of the singer
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Speaker 1: and delivered a gigantic hug the hallway. A high pitched
5:01
Speaker 1: voice called out, Bubbles, get back in here. That was
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Speaker 1: the unmistakable voice of the superstar Michael Jackson. The singer
5:13
Speaker 1: R Kelly pulled himself away from Bubbles Michael Jackson's famous
5:17
Speaker 1: pitching panzee, and then offered the King of Pops and
5:20
Speaker 1: Chinese food. In a high pitched voice, said matched the superstars.
5:26
Speaker 1: In order to achieve total connection with Michael Jackson for
5:29
Speaker 1: this song, R Kelly opted to his words here quote
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Speaker 1: act real feminine like because Michael has a feminine thing
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Speaker 1: going on unquote, and that act included singing the demo
5:40
Speaker 1: version of his song in a spot on Michael jackson impression,
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Speaker 1: a bold and bizarre choice, said endeared Michael to the
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Speaker 1: younger artist, and R. Kelly was nothing if not bold.
5:51
Speaker 1: He was bold to split off from the group's MGM
5:54
Speaker 1: in public announcement in order to become a solo artist.
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Speaker 1: He was bold to sub the new jack Swing of
6:00
Speaker 1: Announcements album born in the nineties for the sex obsessed
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Speaker 1: slow jams of his solo debut record, twelve Play, a
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Speaker 1: bold choice that landed him his first number one hit song,
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Speaker 1: the Raunchy Bump and Grind Now. Just a few months
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Speaker 1: later in nineteen ninety four, in a Chicago recording studio,
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Speaker 1: none other than Michael Jackson himself was giving the bold
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Speaker 1: R Kelly a pat on the back. Michael loved this
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Speaker 1: new song, said it was going to change the world,
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Speaker 1: and he wanted R. Kelly standing next to him singing
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Speaker 1: background vocals. For this auspicious occasion, r Kelly didn't write
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Speaker 1: another raunchy slow jam. Instead, he crafted a simple ballad
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Speaker 1: with a five note ear whir of a vocal hunk.
6:41
Speaker 1: Admittedly it was a little schmaltzy, but it worked because
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Speaker 1: beneath that Schmaltz lay true pain. R Kelly knew all
6:52
Speaker 1: about pain. Growing up poor on Chicago's South Side, young
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Speaker 1: Robert Kelly witnessed suffering, even death. Early he was seven
7:01
Speaker 1: years old. After school, he would meet up with a
7:03
Speaker 1: girl and it was innocent, just two kids playing in
7:06
Speaker 1: a creek, But the other boys threw rocks at him
7:09
Speaker 1: and called him a sissy. One day, the girl spoke
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Speaker 1: up and told the boys to stop, and they came closer.
7:15
Speaker 1: She yelled at them again and told them to leave.
7:17
Speaker 1: One of the boys pushed her. She fell into the
7:20
Speaker 1: water and hit her head. It was late spring and
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Speaker 1: the creek was high. The water was flowing fast. R
7:27
Speaker 1: Kelly screamed for help as the current carried her away.
7:32
Speaker 1: Adults found her body a few minutes later, but it
7:34
Speaker 1: was too late, the girls dead. Painful memories like these
7:41
Speaker 1: helped R. Kelly write the song You Are Not Alone.
7:44
Speaker 1: When it was released by Michael Jackson, with R. Kelly's
7:47
Speaker 1: background vocals featured prominently in the mix, It was the
7:50
Speaker 1: first song ever to debut at number one on the
7:52
Speaker 1: Billboard Hot One hundred sounds crazy, I know, but it's
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Speaker 1: one hundred percent true, go ahead and look it up.
7:58
Speaker 1: More importantly, for Michael jacks and the songs unprecedented success
8:01
Speaker 1: helped to push the allegations against him into the rear
8:04
Speaker 1: view mirror, and for r Kelly, the song gave him
8:07
Speaker 1: a playbook to use for his own controversy. Because Michael
8:11
Speaker 1: Jackson wasn't the only one who had image problems. In
8:13
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety four, rumors were already swirling about r Kelly's
8:19
Speaker 1: involvement with an underage girl, specifically the budding R and
8:23
Speaker 1: B singer Aaliyah. Rather than avoid the rumors, r Kelly
8:27
Speaker 1: played into them by writing and producing Eliah's debut album,
8:30
Speaker 1: an album titled Age Ain't Nothing But a Number, which
8:34
Speaker 1: is all the more gross when you learned that she
8:36
Speaker 1: was only fourteen at the time. In interviews, the pair
8:40
Speaker 1: addressed alike and call each other best friends with a
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Speaker 1: wink and a nod. He instructed her to be coy
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Speaker 1: about her age. His team spread rumors that she was
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Speaker 1: older than she said. He waited until she turned fifteen
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Speaker 1: before he married her in secret, But just a few
8:55
Speaker 1: weeks after the recording session with Michael Jackson, the secret
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Speaker 1: was out. Vibe magazine published r Kelly and Aliah's marriage certificate.
