THE CREME OF THE DE LA CREME

Sorrow at the thought of man's mortality accompanied by a fugitive sense that the moment is immortal.
The Professor Brothers: Fliff Night, Part 1

Totally by accident, I ended up becoming the wrong kind of R. Kelly fan. I'm pretty sure I'm not the only guy who, when I was young and irresponsible, held a (young and irresponsible) negative opinion of Chicago's self-proclaimed "King of R&B." Like a good product of demographic marketing, I preferred the Smashing Pumpkins' Batman and Robin song to Kelly's "Gotham City"; I probably still do. I'd mostly stopped listening to Michael Jackson after "Black or White", so I never spent much time with his Kelly-penned No. 1 "You Are Not Alone". But even though I can see why those songs were hits-- just as I can see why Kelly collaborator Celine Dion's "My Heart Will Go On" was a hit-- I still don't much want to hear them. If Kelly's 1993 debut, 12 Play, had come out a few months earlier, I might have played it between my (in retrospect for an 11-year-old in the Sierra Nevada foothills kinda strange) tapes by horny loverboys Silk, H-Town, and Jodeci. Instead I discovered the alternative rock radio station.

Perhaps like many of you, I was utterly blown away in 2003 by Kelly's "Ignition (Remix)", which remains one of my favorite recordings of the, um, 21st century. Unlike the following summers' hip-hop/indie crossover hits, Outkast's "Hey Ya" or Gnarls Barkley's "Crazy", I can still listen to "Ignition" even though I played the hell out of it. I didn't go nuts for what I heard of Happy People/U Saved Me, but I loved loved loved TP.3 Reloaded-era B-side "In the Kitchen (Remix)" (in retrospect a sign of the weird scenes to come inside the Kelly gold mine). I enjoyed the silly "Trapped in the Closet" saga with everybody else, even if my thoughts about it were complicated. Johnny Rotten: "Ever get the feeling you've been cheated?"

This year, I've found myself astounded again and again by Kelly's many inspired guest appearances. At their best, Kelly's cameos rival those of famed scene-stealers Ludacris and, more recently, Andre 3000. Kelly, whose own songs often feature rappers like Snoop Dogg or T.I., has used his string of guest appearances as if he were one, too-- showing up the actual emcees on Young Jeezy's "Go Getta" or Fat Joe's "Make It Rain (Remix)", and hyping his larger-than-life persona. On Swizz Beatz' "It's Me Bitches (Remix)", Kelly even vanquishes the shit-hot Lil' Wayne. Pitchfork's Dave Maher once suggested to me that perhaps an outsize character like Kelly or Dre feels more natural being weird in these one-offs than over the course of a full-length album, where those eccentricities can pile up until both dudes seem all too human. Makes sense: The only Kelly guest spot I've heard this year that underwhelmed was on Twista's unfortunate Mims parody, "This Is Why I'm Cold".


We mustn't misunderstand on purpose.
Fanfarlo: You're One of the Few Outsiders Who Really Understands Us

So what's the problem here, you ask? Forgive me, Boss Schreiber, for I might not be as different as every hipster-basher imagines himself or herself to be from these douchebags. In a highly perceptive Pitchfork review, Ryan Dombal defines R. Kelly's current persona as "Singing Comedian," citing ridiculous concert footage and viewing the album as an attempt by the singer to spoof himself better than Dave Chappelle or Weird Al. In an equally great read at the Baltimore City Paper, fellow Pitchfork writer Jess Harvell takes aim at the kind of people who actually enjoy Kelly in this guise, i.e., "rubberneckers who couldn't have cared less about the lung-busting slow jams and ballads that were his bread and butter in the '90s." Ouch. Harvell also quotes the Mountain Goats' John Darnielle-- the singer-songwriter who just happened to write my favorite piece of "Ignition (Remix)" criticism-- giving the Kelly-as-comedian angle its inevitable racial twist: "I oppose the critical Buckwheatification of R. Kelly..."

The problem is that on one level they're right. Dombal correctly dings Double Up for occasionally being not very good as comedy and for lacking more pop songs as re-playable as "I'm a Flirt (Remix)" and "Hook It Up". Harvell mostly agrees about the album's flaws, and he's right that people looking to enjoy Kelly by laughing at his (to them) unintentional hilarity are missing out. To Darnielle's point: If there are white people who like a black artist only because they think he's missing his own jokes, that's pretty shitty. (Then again, Wesley Willis was awesome. Moral complexities are complex.)

