Kelly - Ignition Lyrics. You remind me of something I just can't think of what it is Girl please, let me stick my key in your ignition babe So I can get this thing. Sep 3, 2018 - R. Kelly sold four million copies and produced three platinum singles -- 'You Remind Me of Something,' 'Down Low (Nobody Has to Know),'.
It is 3pm on a sunny afternoon in August and half-a-dozen street kids on scrambler bikes are gathered around the gates of the Chocolate Factory in a regenerating suburb of Chicago. R Kelly converted this former home of Trax Records, the fabled acid house label, into his own studios in 2000 and now frequently lives and sleeps here, too. 'Kelly! Kelly!' the kids chant, waiting for a glimpse.
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The week before we meet, this dearly beloved figurehead of the African-American Dream won seven of the eight gongs for which he was nominated at Billboard magazine's prestigious R&B and hip hop awards. He also has a new double album to promote, which includes the uplifting 'Happy People' - another smash in the vein of 'Ignition (Remix)', a number one single for four weeks in the UK last summer. But sunshine, innocence and joy notwithstanding, Kelly is surrounded by darkness.
Notoriously eccentric and reclusive as well as one of the most influential figures in pop, the singer is currently staring at a 19-year stretch in an Illinois state penitentiary if convicted of 14 charges of child pornography stemming from a home video that allegedly depicts him having sex with a 14-year old girl and otherwise degrading her. After the story first surfaced, he claimed: 'Osama bin Laden is the only one who knows exactly what I'm going through.'
Throughout a career in which he has sold more than 23 million albums, and worked with everyone from the Notorious BIG to Celine Dion and Michael Jackson, Kelly has been pursued by rumours of his interest in underage girls. In 1994, he married 15-year old singer Aaliyah (later to die in a plane crash at the age of 22), who falsified her birthdate on the marriage certificate to make herself seem 18. At the same time he wrote and produced a song for her called 'Age Ain't Nothin' But A Number'. The marriage was annulled and no charges were brought.
When the present scandal broke, other reports revealed that Kelly had settled a civil case in 1998 involving a sexual relationship with another then-underage girl, and that he was in the process of settling a lawsuit brought by an Epic Records intern making similar allegations. Earlier this year, prosecutors in Florida dropped 12 child pornography charges against him after a judge ruled that photographs seized from his home allegedly showing him with yet a further minor were seized illegally.
Kelly denies that it is him in the videotape at the centre of the outstanding charges, and that the girl involved is the niece of one of his former protegees, Stephanie Edwards, who had recorded with Kelly under the name Sparkle. But the FBI insists the tape is not doctored. A trial date has yet to be set, almost two years after the indictment.
In the meantime, he continues recording and is committed to a handful of promotional duties to support the release of the new album, Happy People/U Saved Me , including this first interview with a British publication since the story broke. The media circus and chaos around him is part of a wider parable on the morals of the music industry. The immediate problem is that we are entering Kelly's own strange world where everything happens, if it happens at all, on R Kelly time.
3PM TURNS INTO 5.30PM AND WE ARE TOLD by Kelly's chief publicist and nose-wiper, Regina, that Kelly would like to take his wife and a dancer from his entourage for something to eat. Might we like to return at 9pm? As we leave the studios, we catch sight of him for the first time, a leviathan of a man, 6'3' and in splendid shape. With an immaculate set of cornrows, fancy jet-black shades and dressed entirely in black, he cuts a very different dash from the ghostly figure snapped, unshaven, handcuffed, in prison fatigues leaving a Chicago courthouse. He takes his wife Andrea Lee - a choreographer and dancer from his stage show whom he married in 1996 and who has stood by him throughout all his recent strife - and associate to dinner a mile down the road. They leave in a two-storey tour bus with blacked-out windows.
Back at the Chocolate Factory, 9pm, on cue, there is a disgruntled array of people on the publicity trail, from Top of The Pops to Japanese MTV. Regina is busily culling each organisation's allotted time. Questions from the TV people that have been submitted in advance to Kelly's people are being scribbled over and selectively eliminated. Everybody is told that for legal reasons the court case cannot be mentioned. To reinforce the point, seven members of his entourage will sit in on all the interviews.
