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Hello, I'm Erica Kelly from the podcast Southern Fried True crime, and if you want to go from podcast fan to podcast host, do what I did and check out spreaker from iheart. I was working in accounting and hating it. Then after just 18 months of podcasting with Spreaker, I was able to quit my day job. Follow your podcasting dreams, let's break or handle the hosting, creation, distribution, and monetization of your podcast. Go to spreaker.com. That's spreaker.com. In the 1980s and 90s, a psychopath terrorized the country of Belgium. A serial killer and kidnapper was abducting children in the bright light of day. From Tenderfoot TV in iHeartRadio this is La Monstra, a story of abomination and conspiracy. The story about the man who's simply become known as. Lamaster. Listen for free on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, it's Roy Wood, junior, host of The Daily Show podcast beyond the scenes and we are back for season 2. Beyond the scenes is the podcast where we take the topics and segments that were on The Daily Show and give them a little more love. This season, we're bringing back more Daily Show writers, producers and correspondents, more experts, giving us some extra knowledge you can't get anywhere else. Don't miss it. Listen to beyond the scenes. On the iHeartRadio App, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, friends. I'm Robert Evans. And this is once again behind the ********. The show where 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 ******* is Teresa Lee Teresa? You don't know. I could be a *******. Well, I don't know. What is the technical definition like that you used? No. No dad. No mom. What? Runaway dads run away. Then you're. That's right. Yeah. If your dad's gone, yeah. Yes, yes. OK. I mean, 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 eat cookies on a podcast. You can't eat cookies on a podcast. You know what you can eat? Air. I was gonna say the truth. Oh yes, you can. OK, 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? I don't know. Like, I know, I 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 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 I believe I can fly. So now I'm like rethinking playing that song in my head outside of that, like, were you ever a fan of his music? Do you remember any particular albums that like? 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 to. But I I wasn't a big album buyer until pretty much in the last couple of years because I wasn't really allowed to. As a kid. I would say yeah, I have similar experience with him to where like I was a 90s kid, I heard a lot of R Kelly songs on the radio I liked. I did like a lot of the songs. I didn't ever attribute it to him. It was one of those things where like, I like this new song, R Kelly. Yeah, it wasn't like I stand for R Kelly. He was just a big part of like the soundtrack of the late 90s and early aughts in particular. I like that I'm a flirt song, I think. Does he sing? I'm in love with the bartender was like, no, that was definitely not right to T pain. That's right. OK. So but his air, he's around that era. I feel like the T pain songs on the radio. R Kelly songs on the radio. Yeah, yeah. I mean he like, they're fun to grind to, that sort of thing, definitely fun to grind to. I think he has a couple of songs with grind in the name. So. Let's hear about. The fact that he probably has a sex cult, uh, like he's the kind of a child pornographer, right? Isn't that a thing? People like know him for peeing on people, but wasn't she also underage? We'll be getting into that. It's actually very tough to answer that question definitively. Like, it's one of those things, like, where pretty much everyone's like, yeah, but legally he actually got off, right? Because there's no proof. Wait, this does remind me real quick. Speaking of R Kelly. Song I'm a flirt. When I was I was a tech, I was technically underage, but nothing bad happened. But I was. I have to promise that some people don't get uncomfortable. But at that song I remember I worked at a YMCA camp for summer and I was like kind of talking to in the way 17 year olds do a very innocently doing nothing but to to like a 21 year old football player at Stanford. And we yeah, we grind it to that song. Fancy. OK, you grind it down. Alert. Kind of in tribute to R Kelly because technically I was underage. I was 17 years old. So there you go. Yeah, it was kind of like, oh, our Kelly. Hey, cool. Get over here and get maybe put yourself in a questionable position. If I understand right, 17 is the age of consent for grind dancing and most of the eastern seaboard. He was respectful. I feel like it was he was like, let's see how far you'll go and I will not push, you know what I mean? Like, I feel like he was like, I'm not going to push it. It's crazy that that's the bar for being a good guy. Like, I'm not gonna push it with this teenager. He definitely didn't put a stop to it, but he went as far as I was comfortable and then did not push it further. I got to tell you, Teresa, as a man, it is so easy to be a good guy. Yeah, because it's it's just it's just don't assault people. Like, really, if you don't assault people, like, I've done a lot of ****** things, but as long as I don't assault people or gaslight them, like I feel like I'm sailing. I've I've gone years without paying my taxes, but none of that matters because the bar is. Yeah, below the floor. These days, it's opposite for women. If you just start a sentence with I want, you're just automatically a *****. Like, well, I mean, men never expressed their desire. Sophie, would you get me a please? I want to Celsius. Double flip off. Well, we should probably get into the the story now. Yeah, OK. But I'm sure there will be a lot more fun conversations about gender politics. More to come. I know that's what the audience really tunes in for. Robert Sylvester Kelly was born in Chicago on January 8th, 1967. 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, Sola Coaster Kelly. Sorry, there was a little pause. Yeah. Solar coaster. So, like a roller. Exactly. Rollercoaster of yeah, yeah, yeah. 