For the past two decades, R. Kelly has consistently faced allegations involving predatory and/or abusive behavior toward women and girls. This ranges from his marriage to Aaliyah when she was 15 and he was 27, to years of alleged domestic abuse inflicted upon his ex-wife, to his 2008 criminal trial for child pornography charges, after police obtained footage of him urinating on a 14-year-old girl. (Kelly was acquitted, ultimately, because the jury was unsure about the identity and thus the age of the girl.) The public attention on the singer re-emerged in full last July, after Jim DeRogatis, the Chicago journalist who initially brought that footage to light, published a harrowing new report about Kelly's alleged “sex cult.” This prompted more women to come forward with accounts of controlling and perverse behavior on Kelly's part—claims the singer has continually denied. In an April statement, his representative likened the outcry to a “public lynching of a black man,” effectively casting Kelly in the role of victim rather than alleged transgressor.
In late July, Kelly released a song called “I Admit,” 19 minutes of stream of consciousness in which he once again denies all claims. Prompted by the release of “I Admit,” Color of Change, the nation's largest online racial justice organization, contacted Pitchfork with information regarding its conversations with RCA Records, Kelly's longtime label. A subsidiary of Sony Music, RCA has not made any kind of statement about the recent allegations against Kelly—not even as the Women of Color of Time's Up, joining the efforts of the online campaign #MuteRKelly, issued a high-profile open letter in April asking RCA and other companies to sever their ties with Kelly. Though there has been speculation as to why RCA has neither dropped Kelly nor commented at all, what follows is the first public account of an organization's talks with the label regarding the matter.
In July 2017, Color of Change say they sent top RCA executives a letter via email, writing, “We are calling on you to end your relationship with R&B singer and known sexual predator, R. Kelly.” The letter continued: “We believe it is a great sign of corporate responsibility and decency for RCA Records to ensure that your continued relationship with R. Kelly is not interpreted as an endorsement for his depraved actions.” This note also cited Sony's decision not to renew Dr. Luke's contract overseeing his Kemosabe imprint last spring, in the midst of the producer's acrimonious legal battle with Kesha over sexual assault allegations against him. “We saw this very important public response to Sony dropping Dr. Luke, and we wanted to call them on their values as it relates to the defense of black women and girls,” Brandi Collins, a senior campaign director at Color of Change, tells Pitchfork. In August 2017, Collins says she—along with Color of Change's president, Rashad Robinson, and managing director of campaigns, Arisha Hatch—had a phone conversation with a “high-level VP” at RCA. Color of Change has asked to keep this person's name anonymous, but Pitchfork has reviewed their correspondence and confirmed the employment of said individual.
“In the course of that conversation, it was pretty obvious that they weren't going to take action steps around R. Kelly,” Collins recalls. “When we drew comparisons between Kesha and allegations coming out from black women, the representative said, ‘Well, you have to understand it took years of organizing around Dr. Luke [and #FreeKesha] before we took action.’” Collins says that Color of Change's response was, “Women have been sharing stories around R. Kelly for decades. You know that these allegations are going on.”
When asked for comment on these claims, as well as others involving Kelly over the last 13 months, representatives from RCA Records have not responded to ongoing requests from Pitchfork.
“After that conversation, RCA actually hasn't responded [to us],” Collins adds. “We sent more letters, we've continued to push for a response from them behind the scenes, and they've chosen both privately and publicly to remain silent.” The most recent of these letters, from May 18, 2018, highlighted how the movement to hold Kelly accountable has grown since their last conversation, citing the public support for #MuteRKelly by prominent figures including Lupita Nyong'o, Questlove, Ava DuVernay, and John Legend.
Collins points out that many of R. Kelly's alleged victims have been black women and girls, a number of them coming from low-income backgrounds. “They don't have the platform of Kesha or of the women who came forward with Harvey Weinstein allegations,” Collins says. “Even with the Weinstein cases, he didn't refute any specific allegations until Lupita Nyong'o and Salma Hayek, two women of color, came forward with their own accounts Then he rushed to say, ‘Well, obviously that's not true.’ [Ed. note: Weinstein previously denied all allegations made in the New York Times and New Yorker investigations but did not single out specific actresses]. “There's this cultural acceptance of allegations when they come from one type of person, and a sort of automatic side-eying that's cast if they don't have the same level of power.”
Knowing that sustained public pressure is what led to Sony distancing itself from Dr. Luke, Collins suggests the public directs its Kelly boycott efforts toward terrestrial radio. “What we think continues to be important is for people to call their radio stations,” she says. “I think RCA can continue to hide behind blanket economic arguments [privately]: ‘Well, he continues to sell records, so that's worth more than the stories, bodies, lives of these black women.’ By telling your radio stations to remove R. Kelly from rotation, it makes an important statement that it is no longer beneficial for the business to turn a blind eye.” Nationally syndicated morning show host Tom Joyner has already vowed on-air to no longer broadcast Kelly's music, but widespread boycotts have not taken hold across the airwaves the same way they have online.
While radio remains an important medium for major labels to reach the masses, streaming services have become the industry's dominant revenue stream and thus a key fighting ground. In May 2018, Spotify announced that it had partnered with Color of Change, along with several other rights advocacy groups, to develop a Hate Content & Hateful Conduct policy. The controversial aspect of the policy: artists who have done “something that is especially harmful or hateful” would no longer be promoted by Spotify on its original playlists, at the discretion of Spotify employees and partners. R. Kelly was one of the few artists targeted, and his music was quickly pulled from prominent R&B playlists. (Apple Music and Pandora also stopped promoting Kelly's music around this same, though the companies did not announce comprehensive strategies.) The policy was criticized, particularly by powerful industry figures; Top Dawg Entertainment CEO Anthony Tiffith threatened to pull his label's music from the streaming service. Spotify stepped away from the policy weeks later, writing in a statement: “While we believe our intentions were good, the language was too vague, we created confusion and concern, and didn't spend enough time getting input from our own team and key partners before sharing new guidelines. We don't aim to play judge and jury.”
“We were talking to Spotify about white nationalists and hate music that was being streamed, and then also around R. Kelly,” Collins says of the organizations' partnership. “We saw them step up and take a really important industry stand. But then we saw them kind of waffle, after black men and other prominent people defended the right to stream this music, to the detriment of these girls who remain unprotected. Again, this comes down to whose voices matter.”
Since Color of Change's 2017 conversation with RCA, a number of Kelly's shows have been canceled, including a hometown show in May; meanwhile, his recent shows in Greensboro, Minneapolis, and Detroit were met with #MuteRKelly demonstrators. “Leveraging R. Kelly's shameful 'I Admit' gives us one more tactic to hold RCA accountable for its complicity in his sexual abuse and exploitation,” Collins says. “Our members will continue pressuring RCA by circulating our petition and joining together with Time's Up's #MuteRKelly campaign. We won't back down until we are confident that RCA is ready to work with us in good faith to drop R. Kelly. At this time, we're looking at other tactics, but to keep RCA on their toes, we're not going into details.”
