“There’s a lot of people who have a lot of controversy who get played,” Rosenberg said. and morning show host for New York’s Hot 97 (97.1 FM), who called Kelly “completely dead” at the station. “There was a long period where you could have enough plausible deniability, and then in one moment, it just collectively ended,” said Peter Rosenberg, a D.J. Kelly,” with gripping firsthand accounts from his alleged victims, in January 2019, RCA dropped the singer from its roster, and some of his past collaborators apologized, while law-enforcement investigations in multiple states pursued the allegations anew. The singer saw his performances picketed and then canceled, while Spotify announced, then rescinded, a policy banning the promotion of artists, like Kelly, whose personal conduct was deemed “hateful.”Īfter the broadcast of “Surviving R. He collaborated with stars like Jay-Z, Whitney Houston, Lady Gaga and Chance the Rapper, and headlined major festivals into the 2010s.īy then, Kelly’s influence was waning - he had not scored a Top 40 hit in a decade - and the campaign against him coincided with the momentum of #MeToo.

But Kelly thrived before, during and after the controversy, releasing 12 platinum albums in all. In 2002, Kelly was indicted on child pornography charges after a video surfaced that authorities said showed the singer urinating on and having sex with an underage girl.

Throughout the 1990s, he settled lawsuits accusing him of having sex with underage girls in 1994, at 27, Kelly married Aaliyah, his then-15-year-old protégée, allegedly using forged documents. “He’s not just muted or turned down, he’s in jail,” Hampton said.Įven before 2000, when The Chicago Sun-Times published the first major investigation into allegations of abuse by Kelly, the singer had been followed by rumors and accusations of misconduct. Hampton noted that the documentary itself was “not a call to boycott - no survivor said that in the project.” But “social death doesn’t happen without some sort of narrative” that helps consumers make up their minds, she added, tracing that path from the “righteous” activism that sought to cut off Kelly’s financial resources through the Lifetime series and the criminal charges that followed.

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