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 doesn't 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 Clarkson. Ups and downs. No, it's a lot of visuals. Like he put a lot of thought into how he laid out his autobiography and it's one of those things. You get this throughout the story, and it sucks. Like, it's when someone like Harvey Weinstein who's like a ***** ** **** but like, I can't point to anything great. He did like, he's just a ***** ** **** 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&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 it's ridiculous, stupid name, I'm like, Oh well, this guy's got a really good talent for layout. And then I'm like, Oh yeah. And he's. Molesting children? Oh ******* Christ, it's frustrating. I don't know. Maybe it's not. But I mean, he brought somewhere else. Probably laid it out. I don't know. I feel like he's he's he's that kind of utter. I think he's just too controlling to let someone else layout his autobiography. But we'll get to that, too. Anyway. I'm. We are. Parallel solar coaster. Yeah. So, in his autobiography Sola Coaster, Kelly recalled that on the rare occasions he asked his mom what had happened to his dad, this was her response. Don't say nothing to me about that. No. Good *** ** * *****. Because the minute he found out I was pregnant with you. His cowardice left, disappeared in the wind. Didn't want to have anything to do with either you or me, Kelly goes on to write. 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 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 is a color. I mean, maybe if you kill a lot of babies. Oh, there you go. 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. Sure. They're not eating solid foods yet? Exactly. OK, so maybe. If you've seen a lot of baby blood, it sticks out. This is part of why I think he wrote it, too. No ghostwriter is going to be like baby blood red. That sounds like it came out of R Kelly's head. It was that day, that moment, that I decided to hate my father, not knowing really what hate meant or having a 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 talk about him again, and I never did sufferin. Literally just hasn't sent that up or repress any of that. Yeah, well, that's that's as a background, Robert Kelly grew up very poor as family lived in the projects on the South side of Chicago, which, 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 were just around. But it seems weird. It seems weird in Kelly's telling of it. When my mother wasn't around, the woman ran a little. Earlier, as I crept up an 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 OK to watch, like look at him. And yeah, on one occasion, I think later than this, he was handed a camera and asked by a couple having sex to take their pictures while they were having sex. He recalls that the photographic technology impressed me more than the sex. Maybe he's like repressed some of them. That's sad. This makes me 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 that? Like, that's another thing with like Weinstein. I don't know enough about his like childhood to know like was he abused a bunch of kid that have an impact on it? Not that that mitigates bad behavior, because most people who are abused by doing. But this makes you understand what comes next a lot better. Like this kid, he's never going to have an easy time coming up, you know, his barometer of what's appropriate and what's normal is is off right from the get go. Yeah. Age 8 seems to have been a crowded hour for young Robert Kelly. It's the year when he first watched people **** first photographed people *******. And it's also the year in which the love of his life died. Yeah. Here is a quote from his autobiography. Solar coaster, OK. I love love. There's no one on Earth more romantic than me. I've been in love with love ever since I can remember. I've 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 8 and it was puppy love. I believe she was my first musical inspiration when it comes to love songs. O according to R Kelly, Lulu died brutally that same year when he was eight at 8. Yeah, they were out playing near the river and she fell in and bashed her skull open on some rocks. Roberts watched her die and was as traumatized as you'd expect. That's about the most traumatizing thing. Imagine happening to an 8 year old. Yeah. Yeah, it doesn't get much worse than that. There's like little foot seeing his mom die and having your 8 year old girlfriend Bachelor Scullin, 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 3's 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 not told his other family members who this was and when. Chris Heath, a writer for GQ. 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 he was roughly 15 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 there's contact. That's kind of negotiating. That's the thing that survivors do is like. Appreciating or maybe all or thinking, oh, there's experience isn't valid because because people have quote UN quote worse. He didn't touch me. So it wasn't like I should be that, 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 and assault. Yeah. If you're a child and an adult comes up to you, ask you to masturbate and pulls out his genitals, that's sexual assault, 100% abuse of their power. So he's got a rough upbringing and this is not all of it. Robert Kelly. Is probably shocked when he was 13. It's hard to know for sure what happened because he's not exactly a totally reliable narrator here. For years, he told interviewers, he had been shot by thugs who wanted to steal his huffy 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. So, and 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. We wouldn't shoot your shoulder. You definitely very hard to miss a suicide unless you want to. And even if you missed, it probably wouldn't be, like, show your heart, like, blow your jaw. And he was like, I'll do it here. It doesn't. Yeah, because Lil Wayne shot himself in, like, the back or something like that. Yeah. There was just a gun in a couch, and he was playing with an 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 13. Either a suicide. Attempted just a stray 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. Not an upbringing I would risk on anybody, but it was not all in R rated version of a Dickens novel. He had a teacher, Lena McLean, who recognized his nascent musical talent early on and nurtured it. She convinced him to sing Stevie Wonder's 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 Spiderman, being bit. I discovered this power. I knew I had something then. Miss McLean got Kelly on TV for the first time, singing at a Christmas tree lighting ceremony in Chicago. Now, Robert had no head for math or reading, and it actually sounds, from what he says, like he might be dyslexic. It sounds like McLean was instrumental in 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, and that was definitely the right decision. Kelly started busking on a subway as a teenager. On one particularly good day, he made $400.00 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 BBQ at age 24 that R Kelly was first discovered by the industry. Wayne Williams, who worked for Jive Records, just happened to be at that BBQ 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 BBQ. It was the eye