Soulacoaster

by R. Kelly

  I’d tell people who I thought were close to me: Listen to the facts! If you’re gonna have an opinion about something, make it your opinion. But whatever you do, don’t go by something said by somebody pissed off because they didn’t get what they wanted from me.”

  Thank God I had the Chocolate Factory. It lifted me up. It was a safe place where I could create and reach for the sky from my basement.

  As I faced the biggest challenge of my life and the brutal legal battle kicked off, I wanted to respond positively. I wanted to offer my fans—and myself—a big box of musical chocolates. I called the album Chocolate Factory and designed it in gold foil with a bright red ribbon on top.

  Before the album came out, though, I wanted to release a single that explained where I was coming from. My life was on crutches, but I knew I’d walk again. I had many thoughts boiling up inside and I needed to get them out. Mostly, though, I needed to talk with my mother. I missed her so much. That’s why “Heaven, I Need a Hug” starts with these words to her:

  Dear Mama, you wouldn’t believe what I’m goin’ through

  But still I got my head up just like I promised you

  Ever since you left, your baby boys been dealin with

  Problem after problem, tell me what am I supposed to do

  See, I get lost sometimes, don’t understand this place

  Look in the mirror sometimes and see a troubled face

  And then my tears roll down and hit the sink

  Then I hold my head up high, I hope the Man upstairs can hear my cry

  All these questions deep inside my mind

  Like if Jesus loved me, why’d He leave my side, Mama?

  I’m still trying to get the answer why

  You were young, 45, and you had to die

  I’m always tryin’ to help people out

  And its them same people tryin’ to take food out my mouth

  It seems like the more money I make

  The more drama y’all try to create

  The more I try to move into the positive

  The more y’all don’t wanna let me live

  Heaven, I need a hug

  Is there anybody out there willin’ to embrace a thug

  Feelin’ like a change of heart

  And all I really need is a sign or a word from God

  So shower down on me, wet me with our love

  I need You to take me and lift me up

  When I was through mixing the single, my people were telling me not to release it. Because of the court case, most radio stations had stopped playing my music. Naturally that made me mad. That meant they presumed I was guilty. I was already being punished. That’s why this song, “Heaven, I Need a Hug,” was so important to me.

  “But that’s why you can’t put it out there,” said one advisor.

  “Why?”

  “Because they’ll use it against you.”

  “What’s to use? All I’m doing is praying to my mother and God for guidance. I’m just singing what’s in my heart.”

  “They’ll twist it against you. They’re just looking for material to make you look bad. You’d do better to find yourself a preacher and start meeting with him. We’ll be sure the newspapers know that you’ve got a spiritual advisor.”

  “I’ve always had spiritual advisors—starting with my mother and continuing with Pastor Lena McLin. But I’m not gonna hook up with some well-known preacher to make me look good. I’m not gonna use a preacher to help my image. My image is in my music, not some phony public relations stunt.”

  “Look, Rob, 80 percent of all radio stations have banned you. Put out this song and it’ll be 90 percent. Listen to me. I’m right.”

  I didn’t listen to him because I felt he was wrong. When my fans heard my songs during that trial-by-fire period, I didn’t want them to just hear a singer; I wanted them to hear a survivor. To me, it’s not just writing songs, it’s writing life. Whatever the story, the emotion, the calling is at that moment, I feel obligated to share it through my music.

  I put out “Heaven, I Need a Hug,” and the response was strong. Radio stations played it because my fans wanted to hear it. They heard my sincerity; they saw I was wearing my heart on my sleeve; and they started to send me thousands of notes and letters. Little by little, I started to get airplay again.

  The hottest song on Chocolate Factory was “Ignition.” I revisited the metaphor I had started with “You Remind Me of Something”—a woman and a car. I liked it so much I had to break off a remix and put it on the same album. In the remix, the groove got very danceable while the metaphors mixed together:

  Its the remix to ignition

  Hot and fresh out the kitchen

  Mama rollin’ that body

  Got every man in here wishin’

  Sippin’ on Coke and rum

  I’m like so what I’m drunk

  It’s the freakin’ weekend

  Baby I’m about to have me some fun

  “You’ve lost your mind, Rob,” the exec said when I told him I wanted to release “Ignition Remix” as my next single. “You can’t release it with those lyrics.”

  “I can’t change the lyrics,” I said.

  “Why?”

  ’“Cause they go with the song. They go with the mood.”

  “Maybe, but you’ve got to change the title. Given what you’re facing now, you can’t sing about sticking your key in the ignition.”

  “I don’t see why not.”

  “They’ll crucify you.”

  “I think the jam’s so hot that they’ll have to play it,” I said

  “I think it’ll get you banned worse than before.”

  I didn’t believe that. So I sneaked the cut to a disc jockey and asked him to test it on the air. That same night his phone lines lit up like a Christmas tree. People went crazy for it. I immediately made sure it was released all over the country, and the next thing I knew, it was sitting on top of the charts. The ban against me had been smashed by the power of music. “Ignition” turned out to be a monster hit.