9:04
Speaker 1: In that certificate, Alia's age was listed as eighteen, three
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Speaker 1: years older than she actually was. Radio DJs cracked jokes
9:12
Speaker 1: about r Kelly robbing the cradle, critics scolded him, but
9:16
Speaker 1: for the most part, people just shrugged that girl. They
9:20
Speaker 1: said she seemed fifteen to you. Alia's parents were frantic
9:24
Speaker 1: to get her away from r Kelly. They had the
9:26
Speaker 1: marriage annulled, and they threatened to sue Jive Records that
9:28
Speaker 1: they didn't release Aliah from her contract. On her next album,
9:32
Speaker 1: she worked with Missy Elliott and Timberland instead of r Kelly,
9:36
Speaker 1: but she refused to comment on their relationship, just like
9:39
Speaker 1: Tiffany Hawkins, who would in nineteen ninety six sue r
9:43
Speaker 1: Kelly for emotional distress and injury inflicted during a three
9:46
Speaker 1: year relationship, a relationship that began, she claimed when she
9:50
Speaker 1: was also just fifteen. But r Kelly's lawyers were cutthroat.
9:55
Speaker 1: They got Tiffany Hawkins to drop her lawsuit in exchange
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Speaker 1: for a payout, and they got her John Hancock on
10:00
Speaker 1: a non disclosure agreement, which meant that the details of
10:03
Speaker 1: her claims never went to court and never made it
10:05
Speaker 1: to the press. Lawyers, label reps, and PR agents may
10:10
Speaker 1: have helped push back against the controversy, but R. Kelly
10:13
Speaker 1: had a strategy of his own, a strategy that he'd
10:16
Speaker 1: seen work firsthand for his buddy Michael Jackson. All R
10:19
Speaker 1: Kelly needed was a simple ballad with a soulful hook.
10:22
Speaker 1: It didn't matter that the song should have been a throwaway.
10:25
Speaker 1: After all, it was written for a movie about another
10:28
Speaker 1: Michael Michael Jordan playing basketball with a bunch of Looney
10:32
Speaker 1: Tunes cartoon characters. But the instant he finished recording the
10:36
Speaker 1: song I Believe I Can Fly for the Space Jam soundtrack,
10:39
Speaker 1: R Kelly knew he had a smash, and that song
10:43
Speaker 1: made R. Kelly a household name, not as a sexed
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Speaker 1: up R and B superstar, but as a soulful ballad singer.
10:51
Speaker 1: I Believe I Can Fly became a staple of church
10:54
Speaker 1: services and graduation ceremonies. It earned R Kelly the type
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Speaker 1: of goodwill and positive press that would last most people
11:00
Speaker 1: a lifetime, the kind of good will that would be
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Speaker 1: almost impossible to squander. Almost She looked back one more
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Speaker 1: time to make sure no one was following her. The
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Speaker 1: hallway was empty, mostly up ahead. A lone security guard
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Speaker 1: stood by the backstage door. She gave what she hoped
11:45
Speaker 1: was a casual nod as she walked on by and
11:47
Speaker 1: stepped outside into the cool night air. She looked at
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Speaker 1: her watch. She had ten minutes to make the grab
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Speaker 1: and get back inside without being seen. It was just
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Speaker 1: another day on tour with R Kelly, a day filled
12:01
Speaker 1: with rules. Rules about what she could call R Kelly Daddy,
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Speaker 1: rules about when she could eat only when he gave
12:09
Speaker 1: her permission, maybe today or maybe tomorrow. And rules about
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Speaker 1: who she could fuck anyone he told her to, rules
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Speaker 1: that controlled every minute of her day, except for a
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Speaker 1: small window of time deep in the second half of R.
