Wait, I'm really, really out of touch on music, but literally the only thing I know about R. Kelly is that he got busted ages ago for, inter alia IIRC, peeing on underage girls. That wasn't career ending?
That is, I think his reputation is mud enough, but I didn't know he was still working.
It's funny - and I think I'm right - that "young girls" means 12-15 year olds, who are more accurately called old girls. "Girls" without the "young" means elementary school age girls. "Little girls" means actual young girls.
Hell, Dave Chapelle did a skit about it over a decade ago. If this phase change in how we treat sexual assault is to be complete, he has to go.
I'll admit I did not expect the punchline to the FPP. My brain briefly went oh no not him too between reading that he was fired and the reason why.
This has been pissing me off for years, and Jim DeRogatis has been doing incredible work.
As an aside, I saw the post title, and thought, "I know that name." It's because I've read so much of his writing on the topic.
I mean, the annulment of his marriage to Aaliyah and the peeing on girls jokes have be widespread and well-known for fifteen years. But apparently he's just got a tainted reputation from it - not true wrecked career and jailed.
R. Kelly isn't on the radio anymore but he never stopped being hugely popular with his fans despite all the peeing on people and statutory rape and enslaving people. Neither did Chris Brown after all the violence and domestic violence and whatnot.
3: Yeah, that is weird, and I think you've described the usage correctly. A little girl is, say, 8 or younger. A girl or a big girl is maybe 8-13 or so. And then a young girl is anyone post-pubescent that seems too young to be called a woman.
And "young man" either means 3 through 6 or 18 through 40.
Aziz Ansari's jokes about R. Kelly surprised me because there's no direct connection to the offensive toxicity of what's known about him as an abuser. I don't alway have the energy to care about how people choose to partition their lives in dealing with art/artist separation but sometimes it's obvious and weird.
I don't follow this man at all, but, according to wikip, the explanation for why he's not jailed is clear enough: evidence suppressed in Florida on Fourth Amendment grounds, acquitted in Chicago after a years-delayed trial.
Right. That doesn't seem so much "inexplicably indifferent legal system" as "beyond a reasonable doubt is a hell of a strong standard, if you've got the kind of lawyers that can make it get taken seriously."
I haven't read deeply on this but my understanding is that the R. Kelly prosecutions have suffered because clearly and obviously victimized people have largely been unwilling to testify against him, in turn because they have been paid off. It is not an uncommon problem (not that I am an expert) in basically all domestic abuse situations (not the payiffs, the victim being unwilling to testify). The baffling thing isn't the criminal prosecution angle but the pass that he gets in the industry and among fans. "Pass" isn't quite the right word; everyone knows, it's not like his reputation is untarnished and there aren't people with qualms about working with him, but he continues to make tons of money and there are more than enough people willing to dance around that while the money flows. There's also definitely some sort of black man/black victim thing going on which I am not skilled enough to articulate well or understand, but as someone already said Floyd Mayweather (at values of much, much more money) and Chris Brown are treated similarly.
There's also definitely some sort of black man/black victim thing going on which I am not skilled enough to articulate well or understand,
Me neither, of course, but a generalized sense of the illegitimacy of the criminal justice system because of the systemic abuses against black men, which unfortunately turns into minimizing or ignoring the harm done by black men even when there's respectably reliable evidence that they are abusers and criminals, looks to be what's going on to me.
I don't think Chris Brown is the best example, because if IIRC people were sufficiently upset by that incident that he kind of disappeared from the scene for a year or so at the height of his popularity. He's back now and mostly fine, so he didn't suffer that much, but he did face some minor consequences, probably because Rihanna is rich and famous. If she had been poor, anonymous and black, like the women that 90s hip hop artists bragged about raping, killing and beating up, Chris Brown would have suffered no consequences at all. See, e.g., Snoop Dogg, Ice Cube, etc.
14- I'd frame the underlying, subconscious attitude that gives the pass much more negatively -- black men are already balls of id/quasi-animals and the abuse of black women is *shrug* so why worry about it too much. This attitude is of course primarily driven by white racism but sadly seems shared by some black people in the industry. But I was serious when I said I am not competent to usefully understand or articulate what is going on.
