© Redferns Music Picture Gallery 2006
from The Vault
THE TORTURED SOUL OF MARVIN GAYE AND R. KELLY
[3 November 2003]
by Mark Anthony Neal
The music of R. Kelly has always been rife with blatant contradictions. It has often been difficult to reconcile the man responsible for the 1990s motivational anthem "I Believe I Can Fly" with the man responsible for songs like "Sex Me", "Bump and Grind", and "Feelin' on Your Booty". Taken as a whole, these songs are clearly the musings of a thoughtful, passionate, and openly sexual individual. But Kelly, like many African-Americans raised in the bosom of the black Christian experience, has likely felt shamed and constrained by that experience, which at times has openly aimed to deny the full expression of black sexuality, not only within the walls of the church, but within those public, civic, commercial, and private spheres where the Black Church holds sway. One can only wonder if the often absurd and surreal sexual narratives Kelly has produced (including his illegal propensity for under-aged girls) is a product -- a response -- to the sexual repression of the Black Church and its institutional satellites (what'cha y'all think the sex scandals among Catholic priests are about?).
A close listen to Kelly's formidable body of work suggests that of a tortured soul -- a literally Tortured Soul. Kelly has at times been linked to the Soul Man tradition -- a tradition that has produced a litany of talented, even brilliant, men who often lived tragic and tortured lives. When one thinks of the lives and deaths of figures like Sam Cooke, Donny Hathaway, Walter Jackson, or the tragic-comic dramas of Al Green, Teddy Pendergrass, Rick James, and Wilson Pickett, to name just a few, there seems a clear pattern. Many have suggested that these men, all products of black church culture, paid a price for their willingness to sell their gifts from "God" to the highest bidders, be they record companies or adoring female fans. None of these men can match the impassioned contradictions that were Marvin Gaye -- a preacher boy at odds with all forms of authority, including that which he felt was imposed by the women in his life and the father who eventually took his life, who shamelessly and shamefully explored the intersections of sex and spirituality with a clarity rarely achieved in any form of expressive art during the 20th century. While R. Kelly is no Marvin Gaye, the recent releases of Gaye's I Want You (Deluxe Edition) and Kelly's The R. in R&B Collection (Volume 1) place their tortured Soul in striking proximity with each other.
*Read the full essay @ Popmatters.com
**A version of this essay also appears in Da Capo Best Music Writing 2004
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