I’m pretty sure the posse cut “We Ride” was Kelly’s first time working with Jay-Z they’d later make two collaborative albums together. Kelly spent most of R in playboy mode, collaborating with rappers and concentrating on broadcasting his own swagger. ![]() Kelly followed “I Believe I Can Fly” and “Gotham City,” his #9 hit from the Batman & Robin soundtrack, with the endless double album R, which he released in November of 1998. “I’m Your Angel” was very much in that mold. “I Believe I Can Fly” reached #2, and Kelly intermittently chased that high again and again over the years, with singles like “I Wish,” a #14 hit in 2000, or “The World’s Greatest,” which got to #34 in 2002. With that success, Kelly learned that the world didn’t just want to hear him singing about sex, that he could also strike gold with motivational-speaker balladry. That’s when he recorded the big, orchestral gospel-style ballad “I Believe I Can Fly” for the Space Jam soundtrack. I would rather chew broken glass than reconsider my feelings about “Ignition (Remix).”)Ī year after that self-titled album, Kelly broke through in a different way. (I’m going to break column protocol here. He followed that one with his self-titled 1995 album, which sold another five million copies and sent three more singles into the top 10. Kelly’s 1993 solo debut 12 Play, the album that gave the world “Bump N’ Grind,” went sextuple platinum and turned him into a star. “I’m Your Angel” was a calculated move on every level. Somehow, that strikes me as being even grosser than “Bump N’ Grind.” Instead, Kelly landed his second #1 hit years later, teaming up with the world’s most popular adult-contempo balladeer to sing a fake gospel song about being your angel. (Aaliyah will eventually appear in this column.) That should’ve been enough to make Kelly a pariah. Kelly had already illegally married his protege Aaliyah when she was 15 years old, and Vibe had already printed the marriage certificate. I’m sure plenty of people knew about the kinds of things that he was doing with underage girls, but that hadn’t become anything like public knowledge yet. When Kelly landed his first chart-topper in 1994, he was still something of an unknown quantity. (Kelly also wrote “ You Are Not Alone,” Michael Jackson’s final #1 hit, which is a whole other bag of snakes.) The last time Kelly appeared in this column as lead artist, the song in question was “ Bump N’ Grind,” the one where Kelly came straight out and told us that his mind was telling him no but that his body was telling him yes, that he didn’t see nothing wrong with a little bump ‘n’ grind. ![]() That’s why this column unfortunately has to reckon with R. It’s no coincidence that his downfall arrived shortly after his work became unprofitable. Kelly was able to keep doing foul shit for decades because he made money for people. In considering his case, you also have to consider the culpability of the various handlers and yes-men and industry functionaries who kept his abuse factory running for as long as it did. Kelly’s crimes are vast enough to give anyone pause. The sheer documented volume and severity of R. ![]() But Kelly remains the final boss of terrible people in pop music, the monster too radioactive to ever be redeemed. There’s not one single person reading this column who isn’t a fan of at least a couple of absolute human-disaster shitbags. The history of the music business is full of crooks and scumbags and predators. In a lot of ways, Robert Sylvester Kelly is not a unique case. In The Number Ones, I’m reviewing every single #1 single in the history of the Billboard Hot 100, starting with the chart’s beginning, in 1958, and working my way up into the present.
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