On another level, they're talking about... people like me, fuck! Except I'm sure Kelly is well aware of how funny he is; anybody who has watched past the first few "Trapped in the Closet" videos would have to be able to see that. While I agree that Kelly's latest album is a disappointment and that many indie-oriented listeners might not be getting all they could out of his music, I'm not nearly as opposed as Harvell or Darnielle are to Kelly-as-comedian per se. Couldn't we just as easily imagine that, rather than white hipsters being even dumber than everybody (especially white hipsters) already thinks they are, maybe instead R. Kelly is actually even smarter than we give him credit for? (There, now you've got me ending sentences in prepositions!)

Your memories become fantasies if they are not shared, and your life in all its triviality becomes a legend.
Cousin Cole: Party Like a Rock Star (Remix) (also, here) (Dombal has this too)

I'd like to be more familiar with Kelly's '90s catalogue. But when people who are bigger Kelly fans than I am tell me why that stuff was great, it's invariably for the same reasons you might say, I dunno, Japanese automakers are great. Harvell again: "One question you'd hope those who appreciate music for its camp or ironic qualities--or fans of 'outsider art'--occasionally ask themselves is at what point appreciating an artist more for their musical and personal eccentricities than for their craft becomes an insult." We should be enjoying Kelly's songs, it seems, for their "craft" and "formal excellence". Certainly not because they're funny. By that standard, though I'm pretty sure Jess wouldn't go this far, Kelly's more recent escapades-- "Sex Planet", "Real Talk", or even "Trapped in the Closet"-- are an insult to his own talent. Plus, nobody's even discussing R. Kelly TV yet.

What if Kelly's talent is bigger than all that? Part of his genius, from where I sit, is an ability to win the love of different audiences for entirely different reasons. There are people who listen to "Bump N Grind" ironically, and there are (were?) people who listened to it unironically. There are people who listened to R. Kelly's No. 1 collaboration with Celine Dion and found it inspirational, and there are people who didn't listen to it. There are people who want to hear him sing about the tragedies of our time, Hurricane Katrina or the Virginia Tech shootings, and there are people who want to laugh at his jokes.

A true entertainer, Kelly delivers to all of these audiences and more. Another thing: Smart people have pointed out the sublime craft of some of Kelly's early songs, such as "The World's Greatest", and helped me hear them in new light. But craft isn't the end-all, be-all, of course, or else we'd only listen to Brill Building songwriters or, like, Randy Newman. In a Rolling Stone review of Newman's 1977 Little Criminals, Greil Marcus once spoke of "craft without vision." The implication: Some things (vision, apparently) are more important than craft. In other words, there can be defensible reasons-- try wit, humor, verve, or at least one of the threadbare synonyms for catchiness-- why I might enjoy "Ignition (Remix)" or "I'm a Flirt (Remix)" or, fuck, "Make It Rain (Remix)" more than I do Kelly's biggest ballads. So I'm not an asshole. Am I?

One of my favorite bands in the entire world is London's Art Brut, who have another great album coming out this year, It's a Bit Complicated. These guys strip me of my critical pretensions and reduce me to a gibbering, incoherent fan-- in the end, the funnest thing for a critic to be. Many people like to call them "ironic." Other people, myself included, insist singer Eddie Argos (who also writes a sharp blog for the Guardian) is being completely sincere. The catch: Art Brut can be both at the same time; they may truly be as stupidly excited about having "Formed a Band" as they sound, but they know how clever it is to sing a song about it, too. I contend that this ability to be (or seem) ironic without being insincere, more than any sonic similarities, is what Argos has in common with the Modern Lovers' Jonathan Richman.

By the time I heard Double Up's "Having a Baby", in which Kelly sings about childbirth both 100% banally and 100% hilariously, I realized that Kelly might be a second heir to the legacy of Richman songs like "Pablo Picasso", "Government Center", or the acoustic pop that got the ex-Modern Lover into There's Something About Mary-- songs where Richman's voice sounds totally heartfelt, but still somehow leaves you feeling as if you're in on (or missing) a secret joke. "In nine months a child will be born/ Baby you're pregnant in April, which means we're having a Capricorn," Kelly deadpans, and/or sings straight. On Modern Lovers' "I'm Straight", doesn't Richman sound at least a little, um, stoned?

Maybe I'm the wrong kind of Jonathan Richman fan. Bro grabs.

When y'all get 80, 70, 60, 55 years old, Michiko Kakutani gonna be sittin' in a rockin' chair by herself.
Twa Toots: Please Don't Play 'A Rainy Night in Georgia' (via Skatterbrain)