Uncharted: Crime and Mayhem in the Music Industry, episode 51: The horrific rap sheet of R. Kelly
Throughout the 90s and early 2000s, R. Kelly was selling tens of millions of records—perhaps as many as 75 million worldwide—winning awards, having hit singles, and collaborating with Michael Jackson, Britney Spears, Whitney Houston, Justin Bieber, Chris Brown, and many others. He was worth millions and millions of dollars, and people called him “the King of R&B.”
But there was more to R. Kelly than just his music.
In 1991, Barry Hankerson, a record producer and founder of Blackground Records, took his 12-year-old niece, Aaliyah Houghton, to meet the newest signing to Jive Records—an R&B singer named Robert Kelly, soon to be known as R. Kelly.
Within a year, witnesses testified that Kelly was having sexual contact with Aaliyah when she was 13 and 14, as Kelly was writing and producing her debut album. A year later, he and Aaliyah were married in secret. It had to be a secret—he was 27, and she was 15.
This was only the beginning of a series of investigations in multiple jurisdictions that would involve racketeering, sexual exploitation of minors, coercion and forced labour, production of child pornography, and the transportation of people for immoral purposes.
The result was one of the greatest crime stories and falls from fame we’ve ever seen in the music industry—and in all of celebritydom, if we’re honest.
This is episode 51 of Uncharted: Crime and Mayhem in the Music Industry. And this time, it’s the horrific rap sheet of R. Kelly.
In addition to the podcasts, you can hear Uncharted on these Corus radio stations (all times local):
- Toronto: AM 640 (4-5am)
- London: 980 CFPL (4-5am)
- Vancouver: 980 CKNW (1-2am)
- Edmonton: 630 CHED (1-2am)
- Calgary: QR77 (770 AM) (1-2am)
- Winnipeg: 680 CJOB (1-2am)
