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Quick Biography:
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Robert Kelly was born on January 8, 1967 on the
south side of Chicago, Illinois.
-
He
attended Kenwood Academy High School. One
of his music teachers inspired him to be a
singer and he began singing on street corners or
wherever he can and eventually joined a local
band named Public Announcement
-
In
1997 he was nominated for an MTV Movie Award for
Best Movie Song for "I Believe I Can Fly" from
movie Space Jam
and the following year, he won a Grammy
Award for
Best Song Written Specifically for a Motion
Picture or for Television for this same song.
-
R.
Kelly is not only a singer, but is also produces
music. He produced
Aaliyah's first album in 1999 (Age Ain't
Nothing But a Number), which became a pop
hit.
-
In
2000 he married (backup singer) Andrea Lee.
They have two daughters and a son
-
In
2002, R. Kelly reached new heights to his fame.
Unfortunately, the fame was not positive.
Tapes began to appear on the internet with Kelly
having sexual relations with a young girl,
alleged to be only fourteen. It put a
black mark on his career, and also caused the
commercial failure of his 2002 album with rapper
Jay-Z Best of Both Worlds.
-
In
June of 2003 he was indicted on 21 counts of
child pornography - most of the counts have been
dropped.
Biography by Ian Ripley,
PopStarsPlus.com, Sr. Staff Writer
This biography may be copied in part
or in whole for non commercial purposes online or in hard copy and must
contain: (1) the name of the author, (2) the text "copied with
permission from PopStarsPlus.com" and (3) a link to the page that
contains the original biography.
The following biography
is from
Wikipedia.org
“The
Free Encyclopedia.”
R.
Kelly (born Robert Sylvester Kelly on January 8,
1967 in Chicago, Illinois) is an African American
R&B and soul singer, songwriter and record producer
who found international acclaim in the 1990s for his
diverse talents as a singer, songwriter, producer,
multi-instrumentalist and musician. Some of his most
popular material has had critics compare him to
legends like Marvin Gaye, whom they consider Kelly
as his heir apparent in terms of soul and R&B music.
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Biography
Early Life
Born
into poverty and distress in Chicago's Southside
projects, young Robert and his two brothers and
sister and mother Joanne struggled to survive in the
streets. After a shooting by a mugger as a teenager,
Kelly looked to basketball and music to get him away
from the atmosphere that had consumed so many young
Black individuals in the projects. Guided by his
teacher Lena McLin, Kelly entered a career in music
after wowing his high school friends singing the
classic Stevie Wonder ballad, "Ribbon in the Sky" at
a talent show in 1984.
Early Career
By
1988, Kelly had started to develop his unique sounds
playing his keyboards and becoming a street
performer. A young musical executive by the name of
Wayne Williams sought Kelly and helped get him sign
to his first and only record label, Jive Records, in
the end of 1989. After forming the group Public
Announcement, he and the group went into the
recording studio in the end of 1990 and recorded
much of what would be Born Into the '90s at a
recording studio Kelly leased. Within a few months,
songs like "She's Got that Vibe", "Slow Dance",
"Dedicated", "Definition of a Hottie" and "Honey
Love" would be the featured songs in Born Into the
'90s, which was released several days after Kelly's
25th birthday in 1992. A huge R&B success, the album
would yield the featured songs as the hits and would
eventually go Platinum selling over a million
copies.
12
Play and Aaliyah
By
1993, Kelly was on his own. It only took him a few
months to captivate the sounds that would fully
launch the young musician as one of the singular
most great talents of music during much of the
1990s. Released that fall, 12 Play fully launched
Kelly's career into the stratosphere and yielded the
smash hits "Sex Me", "Your Body's Calling" and the
monster #1 sex romp "Bump & Grind". Kelly was now so
big that by 1994 he was able to produce for other
acts. Starting with singer Aaliyah, he found huge
success for Aaliyah with the songs "Back and Forth"
and "Age Ain't Nothin' But a Number" off the album
of the same name of the latter hit.
Kelly
and Aaliyah allegedly married in 1994 despite the
fact that Kelly was then 27 and Aaliyah only 15. The
marriage was quickly annulled and Aaliyah ended her
partnership with Kelly going on to a hugely
successful career that was short-lived when she died
in a plane crash on August 25, 2001. Kelly's alleged
antics of falling in love with teenaged women would
begin to haunt the singer nearly ten years later but
at the time that marriage was brushed off to the
side with the denials of their union by both
singers.
