Mr. Kelly, 41, whose signature song is “I Believe I Can Fly,” saluted a crowd of his fans as he left court and then put his hand on his heart. He made no remarks, but the impassive face he had worn during the four-week trial showed a flicker of a smile.
In the same courtroom where the trial was conducted, five jurors told reporters that the absence of testimony from the alleged victim was a big handicap. “All of us felt the grayness of the case,” one juror said.

R. Kelly is some kind of mad, bulletproof genius, impervious to scandal and capable of almost anything on record and on stage.

After taking his already wildly successful career to stratospheric heights with “I Believe I Can Fly,” a gospel-based inspirational song, he spent the next few years dodging repeated allegations that he had sex with underage girls.

He still faces 14 charges, all stemming from a videotape that allegedly shows Kelly and a 14-year-old.

But what should have been career suicide has instead turned into a long string of No. 1 albums, most filled with songs about sex, and the insanely inspired “Trapped in the Closet,” a video “hip-hopera” that’s pure lunacy.

How does he do it?

Dude works hard, for one thing. Saturday night at Freedom Hall, Kelly put on an entertaining, even charming, show for around 10,000 faithful fans. From the moment he climbed onto a stage tricked out as a boxing ring, wearing a robe emblazoned with “Champ” across the back, Kelly rarely slowed down.

He also rarely focused. This was ADHD r&b, with Kelly usually singing no more than 30 to 45 seconds of any one song. Sometimes he didn’t even get to the chorus before moving on, and the show was 15 minutes deep before he made it past 90 seconds (on “Double Up,” appropriately enough).

He promised to sing all of his hits, and he might actually have sung at least a verse of each.

Kelly pulled it off by keeping the pace frenetic and the energy high while throwing a few wild punches that didn’t quite connect. At one point, he returned after a costume change in 1920s-style clothes while his pianist played ragtime, then “conducted” a minute or two of Beethoven before segueing into a disco production of “Step In the Name of Love.”

It was bizarre, but then again, this is a guy who’s written a hip-hopera about a cheating wife, gay pastor, trigger-happy thug, trailer-trash girl and a gifted midget. So maybe it was actually kind of normal.

Keyshia Cole and J. Holiday opened with brief sets. Holiday’s bedroom r&b still needs some maturing, but Cole delivered a nice set that had elements of classic r&b dating back to the 1970s sprinkled throughout.

R. Kelly threw a New Year’s Eve party to remember for himself and about 5,000 paying guests on Monday night at American Airlines Arena. For all the self-created trouble surrounding the r&b star, this concert was a genuinely happy occasion and — with some exceptions — a break from the weirdness and difficulty of being R. Kelly.

If he has to face the music in 2008 — if his trial on charges of soliciting a minor for pornography does go forward as scheduled in May, and if he’s convicted — he’ll always have Miami.

Kelly, who turns 41 next week, seemed determined to make this stop on his “Double Up” tour a retrospective affair. “I can’t help it if I wrote all these hits,” he said. But it wasn’t so much a greatest-hits-live set as it was a show of greatest snippets.

Kelly did a handful of songs whole, and some of those performances were masterful. He ravished Your Body’s Callin’, with a long, improvisational coda built around a plaintive piano figure. He then apologized for getting “carried away,” though no explanation was needed for this appreciative crowd. He sang Real Talk a-capella, into a cellphone. As his pealing voice rose and fell throughout the male half of an imaginary break-up, the anger, bewilderment, confusion and good-riddance-hangup sounded both melodramatic and genuine. (Given his exploits, it’s possible Kelly exists in a fixed state of melodrama.)

But DJ method was the order of the evening: Kelly and his agile band hip-hopped their way through his remarkable, prolific career as a singer, songwriter and hit machine.

There were indulgent production numbers befitting a big ego and an arena-sized stage. Kelly entered like a prizefighter, walking through the crowd to The Champ with his face half-hidden under a spangled hoodie. He took a lap dance during I’m a Flirt and submitted to a Nubian queen during a fun-in-the jungle sequence that was beyond silly but well choreographed. He stepped on to a rostrum in white tails to conduct Beethoven’s Fifth, while the Vari-lites above him twirled and beamed on cue.

This was Kelly playing in a million-dollar sandbox and having a blast. Interestingly, he omitted his most famous set piece, Trapped In The Closet, the soap-operatic song cycle. A better candidate for deletion was a big-booty ode that he introduced as brand new. “I tried to service it to radio and they said, ‘Hell, no, Kels, we can’t play that [expletive]. It’s too sexual,’ ” he said.