of the tiger. I'm not sure if he means that. Kelly was singing the eye of the tiger, or if he was responding more generally to like he was doing Kung Fu. He was rising up 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 comment. Teresa, I'm going to 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. That's I can't. It looked kind of almost like a like a boy band's stance, you know? But there's a woman in the middle. There is a woman in the middle. So yeah, it's a little off from that. But otherwise, all of the guys look like boy Band. Yeah, imagine there's some dancing involved and very 90s like. That gene slicking back, kind of like nodding at at the camera and pointing, that sort of thing. And R Kelly is wearing what looks like the 90s is windbreaker that has ever been purchased windbreakers? Those were 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 immediately outgrew public announcement. He released his windbreaker. And the windbreaker. I mean, we all kind of outgrew the windbreaker. At least his first solo album, 12 play in 1993. Wondering what the name 12 play means. Yeah, it definitely isn't alluding to his his challenge. Oh geez, that's even dark. That's really dark. I don't know what's really dark. That's what I thought at first. I mean, it's still messed up. According to the Chicago Sun Times quote, it's because Kelly quote claims that while other lovers might give you foreplay, he gives you three times more. What? That's just like, OK, all right. You know, I mean, he's not good at math. So, I mean, you got to give it to him. He put math in his math. Yeah, there you go. Specially for his first album, you know, you got to conquer your fears. The words mixed up his tracks on the album 12 play include such subtle titles as bump and Grind, Sex, me, and this is my favorite. I like the crotch on you, what I like. And you all right, you gotta, you gotta love how just like, OK, you're really not hiding anything there, buddy. Like, I like the crotch on your crotch is not a sexy word. Like it's not it almost like I feel like crotch just sound. 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 General Mills. I relate it to like, I don't know what I really just like. I would think of jeans because of cross, but I think of like dirty jeans and like someone who didn't do their laundry. That's what I think of when I think of crotch. You know, couple in the throes 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 about the crotch in your jeans or something. Yeah, you're right. OK, so ridiculous as it sounded, 12 play became the number one R&B album in America for nine straight weeks. Wow. Huge success and apparently a great R&B album. Solo album. Yeah, this is a solo album. I don't know much about R&B, but the one thing. Pretty much everybody seems in agreement on is that at his stride? R Kelly was a hell of an R&B singer. So. His career exploded after 12 play came out. He owed much of his success to his agent, of course, Barry Hankerson. And it just so happens that Mr Hankerson had a niece, a 15 year old girl named Aaliyah Dana Haughton. She had musical ambitions, a buttload of talent and she. Wow, yeah, this is that alia. She soon started working with her uncle's top musician, the incredibly talented Robert Kelly. 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 our Kelly put in together to make the album. They're both perfectionists, and this led to numerous late nights spent in close proximity. The album was a hit, selling more than 3,000,000 copies and according to some people who know **** about. 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 Alia were married at that most stereotypically romantic of destinations, the Sheraton Gateway Suites and Rosemary. They got married? Yeah, they sure did. She was 15. He was 27. Oh my God. Yeah. That's not OK. That's not OK. Yes, I think we're being prudes. 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 OK. Married for a long time, OK? Because I was like, I do not remember this. How was this not the thing that made him? Because he wasn't big enough? This was big news. This was there was like a controversy over this that extends to today because, again, Aaliyah was 15 and that's a felony. You can't be a 27 year old married a 15 year old. It's not legal. So sometimes in a lot of states, you can actually marry at that age, but your family has to consent. And Elias 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 Alia as 18. So fraudulent marriage. Certificate no big problems now, the whole episode is somewhat murky and unclear, and there are a number of different narratives as to what precisely went down. GQ'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 Alia saying she had run away from home, believing she was pregnant. Smith says that Kelly was then given some specious advice that he could protect himself from the legal ramifications of the situation. And 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 ID for alia from a friend in the public aid office, and they got a backup ID through someone they knew at Federal Express that night. After the ceremony and a suite at the Sheraton Hotel, Kelly and Smith flew back to Miami to resume the tour. So is it? I mean, they were trying to, like, do the paperwork by getting married to make it legal, but then they. Use fraudulent ID. 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, so the odds that someone would find this were lower. But if the marriage is null, if they're if it was built on fake, yeah. So that makes no sense at all. The whole thing is not. They were hoping nobody would notice. 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 **** is this? And I just kind of just part of it, but now I'm like, was it? It was a secret message. Was she like, I'm pregnant? She invited, but I think that was after she was a lot older, because if that wasn't from her, she she lived until like 24. So that wasn't her first album. That's not on aging. Nothing but a number. The I think it was the movie Romeo must die Ohren, yeah, that would have been way later. So she would as an adult. At that point, she was sort of trying to slip in the the story of her. It's hard to say what happened before. Child, this is just one guy's relation. She didn't have the baby, right? I don't think so. No. No, she did not. 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's reliable. Yeah. And we we don't really know 100% what went down because there were, you know, Elias 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 $100 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. 