R.
Kelly: The Singer, Songwriter and Producer
However
R. Kelly later admitted that he and the late singer
Aaliyah were indeed married. After his brush with
controversy, Kelly returned to the studio to record
his third album (his second solo effort) in the
studio he now owned. He released his self-titled
album in 1995, which, like its predecessor, became a
big success selling over 5 million copies and
unleashing classics like "You Remind Me of
Something" (a Top 5 Pop and #1 R&B record in 1995),
"I Can't Sleep (Baby If I)" (a Top 10 Pop and R&B
single in 1996) and his collaboration with legendary
R&B singer Ronald Isley of the famed Isley Brothers,
"Down Low" (a Top 10 pop and R&B record in 1996).
That album was hailed by some as the singer's most
mature record. Before then, people had perceived
Kelly to be a sexual deviant because of the lyrics
on 12 Play.
In
1995, Kelly found his huge success as a songwriter
penning hits for R&B group Changing Faces and pop
and R&B music legends Janet Jackson (producing the
remix for Jackson's 1994 smash, "Any Time, Any
Place") and Michael Jackson (penning and
co-producing the single, "You Are Not Alone" for
Jackson's HIStory album in 1995). The latter's
singles became the first in music history to debut
atop the Billboard Hot 100 at #1.
"I
Believe I Can Fly", R. and TP-2.Com
In
1996, fresh off the success of his own albums and
off of producing hits for other artists, Kelly would
release his most successful single ever with the
theme song from the Michael Jordan movie, Space Jam
- "I Believe I Can Fly". The inspirational song
became a number two smash at the end of the year and
helped Kelly win three Grammy Awards including Best
R&B Song. He was also nominated in the Song of the
Year and Record of the Year categories for that
particular song. Kelly took two years off from music
until coming back with the ambitious double concept
album, R. in 1998. That album featured a smash with
pop superstar Céline Dion titled "I'm Your Angel",
which became Kelly's second #1 single on the
Billboard pop singles chart. It also featured the
soul anthem for love-gone-wrong songs "When A
Woman's Fed Up" and the Sam Cooke-inspired "If I
Could Turn Back the Hands of Time". R. would become
Kelly's biggest-selling album in the U.S. selling
over 8 million copies alone.
In
2000, Kelly returned to his lover man persona with
TP-2.Com, which stood for Twelve Play 2, a sequel to
his 1993 classic album. Ironically the biggest
singles weren't based on his sexuall prowess - "I
Wish" (a top 10 pop and #1 R&B record) was dedicated
to the people Kelly adored who passed away including
his mother and a best friend from the old days, and
"Fiesta" (whose remix version featured acclaimed
rapper Jay-Z and was a top 5 pop and #1 R&B single)
was about partying. But the album's third-biggest
single, the loose and humor-filled "Feelin' On Yo'
Booty" was immediately comparable to Marvin Gaye in
his post-Let's Get It On period and to Kelly's
earlier hit "Bump & Grind".
The
Best of Both Worlds at the Worse of Bad Times
He also
became noted for his hooks on other artists' singles
including a collaboration with the late Notorious
B.I.G. on the single, "Fucking You Tonight", on the
late rapper's Life After Death album and was the man
to make hits off of songs for Puff Daddy (Satisfy)
and Fat Joe (We Thuggin'). By a couple of years, his
collaborations with Jay-Z finally led to what was
supposed to be a history-making project as the
rapper and the singer teamed up to record an album
together. Released in 2002, The Best of Both Worlds
debuted at #2 on the Billboard pop albums chart, but
with a combination of no singles and a controversy
regarding Kelly allegedly making a sex tape with an
underage teenage girl, the album was a
disappointment for both Kelly and Jay-Z, who didn't
want to be associated with the singer during his
child pornography trial.
The
Trouble With Girls
The
troubles following Kelly's alleged rapports with
underage girls go as far back as 1991, when several
young women had accused the singer of having sex
with them. In 1994 and 1995, rumours surfaced that
Kelly had married fellow singer, Aaliyah, though
neither party ever publically admitted to this
marriage. However, none of the prior reports reached
the level of publicity that followed the release of
a video tape in February 2002 that showed Kelly and
a 14-year-old daughter of an associate, and niece of
a former Kelly protege, engaging in sex. The tape,
released by an unknown source, was sent to the
Chicago Sun Times, the newspaper that broke the
story. While witnesses have identified Kelly and the
girl, the alleged girl herself and her parents have
denied that she is the person shown on the tape.