The sex wasn’t the problem; the insane mismatch of topic and tone was. Kelly set his anatomical ogle to what sounded like a borrowed show tune and ended it with a long, Broadway-esque note that should have had the crowd in stitches.

In any case, Kelly had parts or all of enough familiar and likeable songs — Ignition, Down Low, Step in the Name of Love and at least two dozen more — to occupy a two-hour set that spilled into the new year. The show ended with a shower of confetti and balloons, while Kelly sang Happy People and decorated it with interludes from a pair of hopeful-sounding TV themes: Welcome Back, Kotter and Good Times.

Kellz proved his weight in Pied Piper Saturday (November 24) in Uniondale, NY, with a three-hour extravaganza that was as much career retrospective as high-concept arena tour.
Like the Olympics and Congressional Conventions, Robert Sylvester Kelly saw fit to open his performance at Long Island’s Nassau Coliseum with the National Anthem – so when the iconic singer finally took to the stage, outfitted in diamond-encrusted hoodie and fleet-footed behind a boxing ring, the audience was already out of their seats.

But it’s not like the Pied Piper needed a ploy to get it poppin. Perhaps recognizing that the Double Up tour might be his last for awhile, the singer spent every iota of his extensive performance showing and proving he’s earned his title as Mr. Showman, the king of R&B, beginning and ending with his reedy voice, so familiar and agile. After his grand entrance, he put up his dukes to booming chants of “The Champ is Here” (somebody holler at Green Lantern) and ran through his vast stable of hits – singing at least a few lines from even oft-requested titles like “Bump N Grind,” “Forever More,” “Down Low,” “Feelin’ On Yo Booty,” and “Ignition.” Magnum-powered by a team of six dancers, a live band and a hype-man (Milton?), the three-hour extravaganza was as much a career retrospective as a high-concept, grand arena tour. And, as with any retrospective, there was a little bit of reflection. “I wanna thank you for supporting me through thick and thin, for 17 years,” he noted several times throughout the night, at one point appearing like he might actually cry. Shadowing his gratitude, of course, was his pending trial for child-pornography charges, delayed for years but now finally seeing light with a tentative court date in spring of next year. There was a finality to his thankfulness, as if he, long untouchable, could no longer deny the gravity of his situation.

But with Kells, where there is gravity, there’s always a healthy dose of grandiosity to balance it out.

And that he did, his velvety voice fluttering on every timeless melody, his crowd-captivating charisma on full blast, his Swarovski crystal-encrusted cane waving around erect, a not-so-subtle extension of his, um, thoia-thoing. He performed “Strip for You” behind a camera that silhouetted his body, and definitely dropped his pants. For “Slow Wind,” one of his dancers crawled out from beneath a throne to perform a highly complicated lap dance. He clearly relished every moment. But even as his show got increasingly explicit, he apologized for saying “motherfuckas.” (”Excuse my French,” Kellz disclaimed politely.)

As he launched into a run of his newer songs, it became clear his catalogue, comprised largely of grown-ass bedroom anthems for freaky adults, has gotten younger as he’s aged. The tracks from Double Up are more influenced by contemporary rap than anything he’s ever done – trussed up with jeep-beats and street synths, sung in aggressive cadence. He spent an half-hour performing his biggest hits of the year – most of which were his features on ’07’s top pop remixes, from “We Takin’ Over” and “Promise” to “Buy U a Drank” and, just for good measure, “I’m in Love with a Stripper.” Lacking any guest-stars (he didn’t really need any), he aired a video of his high-powered pals stoking the crowd to shout-outs: Ciara, Snoop, T-Pain, Fat Joe, and Common (who evoked the most applause, which my companion said proved the audience was definitely middle-aged).

Kellz also showed why he earned his reputation as an unmitigated wild man. At his most satisfyingly scripted, he indulged his taste for theatrics with play-acted routines that mirrored the passion of community theatre – and dripped with the kind of performative melodrama that only megastars like Michael Jackson, Madonna, and Prince have the presence to successfully pull off. For “Zoo,” that monkey-hooting sexaphor ballad on Double Up, Kellz’ dancers – donning leopard-print bikinis – “kidnapped” him and tied him up. As he sang, kneeling on the ground with six women lipsynching to the sound of lion’s roars around him, he actually busted up laughing. Anyone who discounts his own self-awareness doesn’t giving the man enough credit. And yet, for all his humor and likeability, his audience cannot forget his alleged infractions. In between songs, hecklers could be heard from the stands: “What happened to Ne-Yo?!” one yelled, referring to the opener who was dropped from the tour amid rumored controversy. And, as the performance began to wrap up, one fan got the courage to holler the worst: “R. Kelly, I’m 13, will you go out with me?”