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And this summer I'm bringing my show back to Comedy Central with a new title and a new podcast. It's called hell of a week. But don't worry, every Friday I'll be keeping that same, calling out the BS energy. So if the news is terrorizing your timeline and causing your anxiety to rise high in gas prices, don't worry, we got you. You could chase down all the crazy stories of the week with some laughs and thought provoking conversation that the Supreme Court want to abort the Constitution. We'll talk about it. Does Congress. Gonna replace the bald eagle with an AR15. We'll talk about it with Johnny Depp and Amber Heard, the OJ trial for white people. We'll talk about it and I'm bringing on some of the biggest names in comedy, politics and entertainment to talk about it with me. Plus, catch all the extended interviews, bonus scenes, and filthy language that has to get bleeped out for TV because I hear that Doctor Fauci has a bit of a potty mouth. So be sure to listen to hell of a week with charlamagne the God on the iHeartRadio app, the Black Effect podcast network, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. We're back. We're talking about Alia and R Kelly's very short lived in super illegal man. Literally. She was short lived. Yeah, she died in a plane crash when she was like 20 something. Anyway, the settlement between Alia and R Kelly, we don't again know exactly what went down, but it's supposedly included a promise from Aaliyah not to sue our Kelly in the future due to, quote, emotional distress caused by any aspect 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. So again, we don't know what went down. We don't know what. Always getting bandied about this like he he was like is pre me too. But like he already knew. It's like he was like OK, this kind of **** will come out later, so I'm just going to totally cover my bases. 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. We're like rich people get NDA exactly. But like the NDA's were more like, oh, I feel like it came from a lot of the men who make people sign or silence. And 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 10 years from now, and then you might want to talk about it. He's like, hold up. You don't know you're going to have this, but I know because I've been through it, so don't talk about it. Oh, ****. OK. Now, that's really interesting. They went through it, and that's why he knows that there's going. 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 so sad because it's like he's a victim or survivor himself. But also, you know, there's a cycle and he's perpetuating it. I think you're, I think you're really on to something there. So neither R Kelly nor Alia have ever provided more detail about what went down or the reasoning behind that weird settlement. In 1997, Alia 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 1994 where she said, hey, don't believe all that mess. We're close and people took it the wrong way. But that was again, like, right when it happened. Alia died in a plane crash in 2001 at the age of 24. 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, Sola Coaster. There is, however, a disclaimer at the beginning that notes certain episodes could not be included for complicated reasons. That's probably a reference to the court settlement during that 2016 interview with GQ. Really described Alia as his best best best friend, which seems odd for someone he left out of his autobiography, but again, probably was legally restricted from doing so. In 1995, R Kelly released his second solo album, just titled R Kelly. 3 songs on the album reached number one on the R&B charts. Song titles include down low. Nobody has to know. A little on the nose. On December 24th, 1996, R Kelly was sued for $10 million by Tiffany Hawkins, a high school student with ambitions for a music career. She claimed she met Kelly when he talked to her choir class. Her teacher, Miss Mcglenn, 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 going to probably butcher this guy's last name, but like, how do you think that? Forget us. Derogatis yeah, maybe do Derogatis, Derogatis, Derogatis, Derogatis, Derogatis. That's what we're going to land on. Probably should have checked that when I was reading about R Kelly for 11 hours. Quote asked about the charges in the Hawkins lawsuit that Kelly had sexual relationships with some of the freshmen and sophomore girls from McLennan 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 2 to tango. It's pretty ****** you know? It doesn't take too. Not a full person if you're underage, yeah, you're really not happy. You can't be part of it too when you're not a not a full grown 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, he didn't get out and he's like, well, you. That's different. You have more power. You're a big person. Hawkins claimed her sexual relationship with Kelly started in 1991 when she was 15 and he 24. She says Kelly ended the relationship when she turned 18. Hawkins slit her wrists immediately afterwards, a suicide attempt that she thankfully survived. Also in 1996, while Kelly was settling the lawsuit over the teenager he allegedly molested and into a suicide attempt, he met an adult lady, Andrea Lee. Lee was a choreographer and a dancer who'd 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 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 2003, 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 can't see a bit of foreshadowing. What does he say in his autobiography, Better Solar? Roster, yeah. But. What? Solar solar coaster. No, OK. A year later or sorry, a little later in 1996, which was a very full year for R Kelly, he ran into legal trouble again when he was arrested for battery in Lafayette, LA, 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 on the court stays on. No, that's probably not true. If there's one thing Jim basketball courts are for, it's fistfights with famous people. And that's a sacred it's a sacred thing. I would say as long as you, I mean, to a certain degree you don't like, beat someone's face to a pulp. But if there's a little bit of fighting on, like if it's more like 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 on the court stays on. No, that's probably not true. No, it is. If there's one thing Jim basketball courts are for, it's fist fights with famous people. And that's a sacred, that's a sacred thing. I would say as long as you, I mean, to a certain degree you don't like, 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 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 OK. 