It takes years to build a good reputation. It takes just a second to lose it. And while a reputation gets build on verifications, sometimes, all it needs to get broken is a rumor.
In music, rumors have taken their toll on the careers of the greatest musicians. Once rumors emerged about Michael Jackson's alleged inappropriate behavior with his underaged friends, especially after settling out of court, he never fully got back the respect he had before.
People do generally believe that where there's smoke, there's fire. Because usually there is.
Rumors surrounding R Kelly's sexual interest in young girls emerged in 1994, after a brief marriage to, then underaged, Aaliyah and a court case, settled out of court, surrounding another young woman in 1996. Rumors, as well as legal problems, continued to follow him straight up onto 2008, in which most charges were dropped or he was acquitted.
Because of this, no one really knew what to believe, but for a while, it looked like the world forgot about it and praised his music instead. After all, R Kelly sold over 100 million albums worldwide and has been crowned, here and there, to be the King of R&B, for shaping the sound of the genre, especially in the late 90s.
R. Kelly, recently released his new album, "The Buffet", which came together after recording over 400 full songs for it. I, personally, wouldn't know how you can then go about the selection process, but the album contains 17 tracks and a poem.
One thing is for sure. This is probably the most versatile R. Kelly album around. R&B is the main course, but there are surprise side dishes, even outside of the R&B sub-genres. The country song, "Barely Breathing" is on there and it's got a massive radio friendliness. There's also a clear influence of dance music to be found on the menu.
In fact, "The Buffet", shows why R Kelly has always remained a highly in demand songwriter throughout all the years. He has the ability to cook up any mixture of a song. While "Keep Searching" could remind you of Michael Jackson's style, he offers a full rap track on "Poetic Sex" and throughout the whole album, he jumps in and out of different kinds of lyrical deliveries. From the modern day how-many-words-can-I-squeeze-into-a-bar type of lyrics ("Let's Be Real Now") to a straightforward pop delivery ("Backyard Party").
Maybe putting all those different flavors together, is why it took a while for this album to get attention. Compared to his other albums, this one showed poor sales in the first week of its release, but still ended up being the number one R&B album in the US last week. People had to get a taste for it, but even so, there's plenty on the album that has a bit of a strange aftertaste.
Personally, I'd skip the first two tracks, in particular, but maybe poetry is just not my thing. And then there is that unfortunate piece of lyric in "Wanna Be There" that you can't help will remind you of his attraction to young girls: "Know you had to took all of your tears in your school locker". No wonder everybody is talking about it again....
