R Kelly's Music

Back in the late 90s when Gary Glitter was jailed, his music stopped being played as a result. No doubt he had his fans, but popular opinion amongst my peers when he was appearing on Top of the Pops again in the mid-90s was that his music was a bit naff and should stay in the 70s. The fact his re-release of "Hello Hello I'm Back Again" failed to make the Top 40 implied the record buying public tended to agree.

Now R Kelly has been found guilty of his crimes will his music stop being played?

Some will have no doubt boycotted his music long before now and some were probably waiting to hear the verdict before making a decision. On the other end of the spectrum I read that some of his fans were blasting his music outside court. There will of course be others who will continue to listen to his music regardless.

I'm one who likes to think the music itself is the important thing, but I know it's not that simple. When Alisha's Attic were my favourite music act it wasn't because I considered their music alone to be better than anything else I'd ever heard, it was a combination of me loving their music and the fact they were 2 attractive females. 

If you do want to boycott his music though, where do you draw the line? It goes without saying that you won't be listening to any of his albums anymore. But what about Aaliyah's debut album that was written and produced by R Kelly? or any songs that involved R Kelly? what about albums where one track features R Kelly?

Do you boycott films like "Space Jam" or "Batman & Robin" which feature R Kelly's music?

When you consider those people in music who have been found guilty of a serious crime, boycotting anything they're associated with means boycotting a lot of music. Even then, you could be listening to a song with an orchestra on it where a member of it may have committed a serious crime but you don't even know the person is even playing on it let alone their crime.

In the early to mid-90s one of the biggest raves was Dreamscape and they had tape packs for all their events bar the first one. In the early days there was an MC who would frequently appear in sets called Eze Vibe. What I discovered maybe 5 years ago was that he was convicted in 1999 of murdering his 4 year old stepson and had subjected him to torture prior to that. A pretty horrific crime you'll no doubt agree.

However these Dreamscape tapes are an important part of rave history and I'm not going to stop listening to them because of this. For me this is all about the music, back in the 90s the DJs and MCs were generally just names on the flyer. Some still are even in the age of the internet.

Back to R Kelly, and as owner of all his albums up to and including "TP3 Reloaded" I won't be boycotting his music. The fact of the matter is that I've never seen R Kelly as anything other than a musician. I can't think of any R Kelly lyrics I can relate to and there has never been anything about R Kelly's image I've admired. Furthermore the controversy surrounding his private life has always been there for as long as I've been listening to his music.

One argument is that as long as R Kelly's music is alive he'll continue to make money from it. This may be true with streaming, but he's not going to be making any money from me playing his CDs.