Bootleg copies of the tape became widely available
on the black market. The tape showed numerous sex
acts, including him urinating on the girl. In June
2002, Kelly was indicted in Chicago for seven counts
of soliciting a minor for child pornography, seven
counts of videotaping the acts, and seven counts of
producing child pornography.
In
addition to those charges, Kelly was further
indicted in Florida in January 2003 on twelve counts
of possession of child pornography. However, the
charges were dropped after the search that led to
the indictment was ruled illegal. In 2003, Dave
Chappelle made a skit showing R. Kelly pouring his
pee and "Doo-Doo" Butter on teenage girls. Despite
the apparent parody nature, R. Kelly himself was
said to have been rather offended by the sketch. In
2004, allegations emerged that among Kelly's sordid
tapes was one including gospel singer Deleon
Richards, who is also the wife of New York Yankees
baseball player Gary Sheffield.
The
"Pied Piper of R&B"
Despite
the controversies, Mr. Kelly moved on with his
career releasing his first album since the
allegations came up with the 1960s and 1970s-era
soul music-inspired Chocolate Factory in 2003. The
album became a big success yielding the number two
hit remix of "Ignition" and the top 10 single, "Step
In the Name Of Love" as well as the top 20 single,
"Snake". Kelly's February release of the album
started off an eventful year musically for the
singer-songwriter-producer as he would produce the
#1 hit "Bump, Bump, Bump" for the now-defunct teen
group B2K. His productions on the Isley Brothers'
Body Kiss album helped land the album at #1. His
collaborations with several other acts, including
the Big Tymers, Cassidy, and Jennifer Lopez, became
modest hits that year also. In 2004, he decided to
release a two-sided double-album showing his
different sides titled Happy People/U Saved Me with
one side, Happy People, celebrating club-going
smooth dance-oriented soul cuts and the other
showcasing Kelly's inspirational side. Both title
tracks were released as singles in mid-2004, with
"Happy People" becoming a moderate hit and "U Saved
Me" a relative flop whose lyrics and message were
lambasted as cheesy by many, including the
television station VH1.
Kelly
and Jay-Z released a follow up to the The Best of
Both Worlds album in October 2004, Unfinished
Business, which included eleven previously
unreleased tracks by the duo. It debuted at #1 on
the US Billboard albums chart. This release was
timed to coincide with The Best Of Both Worlds Tour.
Jay-Z eventually removed R. Kelly halfway through
the tour, after R. Kelly accused Jay-Z's entourage
of attacking him with Mace or pepper spray.
Ironically, Kelly had referred to himself on record
as the Pied Piper of R&B. Last year, he had a pop
hit in a collaboration with rapper Ja Rule and
singer Ashanti titled "Wonderful". He expects to
release a new album titled TP-3: Reloaded in July,
which he had promised fans would herald back to his
classic 12 Play period. In April 2005 Kelly released
the long awaited "In The Kitchen", well-known among
fans attending his live shows. The song was intended
to be the album's lead single and received major
radio airplay for a couple of months, but Kelly
eventually decided to leave it as a buzz single. It
was quickly followed up just weeks later with his
"Trapped In The Closet" saga, which rapidly climbed,
and then suddenly fell, the R&B and urban charts
nationwide.
After
the novelty success of the five-chapter song, which
Kelly had likened to an audio version of Desperate
Housewives prior to its release, Kelly revealed that
he was working on parts six through ten of the song.
They are to be released to radio later this summer,
in a similar fashion to how the first five were
released, and Kelly has promised that the next five
parts will tie up some loose ends that the first
five left.
TP-3:
Reloaded's third single, "Playas Only", has also hit
the radio airwaves and music video networks prior to
the album's release. The song features the rapper
The Game and is currently charting.
[Added by PSP: R.
Kelly's new album will be released in Spring 2007]
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The
above biography has been copied in part or in whole
from an article on
Wikipedia.org
"The Free Encyclopedia." It has been modified under
the NGU Free Document License Section 5 in the
following manner: (1) All links within the article
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not been copied. All of the above text is available
under the terms of the
GNU Free Document License.
URL of Original Article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._Kelly
Date Article Copied:
July 11, 2005
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