I’ll flirt with y’all

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The other day I was hustlin’ my way down a quiet road in east London when suddenly, as if the voice of God was booming down from above, a divine melody came wailing out of the window of a house a couple blocks up: “A dog on the prowl when I’m walkin’ through the mall / If I could, man, I probably would flirt wit all of y’all.”It was, of course, the seminal R Kelly remix of ‘I’m a Flirt’. Having just inhaled a tampon-sized spliff, I found myself singing The R’s evocative lyrics aloud, just as I noticed a couple singing them from the ledge of their third storey flat. Further up the street, two schoolgirls passed me. Our eyes locked and we belted out T-Pain’s vocoder-heavy verse together. And, as I busted round the corner, I heard the driver of an oncoming car sing along: “She be callin’ you Kelly, when your name is Tommy!” Shit, Kells brings more people together in Dalston than a Pentecostal church. It was enough to make me close my eyes and cross my chest with a K.

But nothing quite touches the heavenly inspiration of his epic hip hopera Trapped in the Closet, the 12 songs (“chapters”) that climbed up the MTV charts and into the DVD collection of everyone in the know last year. Featuring a variety of one-off characters (including a well-hung midget stripper with defecation problems), mindfuckingly brilliant dialogues (“Ruphus said, ‘Chuck please, don’t say nothin’ else,’ then she screams, ‘Ruphus you son of a bitch,’ and he says, ‘Cathy, go to hell.’ I said, ‘I thought you name was Mary, that’s what you said at the party. Man, this is getting scary, I’m gonna shoot somebody!’”) and a plot that defies all logic and predictability, Trapped in the Closet single-handedly epitomises this decade’s pop culture. I always pictured Kells just going into the studio high as hell, freestyling whatever the fuck pops in his genius head. Instead, mad literary and artistic comparisons have been made with his storytelling abilities - from Stendhal to Ashberry to Lynch.

The self-named ‘Sexasaurus’ recently released an additional 15 chapters, which is great news as I’ve been dangling too long on Chapter 12’s massively suspenseful cliff-hanger: “I’m sorry girl, but that ho was me...” Even better news is that there are apparently 51 1/2 more chapters to come, once budget suffices. The expansion knows no limits - in Trapped Behind the Scenes, R declares: “I believe in 20 years from now there will be a program called Trapped in the Closet - there’s gonna be a talk show called Trapped in the Closet. This is where I come out of - Trapped in the Closet.” Word.

Let’s just hope all goes down well in court when 14 of his child pornography charges come to a head. I saw someone at a party wear a tee that declared “R Kelly Is Innocent” and, for the first time in my life, I finally realised what I want written on my tombstone.

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