13. R. KellyChocolate Factory
I could have put Nate Dogg down here, but R Kelly has gone further: Nate Dogg also had that quality to me, to have that ridiculousness of embracing that contradiction between being religious and ‘I Believe I Can Fly’ and all these very saccharine-sounding things combined with the sweetest interpretation of the most gangster bravado ever. ‘Ignition Remix’, of course, is just such an incredible classic, it’s one of the greatest songs of all time.
Trapped In The Closet isn’t technically an album, otherwise I could have put that on there too. If we’re talking about being openly delusional, Kelly really cemented his reputation as the Ed Wood of r’n’b in that moment, and that’s very touching – it’s very touching when someone goes so far into something and loses complete self-awareness. That’s why we love the characters that Ricky Gervais plays, that’s why we love David Brent, because he has zero self-awareness, and R Kelly has zero self-awareness, which is why we love him – we just want to give him a hug.
For better for worse, I probably have a little more self-awareness than that – I probably couldn’t quite go into the same level of openly delusional. I have a fair bit of it – on The Unspeakable Chilly Gonzales there’s a part where, if Rick Ross thinks he’s big meech, maybe on that album, I think I’m Rick Ross, you know? If I had the insane amounts of money that R Kelly has, then maybe I would make something with that level of high production value, but if you scour YouTube for some of my videos, probably some of them aren’t too far from that. But let’s not forget that R Kelly is a musical genius and is the closest thing to the Prince of our times, in terms of pure prolific… he is music, in the way that Stevie Wonder is music, and music just drips out of these guys.