I put myself last in the queue to meet Kelly and overhear a radio interviewer asking questions about Daniel Bedingfield and Robbie Williams's failure to crack America. When it is my turn, I leave the holding pool and am quickly ushered into a dimly lit recording studio and told to sit at a seat in front of Kelly. He seems largely oblivious to me, as a friend in a baseball outfit whispers into his ear. Another press agent shouts 'Go!' at me, yet Kelly's friend continues whispering and the man himself chortles as he finishes. The agent shouts 'Go!' again. So I go.
To begin with, he circumnavigates every subject listlessly but a question about God catches his attention and he comes to life and launches into long, rambling answers, even if they bear only a vague relation to the questions. He never takes his dark glasses off. It is one of the most intriguingly bonkers 20 minutes I have ever spent with a celebrity, beating encounters with Stevie Nicks, Geri Halliwell, Yoko Ono and both Beckhams.
We talk a little about his connection at the most basic level with his public. He says: 'In life, you have people that love to party. That's me. People that love God. That's me. People that love sex. That's me. People that love people. That's me. And people that make mistakes.' He pauses. 'That's me also.'
ROBERT KELLY NEVER KNEW HIS FATHER and was brought up in the ghetto projects of Chicago. He won a scholarship to a good school, but was still almost illiterate when he left it at 16. A basketball ace, he turned to music after realising that girls didn't follow the boys on the court. 'Not only did I get an A in music but I got an A in ladies,' he tells me, 'because all the ladies loved me for it.'
Kelly first made his name at the tail end of the New Jack Swing era with his 1994 album, 12 Play . If Bobby Brown upped the sexuality in the genre at the start of the Nineties, Kelly gave it a permanent erection. Tracks such as 'Sex Me', 'Bump'n'Grind', '12 Inch Play' and 'I Like The Crotch On You' spoke for themselves. The rest barely let up. The record was a street favourite in the UK. In the US it was a phenomenon. His second, self-titled album saw self-reflective gospel tunes temper the sex songs : now he was a master of the sacred as well as the profane. Further hits followed including 'I Believe I Can Fly', from the movie Space Jam - never mind that Kelly has a phobia about flying.
We talk music and Kelly says he shows no regard for genre and is as fond of writing for Celine Dion as for Nivea and Ginuwine. It is part of his realisation of the American dream - to succeed at every level. I ask what he thinks of when he sees his fans outside the studio, waiting on a stolen word. 'I am very conscious,' he says, 'of who I am as an artist and as an inspirational person.'
If anyone is Kelly's own inspiration it is his late mother, Joanne, whom has frequently celebrated through his songs. 'I learnt a whole lot from my mother,' he says. 'About music, relationships, being a good person, loving people, the whole of life. I learnt about everything from her. Every single day I think about her. All through the day.' Dr Freud would probably have had a field day with him.
I ask if his own marriage has changed him. 'It hasn't changed me much. They say marriage will change you but it didn't change me. Being in love changed me.' How? 'Well, you come to appreciate love more when you in love. Just as you like cereal until you come to your favourite kind of cereal and then you can appreciate cereal even more now, you know? You love a lot of people but when you in love it goes deeper and higher at the same time.'
He has two daughters of his own now. We talk about bringing them up. 'I'm very responsible. And with ability you have to have responsibility. I'm not perfect. But you have to make sure that your children will know that daddy makes mistakes .
'The most important thing ,' he continues, 'is that you realise your mistakes once you make them, like daddy does, and know that a lesson can be a blessing.'
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And what does the American Dream mean? 'For a young black kid in Chicago at the moment it means just the same as it means for anybody else.' Like what? 'Success, you know? Fame, you know? By fame it could just mean being successful: a wife, a dog, kids and a big ole house with a picket fence.'
I ask if he feels he was chosen by a higher power to be famous. 'Yeah, sometimes, but sometimes I feel like I was picked in the wrong way. Well, people, they see you on TV and they automatically say 'OK, got him down, that's what he is, that's what he represents, that's who he is,' and sometimes that isn't necessarily the truth.'