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Speaker 1: Kelly's set. Because right now R Kelly was on stage
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Speaker 1: working his ass off in front of a packed arena,
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Speaker 1: as were his band and his dancers the groupies. Meanwhile,
12:34
Speaker 1: groupies like this one here were backstage in the green room.
12:38
Speaker 1: The entourage was already prepping for the after party. The
12:41
Speaker 1: bus driver was still at the hotel, and for the
12:44
Speaker 1: next ten minutes, absolutely no one was on the tour bus.
12:50
Speaker 1: She put her plan into action, a quick walk across
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Speaker 1: the parking lot to the huge bus park behind the arena.
12:57
Speaker 1: The driver forgot to lock it up again. She slipped
12:59
Speaker 1: in and checked her watch again. Eight minutes. She moved
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Speaker 1: quickly down the aisle, passing empty bottles of crystal cocaine residue,
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Speaker 1: dozens of blunts stubbed out in ashtrays. She passed by
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Speaker 1: ten or so bunks that led up to the largest
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Speaker 1: berth in the back of the bus, The King Suite,
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Speaker 1: r Kelly's home away from home in the tight confines
13:22
Speaker 1: of touring life. Even for a superstar like r Kelly,
13:25
Speaker 1: it wasn't much, just a bed, a chair, and a television.
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Speaker 1: A television where r Kelly liked to watch movies. Sometimes
13:33
Speaker 1: he leaves the door open so others could file in
13:35
Speaker 1: and out, watching advanced copies of movies like Will Smith's
13:39
Speaker 1: latest Ali, which featured r Kelly's song The World's Greatest
13:43
Speaker 1: on its soundtrack. But do you watch other movies too,
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Speaker 1: these ones with the door closed. Never with the dancers
13:50
Speaker 1: or with the groupies, and rarely with the band, only
13:53
Speaker 1: with a few select guys from his crew. Videos of
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Speaker 1: r Kelly proving that young women would do anything to
13:59
Speaker 1: slip with him, that's what really got him excited. The
14:03
Speaker 1: filmmate and rewatching reveling in that feeling of total control,
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Speaker 1: the kind of control his stepsister had growing up. She
14:10
Speaker 1: used to watch the younger kids when his mom worked late.
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Speaker 1: She could be so mean. She knew how to inflict pain.
14:17
Speaker 1: Some night, she would take them into a dark room
14:19
Speaker 1: and make them do things, things that he knew were wrong. Now,
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Speaker 1: as an adult, he was the one in control. He
14:27
Speaker 1: was the one inflicting pain, forcing young naive girls to
14:31
Speaker 1: do things in dark rooms that they knew were wrong.
14:34
Speaker 1: He liked to test the guys in his inner circle
14:36
Speaker 1: by showing them clips of older girls, first nineteen twenty
14:40
Speaker 1: years old. If they liked those, he'd play them the
14:42
Speaker 1: tapes with the younger girls, and then even younger, until
14:46
Speaker 1: it wasn't a question of whether the girls were in
14:48
Speaker 1: high school. Guys started praying that the video they were
14:51
Speaker 1: watching didn't involve girls that were in middle school. That's
14:54
Speaker 1: the kind of video she was looking for. Now she
14:58
Speaker 1: knew it was a risk he got caught, her punishment
15:01
Speaker 1: would be severe. She could be spit on, slapped, choked, even,
15:06
Speaker 1: but she had to get that tape, a tape that
15:08
Speaker 1: showed her having sex with a younger girl, a girl
15:10
Speaker 1: who was barely out of eighth grade, a girl she
15:13
Speaker 1: now knew was R. Kelly's fourteen year old goddaughter. For
15:18
Speaker 1: God's sake, she shuddered just thinking about it. As she
15:24
Speaker 1: scanned the small bedroom, she saw what she was looking for,
15:28
Speaker 1: a ratty gray gym bag peeking out from under the bed.
15:31
Speaker 1: Everyone on tour knew that R. Kelly kept that bag
15:34
Speaker 1: with him at all times, all except for the hour
15:37
Speaker 1: he spent playing basketball every day, and for the ninety
15:40
Speaker 1: minutes that he spent on stage. She checked her watch again.
15:45
Speaker 1: Less than five minutes now, she unzipped the gray bag.