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. It's like a game we don't really have the big goal of West Side Story gangs the way I don't even know if 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 Ashton 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 downs, 1986 ended 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. Definitely 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 8 at the time, and a tremendous number of my early memories involved hearing R Kelly's voice over the ****** speakers at a blockbuster or a Piggly Wiggly or what have you. The man Michael Jordan so well I don't know much about Michael Jordan being as bad, but not a nice guy. No comment until I I do the digging on him for the Michael Jordan episode. Kelly's mother died in March of 1997. This was a devastating blow to the self-described Mamas boy as it would have been for anyone. 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. Yeah. Our Kelly's desire to get right with God, however, did not inspire him to get right with the Justice Department. In June 1997, he missed his key ring on the battery case over that basketball court fight. He wound 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 our Kelly's number one hobby over the next 20 years. In 1998, he settled his lawsuit with Tiffany Hawkins, the teenager he yeah, attempted suicide, reportedly for $250,000. The settlement came four days after Hawkins delivered a horrifying 7 hour 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'd been prepared to testify about being in a threesome with Hawkins and Kelly while Hawkins was underage told the Chicago Sun Times 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 freshmen, boy, we were ugly little girls compared to what he could have had, so I didn't understand why he did what he did. Like a 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 going to. I'm not going to judge her for that. But it is weird, yeah. Yeah. That whole article was published in 2000. It includes a lot of really unsettling information. Quote according to Hawkins's lawsuit, Kelly had sex with underage girls in his apartments at 9 S Wabash 185. North Harbor Drive and other locations in Chicago. In response to questions from Hawkins's attorneys, Kelly admitted that he employed Hawkins as a background vocalist, and periodically gave her small cash gifts and approximately $1400 in checks. But he denied having any sexual contact with the girl. Now Hawkins is friend who was prepared to testify 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 Jordans, or $100, 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 16. That's like a dream to us to work with our Kelly. So we listened to him. I think it's a sickness. Yeah, I mean, that's rough. She's definitely negotiating with herself. And it's not, there's no, you know, right or wrong from a service point of view because it's like how she feels. That 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? I mean, like, clearly he crossed a line from an objective point of view, but a number of them from her point of view. I don't think we could follow 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 OK if she wants to live her life feeling a little bit more normal. And it's also, it's a, you know, the the bargain he put these young women in was essentially the way he was making the thing of it is like, OK, well, he's grooming parts of this may be creepy. I mean not like parts of this, but like other parts are to her good. Millionaire, even if she felt like she consented. Or maybe he didn't ever. Maybe he didn't have a quote UN quote 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 that even if they'd both been 18, the money here would have been an element of force. Not that he was offering them, but because he really. Yeah. It's coercion of like, if I put up with this 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 abusing his power. Yeah. Yeah, in a couple of ways. Like. His power is like an older man who's wiser in the world than these 15 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 and part of him maybe that like the 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 past that way. Still, bottom line wrong. And and there should have been more resources in place to help him get through his trauma so that he knew how to properly deal with it. But there is a world where 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 because he's trying to justify what happened to him. Yeah, he's not like most. People who do really bad things. I'm I doubt he's going into this 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 can have a relationship with kid 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 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. Yeah, as you start to be like, this is ****** ** what you're doing. Robert Kelly about himself. Yeah, yeah, or his actions in this particular instance. Well, let's read the next paragraph. In 2001, Tracy Sampson sued Robert Kelly for bringing her into an indecent sexual relationship when she was just 17. 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 2002, once in April and again in May, by two different women. One claimed he impregnated her while she was underage. Another claimed he'd. Homemade 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 like that song track should have been called ages. Just an undisclosed sum. That's really good. That's really good. Both of these women found in DA's. I found a telling quote, though, from a BuzzFeed article that interviewed a lawyer who's been involved with. Several of our Kelly settlements Chicago attorney Susan E Loggins declined 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 for a 17 year old aspiring singer from Chicago's West Side who is 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 we're talking about on this are probably not the only people who could come forward with allegations if they hadn't. They gotten paid and signed an NDA. You know, it's like with the 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 pee tape because the actress in this tape that was circulating underground was allegedly underage. Kelly was charged with 21 counts of making child ***********. So the back story of this one is a little bit interesting. We're going to hear back for a little bit to November of 2000, when Kelly released the album TP2 to a #1 debut. On the Billboard Albums chart, it featured 2 #1 R&B hits I wish in Fiesta. It also featured songs like the Greatest Sex and Feeling on your Booty. The album reviewer for the Chicago Sun Times was Jim Derogatis. He wrote this 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 Gaye 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 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 Derogatis. You wrote about R Kelly and compared him to Marvin Gaye. Well, I guess Marvin Gaye had problems too, but I don't think they were like Roberts. Roberts Problem boy, we're spiraling. Anything Celsius. The only energy drink currently on this table that's also not involved at all in R Kelly sex cry, alleged sex crimes. Here's some other ads that paid us. Mint Mobile offers premium wireless starting at just 15 bucks a month. And now for the plot twist. Nope, there isn't one. 