R. Kelly has revealed that he has not stopped singing even in prison. In a seven-minute phone interview with the Inmate Tea With A&P podcast, he broke his three-year silence following his 30-year sentence for racketeering and sex trafficking.
The former R&B star called in on a monitored prison phone line and informed the show’s hosts that he had been told he was meant to sing to someone “Happy Birthday.”
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According to Billboard, the two female hosts laughed and called the 58-year-old singer the “King of R&B” as well as his original honorific title, “the Pied Piper of R&B”.
Kelly, who declared he was feeling “great,” burst into the opening words of his 1998 song “When a Woman’s Fed Up,” singing a cappella as one of the hosts danced, laughed, and excitedly performed backup vocals.
The musician described singing as “a beautiful disease that’s uncurable” when asked if he had continued to use his skills while incarcerated.
Kelly said that he has composed “like 25 albums” after being sentenced to three decades in jail in 2021.
Kelly was also convicted in 2022 of three counts of producing child pornography and three counts of enticement of a minor.
Kelly was recognized for his active nature before his imprisonment, having released 18 studio albums between 1992 and 2016, as well as 33 chapters in his unconventional “Trapped in the Closet” musical soap opera series between 2005 and 2012.
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Kelly added that he is attempting to get out of prison so that he can return to “what it is God gave me, my talent,” besides recording music from his cell in a federal prison in North Carolina.
Last month, Manhattan’s 2nd Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals denied Kelly’s request to appeal his New York conviction, which, given the singer’s age, could keep him in prison until his 80s if he serves the whole term.
Born Robert Sylvester Kelly, he has long been accused of sexual and physical abuse of women, as well as an illegal marriage in 1994 to a then-15-year-old Aaliyah when he was 27.
In 2017, it was stated that he held six women, some of whom were supposedly minors, as hostages in what was called a “cult,” where he allegedly controlled every area of their lives, including when they showered, ate, dressed, and had sex with him.
Later, several women came forward to report that Kelly had sexually and physically abused them; some of these women even discussed their experiences for the first time in public in the shocking Surviving R. Kelly series. Kelly and his legal team have refuted the claims.
Buku Abi, his daughter, who is now 26, said in a documentary last year that her father sexually assaulted her as a youngster, which his lawyer denied.
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