15:48
Speaker 1: Dozens of tapes fell out onto the bed. She began
15:51
Speaker 1: plugging them into the machine one by one, until eventually
15:54
Speaker 1: she found the one she was looking for. Quickly, she
15:57
Speaker 1: ejected the MicroTape from the machine and stuffed it into
16:00
Speaker 1: her purse. She knew the bus driver would be arriving
16:03
Speaker 1: any minute now. She bolted down the aisle and out
16:06
Speaker 1: the door. She crossed the parking lot and knocked on
16:08
Speaker 1: the back stage door. Inside, the security guard opened up.
16:12
Speaker 1: She flashed on her backstage pass and he let her in.
16:15
Speaker 1: She looked back and as the door was closing, She
16:17
Speaker 1: saw the bus driver just back from the hotel, stepping
16:20
Speaker 1: onto the bus. She'd made it, and no one was
16:24
Speaker 1: the wiser. But her night wasn't over. She still had
16:30
Speaker 1: to get to the fourth Row Center aisle. The concert
16:33
Speaker 1: was building toward its climax. The crowd was roaring, and
16:37
Speaker 1: for the second to last song of the night, R.
16:39
Speaker 1: Kelly always liked to bring it down for a minute.
16:41
Speaker 1: He would look into the crowd with his soulful brown
16:44
Speaker 1: eyes and start talking about the type of girl he
16:46
Speaker 1: was looking for. She could be out there tonight, and
16:49
Speaker 1: then he would step into the crowd and find her.
16:52
Speaker 1: Her job was to be ready for that moment when
16:55
Speaker 1: he came down into the crowd, when he looked into
16:57
Speaker 1: her eyes. She hated that moment, the entire arena holding
17:01
Speaker 1: their collective breadth as he held the mic to her lips,
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Speaker 1: every horrible thing he had done to her over the
17:06
Speaker 1: last two years flashing through her mind, and then she
17:09
Speaker 1: would speak her line on que I Love You, Mark Kelly.
17:15
Speaker 1: He pulled her onto the stage and asked what her
17:17
Speaker 1: favorite song was. She did what she was supposed to,
17:20
Speaker 1: leaned into the mic with a sull true whisper, and
17:23
Speaker 1: said bump and Grind. Then she and R Kelly engaged
17:27
Speaker 1: in some serious bumping and grinding of their own while
17:30
Speaker 1: the band vamped on the song's intro. It never failed
17:34
Speaker 1: to send a room into a frenzy. By two thousand
17:39
Speaker 1: and one, tapes like the one this particular group he
17:41
Speaker 1: hunted down were slipping out of R Kelly's gray gym
17:44
Speaker 1: bag on the regular. Too many people knew about them,
17:47
Speaker 1: too many people saw them, and it was only a
17:49
Speaker 1: matter of time before they started showing up in other places.
17:53
Speaker 1: And soon they did. R kelly sex tapes were selling
17:56
Speaker 1: on street corners and at bootleg stands in Chicago. Even
18:00
Speaker 1: Tower Records got in on the act with a DVD
18:02
Speaker 1: that sold for fourteen dollars and ninety five cents called
18:06
Speaker 1: R Kelly Bump and Grind You Be the Judge. Eventually,
18:10
Speaker 1: a tape was delivered anonymously to the Chicago Sun Times,
18:13
Speaker 1: who handed it over to the police. On February eight,
18:17
Speaker 1: two thousand and two. The Sun Times reported on the
18:19
Speaker 1: contents of that videotape. Later that same day, R Kelly
18:23
Speaker 1: saying I Believe I Can fly at the opening ceremony
18:27
Speaker 1: of the Winter Olympics, in Salt Lake City, but headlining
18:32
Speaker 1: the Olympics wasn't enough to make the controversy go away.
18:36
Speaker 1: A few months later, r Kelly was arrested in Chicago
18:39
Speaker 1: on twenty one counts of child pornography. While serving a
18:43
Speaker 1: search warrant on his vacation home in Miami, police uncovered
18:47
Speaker 1: a digital camera with more images of r Kelly engaged
18:50
Speaker 1: in sex with minors. He now faced additional accounts of
18:53
Speaker 1: child pornography in Florida. R Kelly's image was in tatters.
