SOHH Squad
Music mogul R. Kelly is going to need much more than a global ban and streaming giants censorship to stop his reign. The hip-hop crooner has addressed the never-ending battle he constantly finds himself in.
New footage has emerged of Kells talking about his trials and tribulations but still managing to remain relevant for over 30 years.
“I don’t even have a college education. I have dyslexia. I don’t even know how to read, spell or write or do math. Okay? But I’m sitting here worth $800 million bro. I’ve written for everybody. I’ve done things for everybody. I’m 31 in the game. Through the storm. Through the sleet. Through the tsunami of rumors and allegations and court cases. Y’all witness to that. So if I did that and I’m still here – ain’t nobody trying to investigate me although they try to make it look like that because that’s what they do to us. But guess what we do when they do that to us? We run with it. We believe it. But why am I here? Why am I still working on my album?” (ASIS Magazine)
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Earlier this month, the Chicago music icon reacted to his music streams increasing despite making recent negative headlines over sexual assault claims.
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Recently, reports emerged about Kells’ popularity growing despite a publicized #MuteRKelly movement.
Streaming numbers for R. Kelly have remained intact a week after Spotify announced it had removed the R&B singer’s music from its playlists, citing its new policy on hate content and hateful conduct. Spotify made the bold declaration on May 10, but R. Kelly’s streaming numbers are relatively the same with some small growth. Before the announcement, he averaged 6,584,000 weekly streams for the year, but from May 10-16, he garnered 6,676,000 streams for the week, according to Nielsen Music. (The Hollywood Reporter)
Last week, music executive Steve Stoute shared his personal issues with streaming giants like Spotify not playing fair in banning artists like R. Kelly.
“When I seen XXXTentacion and R. Kelly get pulled off of playlists on Spotify, I thought, at that moment in time, ‘Where does this go?’ Are you doing this because, are they convenient or is this policy? That’s the problem. Don’t do anything. Do you want to be happy or do you want to be right? … It’s actually unfortunate that Spotify is now the guy standing in front of all this, when other streaming services have followed suit. Don’t we always separate the art from the artist? Haven’t we always done that? So, if you’re going to make it a policy, then I have to start going through the list and now it’s not convenient, because now we gotta be like, ‘How about this, we’re f*cking not playing Michael Jackson.’ I mean, we’re just not.” (Hot 97)