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That's mintmobile.com/behind. Seriously, you'll make your wallet very happy. At Mint mobilcom behind. I'm Anderson Cooper. Earlier this year, while packing up my late mom's apartment and her things, I felt isolated and alone. Weighed down by grief, I began recording a series of deeply personal conversations with others about their experiences with loss and helped me and I hope it'll help you. Whatever you're going through. All there is with Anderson Cooper listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Peace in the planet. I go by the name of Charlemagne the God. And this summer I'm bringing my show back to Comedy Central with a new title and a new podcast. It's called hell of a week. But don't worry, every Friday I'll be keeping that same, calling out the BS energy. So if the news is terrorizing your timeline and causing your anxiety to rise high in gas prices, don't worry, we got you. You could chase down all the crazy stories of the week with some laughs and thought provoking conversation that the Supreme Court want to abort the Constitution. We'll talk about it this Congress. Gonna replace the bald eagle with an AR15. We'll talk about it with Johnny Depp and Amber Heard, the OJ trial for white people. We'll talk about it and I'm bringing on some of the biggest names in comedy, politics and entertainment to talk about it with me. Plus, catch all the extended interviews, bonus scenes, and filthy language that has to get bleeped out for TV because I hear that Doctor Fauci has a bit of a potty mouth. So be sure to listen to hell of a week with charlamagne the God on the iHeartRadio app, the Black Effect podcast network, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. We're back, 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, because I didn't want to make another coffee. Why are you holding a skateboard? Who do the do the sound of a halfpipe? Thought you're gonna say do the sound of a hang loose. Under that, you just gotta put it in your voice. I can hear it when you when you do the same. The hand gestures. Yeah, you're hanging loose. There's no way to do that sign without sticking your tongue out. Like it just happens. Yeah, it's required. It's the law. Speaking of the law, let's talk about R Kelly's 21 charges of child *********** making when we when we last left off. Jim Derogatis at The Who. I will be pronouncing differently almost every time we talk about him. Reporter at the Chicago Sun Times. I had just gotten an anonymous. Letter from one of Kelly's assistants being like our 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 prickly thing. Anytime you're considering breaking a story that would accuse someone of multiple felonies, you've got to be on guard. A letter like that on its own is 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 *********** the Chicago Sun Times went to the cops. The police could not. Even look at it. Yeah. So if you get sent a video like that, you have to call the feds? Yeah, you have to immediately bring in the. Well, I think they go to the local police. I'm not sure they go to the go to the cops. Certainly not with child ****. So, but the police opened up an investigation, but there really wasn't much that they could do because they didn't have. Like, they didn't. You don't know the age of the person. You don't know for sure that this is R 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 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 are watching because I remember hearing the news and I guess people, some people were watching it, but if you watch it isn't that they weren't all child ***********. OK, but wasn't that. I don't know much. I just remember I didn't even know she was underage. I remember there was a pee tape and the dog and then there was like a dungeon. Yeah. Yeah, that's part of his house and stuff. Yeah. So whoever. Sending these anonymous tapes to the Sun Times eventually got fed up that nothing had happened yet. This person left another video in Jim Derogatis's mailbox. He sent it to the police as well, and they were finally able to make an ID. They found a source who claimed to recognize the young women 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 sometimes the go ahead to publish their first story on the matter. Terrifying. I mean, I know they're just. Investigating. They have to do their job. 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 found that means her aunt or uncle watched the sex tape to identify her. They probably saved it, like, had just a clip 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 it. Yeah. They feel like they have enough that the police charged him with 21 counts of child *********** using because the aunt of this girl claims she would have been around 14 at the time of the filming. So R Kelly, who had just performed 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've fired, people that I thought were my friends, that that's not my friends. It's crap and that's how 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 R Kelly was indicted for child **** on June 5th, 2002. He pled not guilty the next day and posted bail using 700 and $5000 bills. Once he got back from court, he immediately violated a court order by singing at a kindergarten. Graduation ceremony? Wait, 700? Like single dollar bills? Is that no $100 bill? I was like, what? He just has just to be petty. Like, why? No, he just had a **** load of cash, $100 bills. 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 2008, 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. Phil Spector was charged and tried for murder and due to a mistrial, have to do it all again. Lil' 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 our Kelly's case was waiting to actually go to trial. Now, delaying this case was very definitely a strategy used by our Kelly's defense. They probably figured that since his alleged victim was expected to take the stand, it would be better optics if she were in her 20s 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 30 some odd pretrial motions, all of which demanded a response from the prosecution and usually led to an argument in court. This always delayed things further. There were also some free cappings that disrupted matters. The judge fell off a ladder and injured himself are Kelly's appendix burst. Then his 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 bunker down like a month after the charges were filed here. At least a single heaven I need a hug, which was basically his plea of innocent 