14- I'd frame the underlying, subconscious attitude that gives the pass much more negatively -- black men are already balls of id/quasi-animals and the abuse of black women is *shrug* so why worry about it too much. This attitude is of course primarily driven by white racism but sadly seems shared by some black people in the industry.
This would imply that white fans would downplay the allegations and black fans would take them seriously and stop being fans, which I don't think is the case. 14 sounds better.
I definitely got the impression that 17 was true, not 18. But the dynamic seemed odd. The long trial delay certainly helped too. They delayed long enough, caught a few breaks at trial, and had talented lawyers.
I think in this particular area there's a lot of internalized racism- I don't think even most hardcore fans think R.Kelly/Mayweather/Brown were framed or weren't doing what they were accused of, they've just chosen not to care. I could be wrong.
R. Kelly was scheduled to be the headliner for the brand new Fashion Meets Music Festival here in the heart of the heart of all a few years ago. A few of the other performers announced that they would boycott the festival if he performed, and eventually the boycott got big enough that the organizers had no choice but to cancel his performance. Mr Kelly didn't make any fuss about this, so I imagine they paid him something, at least.
20: Sexism too. With Kelly in particular it's these fast little girls these days are out of control and not being raised right and who can be surprised? There's a combination of judgmental churchiness and respectability politics and desire to see black men succeed professionally that overlaps in awful ways. (Not universally. I have lots of friends who argue in everyone's comments everywhere whenever his name gets mentioned. But my kids all know "I Believe I Can Fly" and not from me and yours may well too.)
Oh, hey, that's R. Kelly? Whoops. (My children had a weirdly obsessive Space Jam period a decade or so ago.)
23: It's going through another wave of resurgence among millennials--nostalgic mixed with amazement that something so absurd ever happened. Side note that its now-a-period-piece promotional website is somehow still up.
I had no idea that was him either.
23,34 Awful movie. As if Bugs would ever suck up to anyone.
[Where's my hat tip heebie? ]
Possibly related to the thread, maybe a derail-- Curtis Mayfield's "If There is a Hell Below, We're All Going to Go" is completely insane and a great groove.
It's about time somebody merged Cotton Mather and pop music.
27 Great groove. Thanks for putting it in my head.
It's the opening theme to the new David Simon/HBO show on porn. I find that show extremely boring and with two James Francos too many. But one of the great opening credits ever.
DeRogatis got fired from The Rolling Stone in 1996 for writing a negative review of Hootie and the Blowfish. That decision sure doesn't hold up well!
You know who liked Hootie and the Blowfish?
Hitler Bo Diddley! (From a 1996 Rolling Stone interview--it was July so I think before the DeRogatis thing.)
Is there anyone you do like?
Well, there's a few guys. Hootie and the Blowfish. Yeah, yeah. They're neat. A little different, you know. You'd be surprised, man. I like a lot of the things that's being played. I like a lot of the rap music up until it gets dirty. Then I don't want any part of it.
[Where's my hat tip heebie? ]
Wait. Did you really send this to me? I can tell you're kidding but I can't tell if you're also serious.
You know who's from my hometown?
Bo Diddley! He came and talked to my middle school.
He put in the other thread, but it was well after you had it up at the other place.
29 Haven't watched it yet so didn't know that.
34 I'm not at the other place so I did not know that.
I didn't actually open the article at the other place. I just remember seeing Mariel Hemingway.
Curtis Mayfield's "If There is a Hell Below, We're All Going to Go" is completely insane and a great groove.
I was just thinking recently about Curtis/Live!, which is an all-time great live album. Full of amazing grooves, really, really live feel -- you can tell they're playing a small club and the band is really playing off of each other. And, it's hard for me to think of anything else which is both so passionate about the need for social change, and comes out of what feels like a profound sense of love. He is angry, but the performance is more motivated by the feeling that people should be able to do better than by anger.
For example, the part of "Mighty Mighty (Spade and Whitey)" starting at "there really is no difference."
