All About Laughs
R. Kelly’s latest song “I Admit, was a 19-minute opus filled with what he claims to be his defense to the allegations brought up against him. However, the almost 20-minute composition includes everything but an admission to his alleged criminal activities, nor does it seem to share any other details that would help the case. If history tells anything as it pertains to the troubled singer, it is that you should probably not trust anything he says.
The Chicago native has spent the last part of the 2010s under intense scrutiny after scathing allegations of misconduct of women, some allegedly underage, began to pile on. Fallout from the six-part Lifetime documentary, Surviving R. Kelly, was more than enough for most of the public to do without the singer or his music.
Since 1989, Kelly has been active in the music industry when he was at first the lead singer for the group Public Announcement. After one album with the group, Kelly embarked on a solo career that spawned massive hits for himself as well as songwriting credits on everyone from Michael Jackson to Celine Dion. At the time, who DIDN’T want an R. Kelly song?
Well, the tides have truly changed as not only has the singer now been dropped from RCA after all of the fallout, he is currently behind bars and awaiting trial. Before being locked up, Kelly sat down with Gayle King for a now historical interview as Kelly was able to speak up against years of allegations. Quite a few occasions during the interview, Kelly would become impassioned and emotional while answering King’s questions.
“Stop it. You all quit playing! Quit playing! I didn’t do this stuff! This is not me! I’m fighting for my f***ing life! Y’all killing me with this sh*t!” @RKelly told @GayleKing, standing up. “I gave you 30 years of my f***ing career!”https://t.co/u4AENVJQsc pic.twitter.com/jLF7l8etYh
— CBS This Morning (@CBSThisMorning) March 6, 2019
“I have been assassinated. I have been buried alive. But I’m alive,” the I Believe I Can Fly singer said to King. King’s persistence in her line of questioning riled Kelly up at one point where he kept saying that it would be “stupid” on multiple times for him to do the things that he’s been accused of.
“Stop it. You don’t quit playing. Quit playing. I didn’t do this stuff! This is not me! I’m fighting for my [expletive] life!” he begins to shout in the clip shared by CBS Good Morning. “Y’all killing me with this s**t! I gave you 30 years of my career! Thirty years of my career! And y’all trying to k*ll me? You killing me, man! This is not about music! I’m trying to have a relationship with my kids! And I can’t do it! Y’all just don’t want to believe the truth! You don’t want to believe it.”
“So many people have been stealin’ my money. People was connected to my account. I went into – I went by myself for the first time to a Bank of America. Didn’t know what I was doing. Didn’t know what the hell was going on” — @RKelly tells @GayleKing https://t.co/usUB3hr4zR pic.twitter.com/fI0Fu4sVvx
— CBS This Morning (@CBSThisMorning) March 7, 2019
Elsewhere in the 80-minute interview, King brings up the state of R Kelly’s finances as he had been estimated to have millions. “That’s one rumor I wish that was true,” he said. “Here’s the deal. So many people have been stealing my money. People was connected to my account… I didn’t know what I was doing, didn’t know what the hell was going on. I was so tired of not knowing where my money was. A lot of it’s on me.”
Kelly claimed that after some time he went to the bank on a solo mission, for the first time ever, to find out the truth of his money. Besides placing the blame on others for the mismanagement of his funds, he also placed some of it on his ex-wife, Andrea Kelly, who is also accusing the singer of misconduct.
“How can I pay child support? How?! If my ex-wife is destroying my name and I can’t work? How can I work? How can I get paid? How can I take care of my kids? How?” — R. Kelly said through tearshttps://t.co/77tD4vMIri pic.twitter.com/cN4KXb5VCW
— CBS This Morning (@CBSThisMorning) March 7, 2019
“How can I pay child support? How?” Kelly once again passionately shouted. “If my ex-wife is destroying my name and I can’t work? How can I work? How can I get paid? How can I take care of my kids? How? Use your common sense!”
A Chicago judge set Kelly’s bond at $1 million, which in order to go free until trial he would have to pay $100,000. Kelly’s attorney, Steven Greenberg, said that it wouldn’t be that easy as his “finances were a mess.”
“This is someone who should be wealthy at this stage of his career,” Greenberg said to reporters according to Insider. “And through mismanagement, through hangers-on, and bad contracts, and bad deals, and bad leases like he had in his studio. He really doesn’t have any money at this point. I don’t even think he owns the rights to ‘I Believe I Can Fly.'”
Greenberg’s words didn’t seem to hold true as it was discovered by federal prosecutors that a secret bank account was set up for and controlled by R. Kelly shortly after being charged. According to a report by the Chicago Sun-Times, the singer “opened the bank account in the name of a nominee, and, in recorded jail calls, [R. Kelly] appears to have directed people to contact that person ‘to receive payments indirectly from Kelly.'”
Assistant U.S. Attorney Angel Krull writes in a court filing that Kelly set up the bank account under the name of an individual who also owns the company SomeBrotherLuv LLC. The singer shortly after assigned his royalties to flow into the account, which would then commence. The account was found to have $1.2 million in there, and they would also trace payments to Kelly’s attorney from there.
R. Kelly currently remains locked up as he awaits a proposed August trial.
