Sasha Frere-Jones wrote an article for the July 2, 2007 edition of the New Yorker describing her conflicting views about R. Kelly's personality and his music. The structure of the article includes an introduction about R. Kelly's child pornography charges (which have yet to come to trial). Following that, the writer talks about R. Kelly's response to his legal troubles. R. Kelly's apparant responses have been invoking God, comparing himself to various black icons like Martin Luther King or Marvin Gaye, and working. R. Kelly's work is the main focus of the article.
The writer describes a few songs from R. Kelly's album, "Double Up". The first song on the album, "The Champ is Here", talks about the pressures he is under with everyone looking at him in such a bad light. He says he is relying on the hood to help him overcome. The author says that the song isn't exactly an admission of guilt but that R. Kelly is on the defensive. This makes me believe that Frere-Jones thinks R. Kelly is in fact guilty of the charges he is facing. The next song to follow on the album is the title track. This song describes R. Kelly in a sexual encounter with two women and Snoop Dogg... Wierd! The rest of the album has a lot more songs of this same sexually explicit nature.
Frere-Jones obviously sees that the type of music that R. Kelly is putting out there seems to be very self-incriminating and odd.
The voice of the article as a whole is rather contradictory. Even though, Frere-Jones does not seem to approve of the persona that R. Kelly portrays, she seems quite taken by his talent. On one hand, he is a man facing child pornography charges and still singing about threesomes and other sexual encounters. On the other hand, he is still the same talenter R&B singer/writer who put out the classic "I Believe I Can Fly" and the compelling twelve-part "Trapped in the Closet". The author even lists a couple of her favorite songs by R. Kelly.
The diction of the article sort of shifts. It starts out more formal, kind of like a news article describing the charges facing a top R&B star. Then, it becomes more informal like the author is talking to a girlfriend about R. Kelly's talent and how much great music he has created. She starts to list her favorite songs, and her own conflicting feelings about R. Kelly begin to surface.
The tone of the article seems a little serious at first, but then it becomes somewhat relaxed. The author finishes up with a description of a couple more of R. Kelly's songs, and depicts what makes them great and what makes them questionable. It is finally about the music and no longer so much just about R. Kelly's response to being charged.
Through the entire article, it was hard for me to figure out if the author was condemning or defending R. Kelly. The beginning makes me believe that she is condemning him for being so careless and uninhibited while he has charges over his head. Then, toward the end I start to feel like she is trying to defend him by pointing out all the good he has done and how talented he is as an artist. I have read the article over and over and over again, and I still can not figure it out. Now I have drawn the conclusion that maybe Frere-Jones still hasn't figured it out herself, and that could be the whole point of the article--to illustrate how many of R. Kelly's fans feel now with everything that is going on.
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4 comments:
Sexual predator or not, Trapped in the Closet was brilliant. R. Kelly's the man.
Your conclusion is excellent. I like that you figured out that the author can be ambivalent. It's how most of us are about these types of things, right? I am, at least. It's hard to know whether or not to continue to support someone accused of these crimes, especially if they haven't been tried yet.
I really like how you pointed out that the author said she felt R. Kelly's music was "self-incriminating." You did a really good show showing the overall tone of the article, and I can really relate to it and how the author feels. It's a shame when talent like that goes to waste on creepy lyrics and even creepier episodes in an artist's life.
I can't help but thinking about the "Boondocks" episode on R. Kelly every time I hear about him. The whole situation was pretty hilarious admittedly.
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