Soulless: The Case Against R. Kelly

by Jim DeRogatis

I tried to grapple as a critic (and now a professor) with the big questions posed by Kelly’s continued success. Can the ideal of separating the art from the artist apply to him, given the long list of disturbing accusations? And should it?

Take the most extreme examples you care to name: a clown-face painting by John Wayne Gacy, or the album Charles Manson recorded. I can’t condemn you if you find beauty or pleasure in either in a vacuum, but if you know the context, and you embrace those works because of that context, well, you’re a sick fuck and I want nothing to do with you.

He told me of mothers crying on his shoulder, seeing the scars of a suicide attempt on a girl’s wrists, the fear in their eyes. He detailed an aftermath that the public has never had to bear witness to. DeRogatis offered to give me access to every file and transcript he has collected in reporting this story—as he has to other reporters and journalists, none of whom has ever looked into the matter, thus relegating it to one man’s personal crusade. I thought that last fact merited a public conversation about why. . . . [H]e says, ultimately, ‘The saddest fact I’ve learned is nobody matters less to our society than young black women. Nobody.’”

Blame greed; no one wanted to shut down the cash machine. Blame celebrity; it’s the most addictive drug of our times. Blame a lack of empathy and morality almost as sickening as Kelly’s—or blame all that. Many knew, and few did anything to stop him.