  It was important to me during that time to remain true to myself. To not sing about sex the way I’d always sung about it would have been an admission of guilt as far as I was concerned. Since I wasn’t guilty—win, lose, or draw—I was determined to stay true to myself.

  I was back. Chocolate Factory sold more than three million copies.

  But in coming back, I wanted to show all sides of life, love, and struggle. I also wanted to give something back to my city. As the case against me lingered on, I received letters and messages of support from all over the world. But in Chicago, I received a special, familiar, soulful kind of love—the kind that just keeps stepping to you no matter the betrayal, hard times, struggle, or doubt.

  I wanted to give the world the smoothest example of stepping, a Chicago dance style that I love. As I explained at the beginning of the remix of “Step in the Name of Love,” stepping is more than dancing. It’s a whole culture. It’s a way of life. It’s choreographed romance, a special mellow feeling that flows between a couple when they’re out there on the dance floor. When you step, though, you step in the name of love. That’s the important part. You’re not just stepping to score with your lady; you’re stepping and grooving in the name of love. And God is love. You’re stepping but you’re also feeling His spirit, His grace, His rhythms, and His holy rhymes. You got to keep on stepping, 'round and 'round, side by side, separate, and bring it back. And if anyone asks you, say, “We did it for love.”

  That was my strategy: beat the accusers, beat the prosecutors, beat the haters, beat them all—with love. They didn’t understand: If you were hating on me, I got you beat 'cause I’m gonna keep loving on you.

  People kept asking: “Rob, how is it you can keep doing what you do with all this drama surrounding you?” It may sound weird, but I just kept on stepping, kept on creating, kept on loving. Love lightened my load.

  Once I knew my people were with me, I was gonna feed them the bigges
t R. Kelly banquet ever. I was gonna super-size my musical menu. In the same year that Chocolate Factory dropped—2003, when I turned 36—so did The R in R&B Collection Volume 1, a double-disc, hot-out-the-kitchen suite of remixes.

  As the court case built, as the accusations piled on, I knew I had to keep on moving. I had to keep on keeping on. I had to stay focused and strong. I knew I had to keep playing hoop, keep releasing energy, and keep going back to the Chocolate Factory and making music.

  Love lightened my load.

  BEST OF BOTH WORLDS

  The vision I’d wanted to bring to life with Tupac still haunted me. I wanted to marry rap and R&B in a way the world would never forget. With Biggie and Tupac gone, though, I wasn’t sure who could fill the bill.There were strong rappers, but needed the strongest.

  For some time I’d been thinking about Jay-Z. He’d been moving up the food chain and building his audience. Our relationship had been cool. When he asked me to come off my Down Low tour to shoot the video for “Guilty ’Til Proven Innocent,” I said yes.

  He came to the premiere party for my video “I Wish,” a song from the 2001 TP-2.com album. After watching it, Jay said he thought I’d captured Pac’s vibe, and he asked if I wanted to work with him on something. At first Jay was thinking that we would do a single together. But when I suggested that we do an album, he was all for it.

  That’s how the Kells/Jay-Z collaboration began. I was excited, thinking that this could be the colossal R&B/rap merger I’d been dreaming of. We’d already done two collabos, in 2000 I’d sung the choruses on Jay-Z’s “Guilty ’Til Proven Innocent” and in 2001 Jay-Z did a hot verse on “Fiesta Remix.”

  We cut an album together, called The Best of Both Worlds—the best of hip-hop meets the best of R&B—that was released in March 2002. We announced a tour that year to promote the album, but those plans were postponed after charges were issued against me. The following year, Jay dropped his Black Album and wanted to promote it. Just back from Europe, he needed to fill up giant venues around the country and knew I could help. The Best of Both Worlds did okay, but we both knew the real money could be made if we toured together.

  In 2004, the idea of touring together and bringing the fans the Best of Both Worlds tour is what really got my creative juices flowing again. Jay and I had finished working on another album, Unfinished Business, with some of the unreleased tracks from our 2002 collaboration and a couple of new songs. The plan was to promote Unfinished Business during the tour.

  I put all my energy into prepping and rehearsing for the Best of Both Worlds show. I had an idea for staging the opening frame: A video would run during its opening. Two tour buses—Jay in one, me in the other—would be on the run, pursued by police and media helicopters … One tour bus would crash through scenery on the right side of the stage; the other would crash through on the left. Then we would join up in mid-stage and do the title track, “The Best of Both Worlds,” as our opening number.

  Jay didn’t love the idea at first, but he finally came around.

  It turned out to be a spectacular opening. From there, though, things went downhill fast.

  The most persistent problem was lighting. Since the start of my touring career with Levert, I’ve always been highly sensitive to lighting. It can make or break a performance. My lighting has to be exactly right. That’s why I said, “Jay, let’s settle on a mutual lighting guy—not your guy, not my guy, but a neutral guy.”

  “No problem,” Jay agreed. “I think you’re right.”

  At the shows my lighting was all wrong. The guy wasn’t picking up my cues. The dramatic moments—when the mood needed to be dark and mysterious, or dim and sexy, or up and happy—were not lit to my satisfaction. Spotlights failed to find me on stage, and dancers were missing ques because of lighting disconnects during their routines. I tried to contain myself, but nothing means more to me than giving my fans an exceptional show. I threw a fit.