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 nother 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 trying to figure it all out. Heaven, I need a hug. Is there anybody out there willing to embrace a thug? So Umm yeah. He needs a hug. He's using his music as a way to get. I mean it's people to get on his side. It's powerful tool. The question of his guilt or innocence is actually a semi regular theme in R Kelly's music. For example, in the album Chocolate Factory, during a 10 minute mini Opera, R Kelly finds himself at the gates of heaven. Saint 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 20 minute remix of I believe I can fly so it's regular. Reoccurring theme in Kelly's music. His career continued to chug along in the early aughts, but even his work wasn't free of drama. In October of 2004, 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 Saint Louis on October 23rd, 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 spent hours serving food to customers through the drive through window. So sometimes this coverage sheds a little light on how Kelly's people spun this it's ******* weird. Kelly's attorney, Ed Genson, confirmed reports Monday that Kelly headed from Saint Louis's Sava Center to a McDonald's restaurant that had closed, but which he persuaded to reopen for the entourage traveling on his bus. Then he decided he wanted to work the drive through Genson said it was on the radio. People were running out of their houses to have R Kelly serve 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 prime time. Five interview that aired in October. He talked about frequent visits there with his late mother. We'd go to McDonald's almost every morning. She drank her cup of coffee. She'd wear this cheap lipstick and she'd leave this red lipstick around the cup, Kelly said. Well, first of all, to McDonald's for being so big that that's not even a thing you associate with McDonald's. It's just a house. It's just like going to the store, you know what I mean? To be like, he served 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 thing that happened to you. But you know, this is so big, you're just like, you don't even associate that with the brand. I feel like this has to have been a franchisee, though, because I feel like McDonald's corporate. If some, if they didn't ask, like, should we have this guy who's being indicted for child *********** working our drive through? You know, I feel like the CEO allowed to go in to eat well, yeah. But I feel like Ronald McDonald would probably be like, yeah, we don't want that guy work in the window. But I'm going to guess, yeah, it was some like local franchise owner who was like, well **** this would be good business. McDonald's in Saint Louis. Yeah. I I feel like, would you have gone if you were there at that time? Like, knowing what was going on? But, like, he's not found guilty yet. Like, as a normal person would be. Like, I'm going to go get food from the R Kelly at the drive through. You know what? I'll say this. I'll say this as someone who was born in Saint 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 in Saint Louis. Uh-huh. Yeah, that's the kind of thing. Looking back, I'm like, oh, I'm principle. 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, R Kelly is handing out burgers down the street. I mean, like, I'm going to be totally honest. I probably would drive through like, I don't like. I'm not saying that the right thing to do and you can like, whatever, come at me. But I'm being honest. I think I would have gone OK, let me, let me, let me pause it this to you. If like Mel Gibson, 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. There's a 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 think if it was someone like, OK, William Shatner is a famous person I love who I'm sure has done horrible things that I just haven't heard about. He must have Shatner about him. He has to have look at it. Look into his. Looks like a character actor who like plays. That I think could be totally sweet. We don't know if any member of Hollywood has killed someone for money. It's Bill Shatner, OK? I'm saying that right now. I have no evidence of this. Completely unsubstantiated, if any. A list star is a hit man. It's it's Bill Shatner and 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, if Shakur was look at my killer 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 in 10. You know what I mean? Like, I don't know. Maybe one day they'll be like, I remember that face. Oh, just randomly. I'll just kill her. You know what I mean? I don't know. Anyway, sorry for derailing. There's Nelly from Saint Louis. What is Nelly from Saint Louis? I have no idea anyway. I give other artists from where I landed is 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 Mcnuggets from from William Shatner. I would. I think I would. So yeah, that that's your answer. Is I I can see why people would do this. So quite the digression. On October 29th, 2004, a few days after Kelly's night at McDonald's, Guy R Kelly stopped he performance in Madison Square Garden saying a fan had waved a gun at him. He wound up in a fight backstage with one of Jay-Z people and got pepper sprayed. He went to the hospital. There were a **** load of lawsuits and the tour collapsed in on itself. So on July 21st, 2005, during pretrial proceedings in Kelly's court case, a 21 year old woman testified that the girl in Kelly sex tape was. 14 when the video had been filmed saying it, quote, it was the summer after 8th grade. The judge did not consider. Yeah, that's bad, right? Eighth grade sounds so much younger than 1414 sounds. I mean, it's still bad, but eighth grade really drives it home. What's going on here? The judge did not consider this enough and threatened to toss out the court case unless a more affirmative ID could be made. Two months after this, Roberts 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 wound up getting a divorce in 2008 anyway, and we will hear from Andrea a little bit at the end of all this. Back in February of 2006, while everybody was still waiting for the Kelly trial to start, Robert Kelly's brother Carrie or Killa Kelly came out with a DVD filled with allegations against his sibling, among other things. Yeah, killer Kelly claims that R Kelly offered him $50,000 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 and had a problem with underage girls. III. None of that seems out of the pale. 