30. Huh. I was listening to artists like Ann Peebles and this came on.
Aaand her weird but groovy "Old Man with Young Ideas" extolling virtues of a May-December romance
While I'm listing odd soul tracks that are good, Gino Washington's "Puppet on a String" ambiguously pointed at either love or addiction, maybe both at once.
Oooh there's a vampy hipster version of Puppet on a String by the Detroit Cobras, pretty good.
Gino Washington was great because one of his songs was called "Gino is a Coward". Always love the third-person self-description in song titles.
44: Do you know of other examples of this?
a generalized sense of the illegitimacy of the criminal justice system because of the systemic abuses against black men, which unfortunately turns into minimizing or ignoring the harm done by black men even when there's respectably reliable evidence that they are abusers and criminals, looks to be what's going on to me.
Or, to put it more simply: he's a criminal, and, fortunately for him, he works in a sector that valorises criminals. If he'd been acccused of a non-sexual assault - hell, if he'd been convicted and sentenced for a non-sexual assault - it would barely be thought worth mentioning.
I have an update from our ATM from last weekend, the one whose boyfriend wouldn't go down on her. (one sec.)
She writes:
The boyfriend stuff isn't perfect - it's not a thing that's just going to be forgiven and forgotten easily. But the icy tension is gone and somehow we've gotten to a really lovey-dovey touchy state.
At first he was just saying sorry, and it seemed really empty to me, so I was not accepting the apology. Then he wrote a super long email acknowledging how awful it was and how he was terrified I was going to leave him. That he'd been selfish and hadn't realized just how bad what he said was, and that he's never said anything before about it because he figured it was a minor blip in all the good things. And now he regrets letting it go for so long because while he was just actively not doing oral, he hadn't thought through how much I may have been wanting it. He said it was unfair because I give him oral all the time and he loves it, and he's taken it for granted and even realized that it is often required if he's going to get an erection. So he'd thought about what it would be like to hypothetically know that I had all along had bad thoughts about it. He went on to say that he had been unfair to me because I deserved someone who was eagerly excited to do that for me, and he should have told me up front so I could make that choice to keep dating other people or whatever.
So the apology email went a huge long way in actually tapping into the sort of apology I wanted. He has also cried a lot which honestly made me feel better.
I should have probably gone presidential for that.
What if I used a VPN to hide my server?
I'm not responsible for every horrible pun here.
54: That's right. Stanley bears ultimate responsibility for all of them.
That is awesome, ATM-er! Maybe continuing a thoughtful correspondence would be helpful, and perhaps it could evolve into an erotic correspondence??? I was a downer on the original thread, sorry, am very pleased things have gone in a better direction.
45, there's Bo Diddley, and "Wu Tang Clain Ain't Nuthin To Fuck Wit" comes to mind.
56: That's good, but I was thinking more along the lines that he was responsible for creating an environment in which punning was ubiquitous, unavoidable, and therefore tolerated.
46 is entirely right, and there's a streak of ugliness going back a long way in black music that is or has been venerated by white kids: looking at you, Robert Johnson.
45. Roxanne's Revenge, a bunch of Yellowman tracks, KRS-One, Doug E Fresh, maybe Schoolly D
In both dancehall and at least early hip-hop, performers would mention themselves a lot in the tracks; I think that a) listeners needed help to know who made the track and b) singing about yourself was part of the genre.
there's a streak of ugliness going back a long way in black music that is or has been venerated by white kids:
By kids of all colours, actually.
61: The Wurzels also sing songs in which the narrator talks about going to see the Wurzels, which is a bit meta.
Darius Rucker of Hootie has a respectable country music career now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvKyBcCDOB4
that song is super singable and is likely the most popular country song at karaoke
Rucker didn't write it but he recorded the most popular version
the songs weird origins:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wagon_Wheel_(song)
"I'd gotten a (Bob) Dylan bootleg in like ninth grade and I let (band co-founder) Ketch (Secor) listen to it, and he wrote the verses because Bob kind of mumbles them and that was it. We've been playing that song since we were like 17, and it's funny because we've never met Dylan, but the song is technically co-written by Bob Dylan."