  I’m a guy who choreographs his every move on stage. Now my fans couldn’t see where I was on stage. I knew I wasn’t imagining things because I record every tour show performance, so I can critique it the next day. Every Best of Both Worlds’ tour tape that I played back was extremely disappointing to me and didn’t measure up to my standards because of the lighting. Finally a crew member told me the truth—that the lighting guy was Jay’s regular lighting guy.

  I went to see Jay so we could discuss the problem without a lot of middlemen involved. I was sure that we could figure out a solution. I said, “Jay, the tour is about making us both look good.”

  “I realize that, Rob, and I know you’re unhappy, but there’s not much I can do about it.”

  “We can find another guy to do the lights.”

  “He’s under contract. We’re stuck with him.”

  We talked some more, promises were made that things would improve, and I left the meeting optimistic.

  Later he came to me and asked, “Would you mind if I use that throne you built?”

  “Go ahead and use it,” I said, thinking that could calm the waters and get him to make his lighting man do right by me.

  I had built this throne—a massive King of R&B chair—that I used during my middle segment in the show. The understanding was clear—after I used the chair, I’d leave it on stage so Jay could use it.

  What happened, though, was that Jay’s people got the chair for Jay to use before I came out. As a result, people were thinking that I was biting off Jay’s style rather than the truth—that he was biting off mine.

  Another thing: Before the show, Jay made a big deal about putting up big-screen advertisements for his Black Album. When I asked to have a big-screen picture of the current R. Kelly record, his people said no.

  If the lighting had improved, I might have let all that bullshit go. But the lighting got worse. I did everything I could, even simplifying the lighting cues for my show so that I could at least have the bare minimum of lighting effects that I wanted, but even that didn’t fix the situation. At one point, I became so frustrated that I left the stage during a show in St. Louis and went to the place that gives me comfort in times of trouble—McDonald’s. But this time, I didn’t go to eat. Instead I asked the guy working the drive-thru window if I could borrow his cap and uniform, and for the next three hours, I served Big Macs, fries, and Cokes to customers.

  As the tour went on, Jay’s crew and mine were at each other’s throats; sets came to abrupt endings, shows were canceled, and all sorts of crazy shit popped off. By the time we hit Jay’s hometown, New York, everyone was on edge. Considering the pending trial, the unnecessary drama was hard to handle.

  Right before the Madison Square Garden concert in October 2004,1 received a threatening phone call. When Jay-Z and I opened with our first act, there was a dude a few rows from the stage just glaring at me. He opened his coat in a way I considered threatening. I can’t say for certain if he had a gun or not, but it was enough to put me on guard and mess up my groove. When I returned for my solo set, there was another guy in the bleachers opening his coat, gesturing like he had a pistol. When I left the stage for a costume change, I told my business manager and the promoter that I wasn’t planning to risk my life finishing the show. The show’s promoter convinced us that everything was cool, and we could go back out. On my way back to the stage, a member of Jay-Z’s crew pepper-sprayed me dead in the face. Not only did he blast me, he got my booking agent and some of my crew as well. I had to go to St. Vincent’s Hospital by ambulance where they put little tubes in both my eyes to flush chemicals out so I wouldn’t lose my sight. If I hadn’t been wearing my stage stunners, the doctors said that I might have gone blind.

  As I was leaving the hospital, I was met by a group of reporters all asking me if I had heard what Jay-Z had said about me on the radio.

  I told the reporters that I didn’t know anything about it and that I had every intention of continuing on with the tour. It was only later that I found out he had said that I was jealous and insecure
, and he called my actions “foolery.”

  When I arrived at Madison Square Garden the following day with the tour buses with my band, background singers, and dancers, we were turned away and not allowed to enter the building. In the meantime, several of Jay-Z’s music friends had conveniently shown up to help Jay fill the show out and replace me. Even more conveniently, several friends had been there the night before and had finished the show while I was at the hospital. Jay-Z continued on the road without me. We found out later that the “friends” had booked their tour buses two weeks before the Garden show.

  Later, I issued a press statement:

  “The fans deserve better than this. I’d like the show to go on. It’s really disappointing that Jay-Z and the promoter don’t.”

  Charges, counter-charges, and lawsuits flew back and forth between me and Jay-Z, but neither one of us wanted to leave a bad taste in our fans’ mouths. Our collaboration album, Unfinished Business, was officially released worldwide about a week before I left the tour. It debuted at #1 on the Billboard 200 chart in 2004 and went on to become another platinum-selling album. Although the concerts came to an abrupt end, our album delivered the full Jay-Z/R. Kelly suite to fans. The truth is, that although I’m a fan of his music, to this day, the business between me and Jay was finished.

  HAPPY

  It’s ironic that some of the happiest music I’ve ever made came at the unhappiest time in my life. That’s no accident. The longer the legal nightmare went on, the more I needed to make positive music. It wasn’t only my natural instinct; it was my way of surviving a negative situation as well.