18:59
Speaker 1: Newscast shredded him. He was a punchline for as HEAs,
19:02
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, Dave Chappelle and every other comedian on the circuit. Still,
19:07
Speaker 1: r Kelly's record label, Jive, stood by him. As long
19:11
Speaker 1: as his music sold, they would protect him. He had
19:14
Speaker 1: a team of high powered lawyers and crisis managers to
19:17
Speaker 1: help make sure that happened. But with these new allegations,
19:21
Speaker 1: these new revelations, the question everyone was asking was would
19:25
Speaker 1: fans keep buying what r kelly was selling? And I
19:28
Speaker 1: don't just mean the music, I mean the lie. We'll
19:36
Speaker 1: be right back after this word word word. R Kelly
19:47
Speaker 1: prowled the lip of the stage like a panther. He
19:51
Speaker 1: held out his microphone to the crowd as they sang
19:53
Speaker 1: along to his Megaheit ignition. Even here in New York,
19:58
Speaker 1: they couldn't help but bounce to this one. Madison Square
20:01
Speaker 1: Garden may have been Jay Z's home turf, but right
20:04
Speaker 1: now r Kelly was holding up his end of their
20:07
Speaker 1: Best of Both Worlds Tour. Two thousand and four, two
20:11
Speaker 1: years since r Kelly's arrest for those twenty one counts
20:15
Speaker 1: of child pornography, and he was still a free man.
20:19
Speaker 1: In fact, his trial hadn't even started yet, and though
20:22
Speaker 1: his reputation took a hit, his money was doing all
20:25
Speaker 1: the talking. His album Chocolate Factory, released the year prior,
20:31
Speaker 1: had sold over three million copies, and now he was
20:35
Speaker 1: on stage with the biggest name in hip hop. The
20:38
Speaker 1: Best of Both Worlds Tour was a concert promoter's wet dream,
20:42
Speaker 1: R and B and hip hop's reigning kings together for
20:45
Speaker 1: the first time. The accountant's forecast a million dollars in
20:49
Speaker 1: revenue per show. Of course, that revenue was zero when
20:54
Speaker 1: a show got canceled, like the one a few weeks
20:57
Speaker 1: prior in Connecticut, r Kelly blamed the light for a
21:00
Speaker 1: lackluster crowd response the night before fired him on the spot.
21:05
Speaker 1: By the time they found a replacement, the Hartford show
21:07
Speaker 1: was already canned. Losses piled up when the shows were
21:11
Speaker 1: delayed too, Like the second night of the tour in Chicago,
21:15
Speaker 1: R Kelly sat on the bus for two and a
21:17
Speaker 1: half hours past the show's start time while everyone else,
21:20
Speaker 1: including jay Z, waited and waited. It caused the stage
21:24
Speaker 1: crew to hit overtime, taking a hefty bite out of
21:27
Speaker 1: the gross. So while R Kelly took the Madison Square
21:31
Speaker 1: Garden stage on time for once, a group of label reps,
21:34
Speaker 1: promoters and agents watched nervously from the luxury boxes. There
21:38
Speaker 1: were seventeen stops left on this double bill. If they
21:41
Speaker 1: could pull off a great night here tonight, there was
21:44
Speaker 1: still time to put this tour back in the black
21:47
Speaker 1: on paper. The knight should have been great. Jay Z
21:50
Speaker 1: and R Kelly performing songs from their new collaborative album,
21:53
Speaker 1: Unfinished Business, stars like Usher and Mary J. Blige singing
21:57
Speaker 1: along from the front row. Kelly gazed out into the crowd,
22:02
Speaker 1: bodies rolling heads nodding, but a few faces just stood
22:05
Speaker 1: there staring hard back at him. He locked eyes with
22:09
Speaker 1: one of them. A man in a long black coat. Suddenly,
22:13
Speaker 1: the man reached down, pulled open the coat and pointed
22:16
Speaker 1: down to his waist. What was that, wait, was that
22:19
Speaker 1: a gun? R Kelly panicked. He turned back to the
22:23
Speaker 1: left and looked up into the rafters and there was
22:25
Speaker 1: another man wearing the same black coat making the same motion.
22:30
Speaker 1: Hark Kelly lost it. He made a bee line for backstage,
22:34
Speaker 1: and from backstage he listened as the crowd kept going
22:37
Speaker 1: crazy for Jay but he couldn't stop thinking about those
22:40
Speaker 1: men in the long black coats, about being in some
22:43
Speaker 1: crazy person's crosshairs. Fuck this, Fuck New York. He was
22:48
Speaker 1: out of here. The stage lights were cut, Madison Square
22:53
Speaker 1: Garden plunged into darkness. A few minutes passed, and then
22:58
Speaker 1: the lights came back on right, blinding, illuminating. Security guards
23:02
Speaker 1: now rushing the floor. They made their way to the
23:05
Speaker 1: spots where r Kelly said he saw the men in
23:07
Speaker 1: long black coats. The guards pawed their way through the throng,
23:11
Speaker 1: and they were thorough. They found no long black coats,
23:14
Speaker 1: no weapons, nothing. The show was stopped, but jay Z
23:20
Speaker 1: was determined not to let the show go to shit.