Whatever the truth about R Kelly, the music industry has chosen to see only what it wants to. Of his many collaborators, only the rapper Fat Joe has made an official statement of support, telling the Associated Press: 'R. Kelly is the greatest at his craft, no one is more talented. I feel that music overcomes all obstacles that are thrown in an artist's path.' Yet there has been plenty of tacit encouragement. 'R&B radio clearly has decided to rally around him,' says Sean Ross, editor-in-chief of the US trade publication Airplay Monitor . Meanwhile Kelly has continued to write for other acts,including Britney Spears (with 'Outrageous' and its chorus: 'Outrageous: My sex drive') and American boy band B2K, who had a number one hit last year with his 'Bump Bump Bump'. 'He sent us some music for the guys, and that record really stood out,' says Max Gousse, a vice president at Epic. 'We definitely did weigh it [the scandal], but it was undeniable - a hit record is a hit record.' The scandal first broke on the eve of the release of the Best Of Both Worlds album, a hugely hyped pairing with Jay-Z. The rapper swiftly distanced himself from the project, but the two are now planning an extensive US tour this autumn.
An obvious comparison is with Michael Jackson - for whom Kelly wrote the richly titled 'One More Chance', the lead single from Jackson's greatest hits album last year. But while Jackson's career is in the doldrums and he remains a pariah, Kelly is feted as long as his golden-touch remains.
KNOWING THAT THE COURT CASE WAS OFF limits in interview, I had earlier spoken to Jim DeRogatis, the journalist for the Chicago Sun-Times who first broke the story. After drawing comparison between R Kelly and Marvin Gaye in a review, DeRogatis received an anonymous fax, clearly from someone associated with the singer, intimating that Gaye's libidinous antics were nothing compared to the goings-on at camp Kelly. DeRogatis made inquiries and wrote a report in December 2000, airing a number of rumours about Kelly. The paper received no lawsuit from Kelly's label or lawyer.
DeRogatis approached Stephanie Edwards when writing his initial piece, having received a tip-off about Kelly and her niece, but she declined, thinking the allegations nonsense. Eleven months later, Edwards called DeRogatis back. She had seen the video. 'She was hysterical and in tears. She didn't know what to do. She'd called the police and the division of children's services and broke down, saying to me 'It's all true.'
A couple of weeks later, DeRogatis got a call to go to his mailbox. 'And there was the videotape, unmarked, no note, no anything. I sat with Stephanie and showed her the tape and said 'Is this what you saw?' and she broke down and said 'Yes it is' and then as soon as we knew what we had, we turned it over to the police. This was evidence of a felony.' Kelly was indicted.
DeRogatis asks if I have seen the tape. I haven't. 'If you'd seen the tape you'd know that this is not Tommy Lee and Pam Anderson,' he says. 'It's not fun and games. This girl has the disembodied look of a rape victim and he's urinating in her mouth. It's a sickening spectacle.' DeRogatis was a fan of Kelly's before he began his investigations and remains a partial one of his music to this day. 'But it's pretty hard to hear this guy sing that he wants to ride his girl like his Jeep,' he says, 'after you've seen that video.'
THERE MAY BE CLUES TO KELLY'S STATE OF mind on his records. After the allegations were made, he fashioned an album that was largely scrapped, though some tracks were tagged onto an extra CD with his last album, the brilliant Chocolate Factory . The scrapped record was his confessional, much of it available to download on the net, a sometimes ludicrously lyrical soul-rock operetta in which Kelly goes to the gates of heaven, is judged by St Peter and forgiven by his mother.
I ask Kelly if he has ever been embarrassed by singing a song due to its naked lyrical content. He says: 'Like what?' I say: 'Like 'Heaven I Need A Hug', from that very album. He looks affronted. 'Never! If I'm going to be a leader then I have to go places that other people are afraid to go to. That's what makes a leader. To be not afraid to step out and go over the frontline. To stare darkness right in the face.'
The U Saved Me half of his new CD is R Kelly's first fully blown church affair. Whether it was intended as such or not, in the light of his legal situation, it feels again like a call for salvation. 'Unfortunately, some people don't appreciate the spiritual songs from R Kelly because that's not how R Kelly started,' he says, musing on the subject. He continues: 'Sometimes you have to jive a person before you can knock 'em out, though. I look at my music in the beginning and the sexual songs, the partying songs, those are the realities because those things happen. Those things have happened today - somebody had sex, somebody went to a club, somebody met somebody, some things went down, some of us weren't meant to be here, some of us were supposed to be abortions!'