What could he do? The band played on. “Happy People,” one of Kells’ most gorgeous and transcendent songs, is his vision of a carefree world, where folks could step and love with abandon – his melancholy interpretation of heaven, it’s half-celestial fantasia, half Chi-city club. And so it was right that he ended his concert with that track, a posse of audience members dancing onstage behind him. Dressed in an oversized white tuxedo with coattails, the crowd safely in his palm, he weaved his song into a medley of choruses: “This Christmas,” “Joy and Pain,” and somewhat bewilderingly, the theme songs to long-syndicated TV shows “Love Boat” and “Welcome Back, Kotter.” As he closed out his medley to the theme from “Good Times,” the sky opened up and a blizzard of silver-and-white confetti fluttered down upon the audience, glittering snow from Kellz’ personal nirvana. “Not getting hassled, not getting hustled. Keepin’ your head above water. Making a wave when you can. Good Times.” He belted it like it was gospel. Like he meant it.

At an R. Kelly concert, one would almost be disappointed if nothing deeply weird happened. And he lived up to his reputation Thanksgiving night at the Prudential Center in Newark. He saved his biggest head-scratchers for late in the evening.

First, there was a long video segment devoted to footage of him playing pranks on sleeping members of his road crew.

Then he re-emerged, resplendent in an all-white suit. He released two white birds, which flew around the arena, then mimicked the moves of a classical conductor as a tape of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony played, lights flashed, and fireworks went off in time with the music.

Then came the grand finale. Kelly sang his hits “Step In the Name of Love” and “Happy People” as their dance beats and mirror balls, spinning overhead, turned the arena into a giant disco. Female fans danced onstage, and confetti fell. Inexplicably, he inserted the theme song to the ’70s TV show, “Welcome Back, Kotter,” into “Happy People.”

Kelly, 40, has the résumé as well as the vocal chops to justify the title he used to describe himself in the song, “I’m a Flirt”: “The King of R&B.”

R&B singer Ne-Yo, who was tapped to open for R. Kelly on his Double Up tour alongside Keyshia Cole and J. Holiday, was relieved of his duties just a week into the trek, his label has confirmed.The rest is here.

Ne-Yo later spoke to a radio show and gave his side of the story.

R&B genius R. Kelly blew our minds ten times this summer with parts 13–22 of his brilliant, never-ending hip-hopera Trapped in the Closet. In this week’s New York, we, quite rightly, declare the series the Funniest Web Video of 2007. To return the favor, the Pied Piper himself agreed to answer a few of our questions via e-mail. We can’t believe it either!

Are you surprised these films have become seen by so many people? It was a gamble to film them in a way that’s so different from most music videos.
I am surprised that it’s been seen by so many people, but I didn’t make it because I hate music videos. I actually love watching music videos, but I’m always trying to figure out a way to bring something new to the table.

Who are your favorite directors?
So many movies, so many great directors. So many favorites. I’m a movie buff.

Was Trapped in the Closet influenced by anything in particular?
Trapped in the Closet was not inspired by movies or TV. Trapped was inspired by the time when there wasn’t any TV, and soap operas were on the radio, and you would have to imagine what was going on while you listened to the dialogue. And that’s what Trapped was until I decided to put it to film.

We’re calling it the funniest of 2007. Who are your favorite comedians?
My favorite comedians are Eddie Murphy, Martin Lawrence, Bernie Mac, Steve Martin.

Do you think you’re underrated as a comic actor?
Absolutely.

Do you use the comedy, in part, because it allows you to take on more serious issues in Trapped?
Yes, because it adds a little bit of relief, and it opens you up to be able to receive the message.

Because everyone thinks you’re so funny, do you think people, particularly critics, have underestimated the more radical aspects of the series — like your focus on HIV in the final episode?
Who said that’s my focus?

Would you take a part in a Hollywood film?
Yes … it would be a drama, action, comedy or suspense or whatever.

How long will you continue making Trapped in the Closet episodes?
Till the aliens decide to leave. —