23:22
Speaker 1: Here in his hometown with famous friends, in the crowd.
23:25
Speaker 1: No less, he sent members of his crew to bring
23:28
Speaker 1: those friends backstage. He was going to do the unthinkable,
23:31
Speaker 1: put together a sixty minute set of unrehearsed material on
23:34
Speaker 1: the fly in front of a packed arena. R Kelly, though,
23:39
Speaker 1: had other plans. He had already made his position clear.
23:42
Speaker 1: He was done, but the promoters repleading with him to
23:45
Speaker 1: go back out there to finish the night. The coast
23:47
Speaker 1: was clear, the crowd was ready. R Kelly looked out
23:50
Speaker 1: to the stage to Jay Z standing there with Mary
23:53
Speaker 1: and Usher in the wings. He realized that he couldn't
23:55
Speaker 1: miss out on this. The moment would be too special.
23:58
Speaker 1: He relented. He was in. That's when one of Jay's
24:03
Speaker 1: crew stepped forward. The dude blocked r Kelly's path. He
24:06
Speaker 1: told r Kelly there was no way he was going
24:09
Speaker 1: back out on that stage. R Kelly tried to push
24:11
Speaker 1: the guy out of the way, but the dude was
24:13
Speaker 1: too big. The dude raised his arm and unloaded a
24:15
Speaker 1: can of pepper spray directly into r Kelly's face. R
24:19
Speaker 1: and b's biggest superstar dropped to his knees and then
24:21
Speaker 1: fell over, coughing his eyes, burning his throat on fire.
24:26
Speaker 1: R Kelly finished the night in the hospital while jay
24:29
Speaker 1: Z finished the show, and then r Kelly was finished period,
24:34
Speaker 1: kicked off the tour, and banned from Madison Square Garden.
24:41
Speaker 1: Up until this point, the cloud of r Kelly's long
24:44
Speaker 1: delayed child pornography trial had been easy to overlook. As
24:47
Speaker 1: long as he could still sell concert tickets, the suits
24:49
Speaker 1: weren't worried. But if he couldn't be trusted to get
24:52
Speaker 1: on stage anymore and stay on stage, maybe it was
24:55
Speaker 1: time to cut ties with r Kelly, especially if he
24:57
Speaker 1: was found guilty. At least that's people were saying now,
25:01
Speaker 1: which seemed extremely likely when r Kelly's trial finally started
25:05
Speaker 1: in the summer of two thousand and eight, and I
25:07
Speaker 1: got to emphasize this fact. It took six years for
25:10
Speaker 1: this trial to begin. Six years between when he was
25:13
Speaker 1: first arrested for child pornography in two thousand and two
25:17
Speaker 1: and the day his trial got underway in two thousand
25:19
Speaker 1: and eight, Six long years during which r Kelly kept
25:23
Speaker 1: doing what r Kelly did, physically, mentally and sexually abusing
25:28
Speaker 1: young victims, which is fucking nuts when you think about it.
25:32
Speaker 1: At the center of the trial was one of those videos.
25:35
Speaker 1: More than a dozen witnesses identified the girl on the
25:38
Speaker 1: tape as fourteen years old at the time, but the
25:41
Speaker 1: girl refused to take the stand, and the judge banned
25:45
Speaker 1: the prosecution from discussing any of the other allegations against r. Kelly,
25:49
Speaker 1: and his legal team threw everything against the wall. The
25:53
Speaker 1: tape was edited. They said it wasn't r Kelly. They
25:55
Speaker 1: said it was his brother. They said that girl on
25:57
Speaker 1: the screen, she wasn't the same girl that was hearing.