Without let-up he continues: 'But by destiny we are here and the inspirational songs are something I choose to do. If I hadn't struggled then I wouldn't be inspired to cry out. You see what I'm saying? If there's no fire, there's no scream. If there's no scream, then no one hears you and no one comes to help you in the first place. The depth of my struggle has definitely determined the height of my success. To be able to teach my kids not just about success but about the struggle that comes with it.'
Time's up. Kelly rises as I make to leave and raises his dark glasses for the first time, as if he has exorcised something. He asks my name. I tell him and he whispers 'God be with you', as if he is a minister. Regina joins me outside and says she has seldom seen Robert talk so frankly. She says she'll try to arrange some more time with him. I think we both know it'll never happen.
Later that evening, I am listening to his new record over and over. It is light and sumptuous and brilliantly elevating: black music history - Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, Al Green, even Frankie Beverley - has found its modern exponent in Kelly. Happy People is as joyous as he is bleak, U Saved Me a beautifully presented call to the heavens.
There are people from his entourage and record company around. One corners me and I am asked for the second time today if I have seen the sex tape. I say no, once again. I ask them if they have. No, they say. Because if they had they might worry about working the campaign for the record. OK, I say. But knowing it exists, isn't it still hard? The answer is emphatic. 'Just listen to all this sweet, sweet music. I'm working the music.'
Anita Baker
One of the alleged victims of Grammy-winning singer R. Kelly told Channel 2 Action News she thought his arrest would never come — until it happened Friday.
“When I first heard the news, I started crying because it was tears of joy,” Asante McGee said.
RELATED: R. Kelly surrenders to Chicago police
Here’s a new picture just into our newsroom of R. Kelly turning himself in to authorities in Chicago tonight. @wsbtv pic.twitter.com/D8ReQwMGC7
— Justin Wilfon (@JustinWilfonWSB) February 23, 2019McGee said she used to live with Robert Sylvester Kelly, better known as R&B artist R. Kelly, at his mansion in Johns Creek about six years ago. She is one of many women accusing him of physically, emotionally and sexually abusing them at his homes in Chicago and North Fulton County.
“To know that we finally got an indictment after two decades, after him getting away with the allegations, it was a joyous moment for me,” she told Channel 2. “Just knowing the things that he was doing to those young girls was really sickening.”
MORE: ‘He’s literally the devil’: R. Kelly accuser details alleged abuse in Johns Creek
McGee was featured in the recent docuseries “Surviving R. Kelly,” which aired in January. Kelly has denied all allegations made against him. McGee believes the TV show led to Kelly’s charges, who was indicted Friday on 10 charges of aggravated sexual abuse in Chicago.
RELATED: ‘Let these girls go’: Georgia family begs R. Kelly to stop alleged abuse against women
She met the now 52-year-old entertainer when she was in her 30s, she told the news station. McGee said Kelly took her and two other women to his Johns Creek mansion in 2016. She accused him of making odd demands, controlling them and sexually humiliating them.
MORE: R. Kelly responds to docuseries through lawyer, denies allegations of sexual abuse
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“He told me when I go get clothes, to bring all of my stuff to his house including my computer because I’m going to be living here with daddy,” she previously told Channel 2. “He told me (to move in with him). That was not up for discussion.”
RELATED: R. Kelly accused of abusing women, running 'cult' in Johns Creek
“There’s no way he’ll get away this time.”
At 11, hear from one of R. Kelly’s Atlanta accusers on the new charges he’s now facing. @wsbtv pic.twitter.com/42g5WS1T60
Following the documentary’s premiere, TMZ reported the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office was investigating the allegations made against Kelly that involve his mansion in Johns Creek. DA spokesman Chris Hopper told AJC.com on Friday the office still has no comment.
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However, a no-bail arrest warrant was issued Friday afternoon by Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx in Chicago. She unveiled a grand jury indictment against Kelly that involves four victims, three of them minors at the time of the alleged crimes.
MORE: R. Kelly charged with 10 counts of aggravated sexual abuse involving four victims
The singer, known for hit singles such as “I Believe I Can Fly” and “Ignition,” turned himself in to Chicago police around 9 p.m. Friday, according to the Chicago Tribune. A bond hearing is scheduled for Saturday afternoon in Chicago.
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“There’s no way he will get away this time,” McGee said.
In other news:
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