Perhaps R. Kelly is a genius: Having the insight to realize his record doesn’t even deserve a title is quite a feat, especially in this day and age of trendy soundalikes and Auto-Tune abusers.
Then again, it’s more than likely that Kelly truly believes his new album, Untitled, is both original and valuable.
Released today through Jive Records, the new full-length album is just under an hour’s worth of smoothly sung songs about wanton sex and drug use, minus any sort of story or complexity.
Kelly released this record 16 years after his first solo LP, 12 Play, and he still has not grown up. Like his first record, this new album sounds as if it was designed for one place and one place only: the bedroom.
Indeed, Kelly seems trapped on this LP between the lyrics of a sexually degenerate eighth grader and an unintelligent “Weird Al” Yankovic. Unfortunately, he doesn’t know it. This ignorance is especially evident on the album’s second track, “Exit,” on which he implores, “I got a big house, up in the mountains, let’s go/ And I even got a stripper pole,” before immediately requesting, “Girl, take me serious when I sing.”
Despite being one of America’s most successful musical artists with such hit singles as “I Believe I Can Fly” and “Bump N’ Grind,” the 42-year-old Kelly seems tired on his latest material. Though his style hasn’t changed, he seems unwilling to make the extra effort to put any of his songs into the higher strata many of his earlier works attained.
Take Untitled‘s first single, “Number One,” a slow beat with possibly the most annoying hook created in 2009 — an overly masculine, pitch-altered voice echoing the title of the song over and over. It sounds nearly identical to the sort of cheesy stamps many DJs place at the beginning of remixes.
The track features singer Keri Hilson, one of six guest artists appearing throughout four songs on the LP. Unlike previous records, such as 2007’s collaboration-stuffed Double Up, Kelly has failed to recruit any particularly interesting guests for Untitled.
Even worse, the man can’t write any new music worth listeners’ attention. Maybe Kelly’s years of court battles regarding allegations of his illicit interests in child pornography has drained him of the energy to make a song that addresses anything more than his animalistic desires.
Throwaway track “Go Low” is a perfect example of the creative lull in Kelly’s music, wherein the singer describes what he wants to do to a woman. That’s about as much as can be tastefully repeated here. The disgusting, juvenile analogies to genitalia wouldn’t be out of place in a bathroom stall at a rest stop on the New Jersey Turnpike, though they are sung with great passion over a tedious beat.
This odd cross-section between emotional delivery and hilariously bad lyrics is the only reason to continue listening to this album. In essence, it is an anomaly. Listeners — even longtime fans — will have trouble believing R. Kelly has anything serious left to offer the world of music after this record, which is a veritable laugh factory.
With silly compositions such as “Bangin’ the Headboard” and “Text Me,” a song that glorifies the act of sexting, it seems improbable that any one song could be the worst of them all.
Then there’s “Pregnant,” the track that closes this aural circus of sexual depravity. Here, Kelly pines for domesticity, singing, “Girl, you make me wanna get you pregnant/ … Knock you up … / Never felt nothing like this/ She’s more than a mistress … / Now put that girl in my kitchen.” It’s the sort of song that deserves one listen just for the inevitable chuckle, as verse after verse becomes increasingly sexist and devoid of reason, lasting six unbearable minutes.
The actual instrumentals are nothing to get excited about either. The first eight tracks never rise above a dull rumble of sparse drums and synthesizers as Kelly flatly sings his demoralizing vocals.
Late in the album, “Be My #2” randomly breaks the string of boring instrumentals as a deftly executed dance track consisting of thick Daft Punk-affected funk-disco. Tolerable tracks like these were common on Kelly’s previous outings, but here the song seems more like something he had to do than something he wanted to do.
But a few tracks later, the emotional buildup that structures “Elsewhere” is vaguely reminiscent of elevator Muzak, yet the repeated crescendos give Kelly plenty of room to stretch out his vocals and vaguely impress the listener. It’s a sign of good, if derivative, R&B music.
Don’t be tricked by these micro-sized victories, however. The most confusing song on the album, “Supaman High,” mixes the obvious concept of the title with ideas about being rich and drinking alcohol in clubs, then weakly shouts it over a childishly repetitive instrumental. This track, along with too many others from the album, prominently features a rhyming shout-out to Patrón, seemingly Kelly’s favorite drink.
Nothing can really prepare listeners for the failures of this album. If you are a longtime R. Kelly fan, then a listen may be in order, just to see where his mind has been over the last few years, through his legal issues and all.
However, the album overall really only makes one thing clear: It’s time R. Kelly stopped being the butt of everyone’s jokes about child pornography. Instead, people should just not talk about him at all.
zberman@umd.edu
RATING: .5 star out of 5