26:00
Speaker 1: They said anything to stir up a hint of reasonable doubt,
26:04
Speaker 1: just as doubt was being stirred up on the streets
26:07
Speaker 1: outside the courtroom, dozens of fans, many of them young women,
26:11
Speaker 1: began showing up every day to voice their support. R
26:14
Speaker 1: Kelly made a point to talk to one of them,
26:16
Speaker 1: a high school freshman. By the way, as he headed
26:18
Speaker 1: into the courtroom, he stopped to hug her on the
26:20
Speaker 1: courthouse steps, in front of press photographer, his news cameras, everyone,
26:24
Speaker 1: and then he slipped her his number and told her
26:26
Speaker 1: to call him after the trial. This fucking guy R
26:30
Speaker 1: Kelly knew he could get away with it, just as
26:33
Speaker 1: he'd been getting away with it since the day he'd
26:35
Speaker 1: been arrested some six years prior. People just loved him
26:38
Speaker 1: too much. His music was part of their lives. He
26:41
Speaker 1: knew no jury of I Believe I Can Fly Lovers
26:43
Speaker 1: would ever convict him, and he was right. After seven
26:48
Speaker 1: hours of deliberation, the jury came back with a verdict
26:51
Speaker 1: of not guilty on all counts. With that verdict, r
26:55
Speaker 1: Kelly was given his freedom, and America gave him a
26:58
Speaker 1: clean slate, a chance to zoom his life as a superstar.
27:02
Speaker 1: But r Kelly wasn't just a superstar. He was bulletproof.
27:06
Speaker 1: He reached out to that high school freshmen he met
27:08
Speaker 1: on the courtroom steps, and he started working on his
27:11
Speaker 1: next victim, because as long as he was a free man,
27:15
Speaker 1: R Kelly was never going to stop ever. Daddy, the
27:41
Speaker 1: girl eighteen nineteen years old, wiped away tears and cleared
27:45
Speaker 1: her throat. She didn't want her father to know she
27:48
Speaker 1: was crying. Daddy, is everything all right? Her father's voice
27:54
Speaker 1: on the other end of the phone had a touch
27:55
Speaker 1: of sadness, but he said all he wanted was to
27:58
Speaker 1: make sure she got home safely. He shouldn't even be
28:01
Speaker 1: calling her in the first place. He shouldn't be calling
28:03
Speaker 1: anyone because he was using a smuggled phone. Locked up
28:07
Speaker 1: in federal prison twenty twenty two. She'd visited her father
28:12
Speaker 1: for the first time just a few hours prior that
28:15
Speaker 1: long trip from Jersey to Brooklyn the drab, depressing visiting room.
28:20
Speaker 1: It was painful to see him this way. The only
28:23
Speaker 1: bright spot, if he could call it that, was that
28:25
Speaker 1: she got to see a celebrity in the visiting room.
28:28
Speaker 1: R Kelly, one of her favorite singers in the world,
28:31
Speaker 1: locked up awaiting sentencing. Someone was visiting him his daughter.
28:37
Speaker 1: Maybe she hoped it was his daughter, At least she
28:40
Speaker 1: watched as they talked. He smiled easily and laughed. Her
28:44
Speaker 1: dad noticed that she was looking over at him. Oh,
28:47
Speaker 1: is actually a really nice guy, he told her. He
28:49
Speaker 1: just has a type, is all now. A few hours later,
28:54
Speaker 1: her dad, on the other end of a smuggled phone,
28:56
Speaker 1: said someone was with him who wanted to say hi.
28:59
Speaker 1: She heard the phone shuffle over to another set of hands,
29:02
Speaker 1: and then she heard the voice of R. Kelly. He
29:05
Speaker 1: said hello, He turned on the charm. In his smooth baritone,
29:10
Speaker 1: he sang a few bars of a deep cut called
29:12
Speaker 1: love Letter. Even in his fifties, his voice still sounded incredible,
29:18
Speaker 1: but it was all a ruse, a siren song, luring
29:20
Speaker 1: yet another young prey. For almost fifteen years after his
29:26
Speaker 1: not guilty verdict in two thousand and eight, r Kelly
29:29
Speaker 1: continued collecting dozens of young teenage victims. Let me say
29:34
Speaker 1: that again, for the cheap seats young teenage victims. He
29:39
Speaker 1: held them in near slavery. He refused to let them
29:43
Speaker 1: eat for days at a time. He made them urinate
29:46
Speaker 1: in small cups. He took their cell phones and cut
29:49
Speaker 1: them off from their friends and family. He beat them
29:53
Speaker 1: for any minor infraction of his rules. Those beatings included spanking, slaps, punches.