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. #1 DVD is not the most credible way to present allegations. Bonus feature couldn't find the title. I found it. It was published by Drama magazine with An H in the word draw. So it's again. I'm going to guess he got money for this. It was hashirama. Yeah. O 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 if R Kelly tried to have his brother take the fall for him now. Even under the cloud of legal ******* 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 precipitously. R Kelly has been the biggest name in R&B throughout most of this. In May 2007, R Kelly gave an interview to hip Hop Soul magazine in it, he said. In the alley of today, I'm the Marvin Gaye of today, I'm the Bob Marley of today, I'm the Martin Luther King or all the other greats that have come before us. And a lot of people are starting to realize that now. In February of 2008, a couple of months before jury selection began on the trial, Regina Daniels, Kelly's longtime spokeswoman and the person who officially denied the allegations of his wrongdoings to the press 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. 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 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, that's grooming. And this is now, again, the husband and his spokeswoman, both of them had worked for him coming out and saying this, a lot of people in his orbit. Come out later with allegations. On June 14th, 2008, R Kelly was found not guilty by a jury of his peers. The prosecution's star witness, the woman, and the tape never took the stand. Jim Derogatis, the Chicago Sun Times reporter who broke the story, took the 5th and did not testify. I think some of it is that he might have had to, like, admit that he'd seen the tape, which would have been legally scary. And he also had some, like, worries that he he would be required to give up, like sources and stuff like that. So he he he he did not testify. Which is always a fraught thing for a journalist and 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. Is that a thing that people do? It happened this time is that I've never heard of this before. Party and the people who are everybody. Prosecution, defense, let's all get on, get down. 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 put me in jail. That's all parties. I don't think R Kelly went. What? I'm gonna guess maybe that was the judge's hope that he'd get to party with our Kelly again. There's some weirdness with the judge. The judge threw it. Yeah, some weirdness. So R Kelly was not guilty, and and if he were truly innocent of all of the allegations against him, this story might have ended there. But this is not the sort of podcast where we talk about wrongly accused people. 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 drop Part 2 of the working title has been R Kelly. What the hell, man? How you doing? I'm OK. I didn't realize that you were going to leave me on a cliffhanger. That I'm going to leave you on a cliffhanger. So. I'm not gonna know that's when the air horn should have kicked in. I don't like the defense that people say of like, Oh well, great art. Well, while we hear all the time great artist and you know what we're going to do? Not, not give their art. Yeah, I think it would have helped public opinion if when someone's under trial for child *********** that they're forbidden to put out art. Because then people can just, you know, find 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 under trial for something bad, you shouldn't be allowed. To put out anymore of your art, that's a privilege. It's not a right. Well, I mean, when you're on trial, though, you're not guilty. Like, you can't stop someone from putting out art when they're innocent until proven guilty. Born under position where it's like, well, it'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. You have some water when you're trying to, like, get people to be like, hey, this guy's been accused of a bunch of heinous crimes. Let's all boycott his music. I think that's fine, but I 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 that's pesky civil rights. I don't know, man. I don't know justice. Teresa, you want to plug your puggles? Yeah, sure. I've got a podcast. It's all about secrets. I've gotta get you on sometime. I love secrets. You got any secrets? I feel like you're very open book, but it doesn't have to be a scandalous secret. Just something you've not talked about, you know, on stage or whatever. Already did podcast about. It's called. You can tell me anything. Comedians confess something they haven't told anyone. It's really fun. You can find it on Instagram at tell me anything pod. And I'm on Twitter at Larissa Tee. Yeah, I'll have to be on. I'll talk about the time. Fire bomb that oil Derrick or something. I'm Robert Evans. This has been behind the ********. You can find us on Instagram and Twitter at at ******** pod. You can buy shirts and cups and cell phone cases and commercial drilling equipment all at our tea public store behind the ********. Tea public. Check it out. You can get our branded stuff on your MX-80 earthcore cracker, which is one of the finest you know commercial drilling rigs available. I shouldn't be lying about commercial drilling equipment. We're going to have like 30 people. Pop up on Twitter and be like. Also you can get stickers. You can find me on Twitter at I write. OK, you can find the sources for this episode on behindthebastards.com. We'll be back on Thursday with the story of our Kelly's alleged sex cult and until then, podcasts. Hey there. I'm Scott rank, host of the podcast history unplugged. Now, it really is a dream come true to get paid to talk about history without all the stress while still being able to make a living. And I did it with Spreaker from iheart. Not only did they make it super easy to monetize my podcast, but ad revenue is 3 to four times higher with spreaker than with any other host I've worked with. So if you want to turn your passion into a podcast and give this a try, visitspreaker.com. That's SP. RE aker.com get paid to talk about the things you love. Hey y'all, it's Caroline Hobby hosted get real with Caroline Hobby interviewing the most fascinating people in Nashville and beyond. I talked to artists. I talked to the wives of artists. I talked to women entrepreneurs who have created businesses, who are moms, who juggle a million hats and do it all. Each episode will leave you inspired, feeling like you can accomplish your own dream and calling. Listen to new episodes of get Real with Caroline Hobby every Monday. In the Nashville podcast network available on iHeartRadio App, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcast. Hey, it's Chuck Wicks from love country talk to Chuck where we bring you what's really happening in the country music family. We also if you love country, here's the deal. You love country music, you can be on the podcast. So if you're a fan country music or you can call in anytime. 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