29:59
Speaker 1: According to theentencing memorandums submitted by the US Department of Justice,
30:03
Speaker 1: he choked one victim until she passed out, and he
30:06
Speaker 1: made others eat feces on camera. And then there was
30:11
Speaker 1: all the sexual abuse, the exploitation, the assault. The word
30:15
Speaker 1: sex or sexual shows up over two hundred times in
30:18
Speaker 1: that thirty one page sentencing memorandum. But before all the
30:22
Speaker 1: dark details were revealed in that official memo, a blockbuster
30:26
Speaker 1: report in the twenty seventeen BuzzFeed article described in great
30:30
Speaker 1: detail the so called pied piper of R and B's cult.
30:35
Speaker 1: In twenty eighteen, The Washington Post published an article which
30:38
Speaker 1: alleged wilful ignorance at the hands of Jive Records executors,
30:42
Speaker 1: that many a blind eye was turned in order to
30:44
Speaker 1: make a buck. That reporting was followed up by the
30:47
Speaker 1: scathing twenty nineteen television specials Surviving R. Kelly. Unbelievably, none
30:53
Speaker 1: of these articles or television specials, none of these damning,
30:56
Speaker 1: disgusting revelations, None of these things brought our R. Kelly down,
31:01
Speaker 1: at least not at first. Instead, it was the long
31:04
Speaker 1: forgotten marriage license from back in nineteen ninety four. For years,
31:09
Speaker 1: people wondered how R. Kelly had been able to marry
31:11
Speaker 1: A Leah when he was only fifteen years old, how
31:14
Speaker 1: he'd been able to change her name on an official
31:16
Speaker 1: document to claim she was eighteen. Now decades later, prosecutors
31:21
Speaker 1: finally had the answer. R Kelly had paid off a
31:24
Speaker 1: state employee for a fake ID. This key piece of
31:27
Speaker 1: evidence helped convict R. Kelly on charges of racketeering and
31:31
Speaker 1: sex trafficking. Next, Chicago prosecutors hit him with additional child
31:35
Speaker 1: pornography charges. Double jeopardy protected him from being charged again
31:39
Speaker 1: for the same crime, but luckily for the prosecution, r
31:42
Speaker 1: Kelly had created hundreds of tapes new tape, New crime.
31:47
Speaker 1: After refusing to testify in two thousand and eight, his
31:50
Speaker 1: victim from the original lawsuit agreed to take the stand,
31:54
Speaker 1: and with her testimony, r Kelly was at long last
31:57
Speaker 1: found guilty in twenty twelve. Twenty two after the verdict,
32:05
Speaker 1: that victim shared a statement with the press that read,
32:08
Speaker 1: I have lost my dignity due to Robert Kelly. I
32:11
Speaker 1: have lost my dreams due to Robert Kelly. I have
32:14
Speaker 1: lost my teenage years due to Robert Kelly. And no
32:17
Speaker 1: amount of therapy will make me okay. R Kelly was
32:21
Speaker 1: sentenced to thirty years. He is currently serving his time
32:25
Speaker 1: in Butner Federal Prison in North Carolina. He won't be
32:28
Speaker 1: eligible for release until twenty forty five at the earliest.
32:32
Speaker 1: By then he'll be seventy eight years old. In the meantime,
32:37
Speaker 1: r Kelly's music plays on at backyard barbecues and graduations,
32:42
Speaker 1: during late Saturday night bumping grind sessions and Sunday morning
32:46
Speaker 1: church services. R Kelly still has fans. He's still connecting
32:53
Speaker 1: with young women, even from behind bars, still charming them
32:57
Speaker 1: with his soulful brown eyes and his smooth voice. And
33:00
Speaker 1: maybe you can separate the art from the artist. Maybe
33:03
Speaker 1: you're capable of seeing only R. Kelly the sexy R
33:06
Speaker 1: and B star or R Kelly the vulnerable and soulful balladeer.
33:11
Speaker 1: But Robert Kelly used that sexy, soulful image to lure
33:15
Speaker 1: young girls, to trap them in his world, to subject
33:18
Speaker 1: them to unthinkable torture and pain, pain that lives on
33:22
Speaker 1: as long as his music rings out. And that is
33:25
Speaker 1: the real disgrace. I'm Jake Brennan in this is Disgraceland.
33:52
Speaker 1: Disgraceland was created by Yours Truly and is produced in
33:55
Speaker 1: partnership with Double Elvis. Credits for this episode can be
33:58
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34:02
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34:05
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34:32
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34:50
Speaker 1: Right discos? What do you think of our episode on
34:53
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