Lady Gaga has issued an overdue apology for working with alleged sex abuser R Kelly in 2013, setting an important precedent.
Ever since then-27-year-old R Kelly married 15-year-old Aaliyah in 1994, his alleged abuse of young black girls has been an open secret. And in new documentary, Surviving R Kelly, 54 survivors allege various abuses - emotional, physical and sexual abuse as well as coercive control and the rape of minors - at the hands of the self-pronounced ‘Pied Piper of R&B’. R Kelly denies all the allegations, saying he will ‘sue everybody’.
How has R Kelly has been able to hide in plain sight for so long? If money and judicial hiccups have done their bit, so too has A-list support. Every time someone with the power to not work with R Kelly chooses to work with him, they’re effectively vouching for him.
Collaborations with Jay Z, Usher, Diddy, Celine Dion, Rihanna, Snoop Dogg, Britney Spears, Justin Bieber, Ludacris, Mariah Carey, Phoenix, Pharrell, 50 Cent, Gucci Mane, LL Cool J, Lil Kim, 2 Chainz, Lil Wayne, Mary J Blige, Jennifer Hudson, Sean Paul, Akon and, of course, Gaga, have all helped boost not only R Kelly’s coffers, but his star power. This legitimacy can then be weaponised against his alleged victims.
After the documentary, though, the pedestal R Kelly’s been placed on is beginning to crumble. Only one big name celebrity - John Legend - appeared on the documentary, later tweeting: ‘It didn’t feel risky at all…I believe these women and don't give a fuck about protecting a serial child rapist. Easy decision.’ Chance the Rapper, Damon Dash, Ne-Yo, Tank, Omarion, Meek Mill and Common have since taken Legend’s lead, condemning R Kelly.
Now, Gaga is one of the good guys again. In a screen grabbed note posted on Instagram Stories and Twitter, she acknowledged the ‘suffering and pain’ experienced by R Kelly’s alleged victims. ‘I stand behind these women 1000%’, her message began, continuing that she feels ‘strongly that their voices should be heard and taken seriously.’
In 2013, Gaga released a song called Do What U Want (With My Body). The rumbling, funk-driven track begins as a defiant retort against the press’s treatment of Gaga. ‘You print some shit that makes me want to scream’ she sings, before launching into the chorus: ‘You can have my heart and you won’t use my mind but do what you want with my body’.
R Kelly arrives in the second chorus, singing a pretty dull verse about his superstar life and sexual prowess before singing: ‘Do what I want, do what I want with your body.’
If that didn’t bury the first verse’s feminist critique of women’s sexualisation by the media fast enough, the music video knocks it another few feet under. Never released, its director, the fashion and celebrity photographer Terry Richardson, had been accused, for years, by many women, of sexual coercion. (He denies the allegations). Clips of the video later leaked on TMZ.com, show Gaga on an operating table, being put under anaesthetic by Kelly - dressed as a doctor - who then plays with her unconscious body.
At the time of the song’s release, reporters asked Gaga about working with a man who’d from 2002-2008 fought 21 child pornography charges. Her response was: ‘R Kelly and I have sometimes, very untrue things written about us, so in a way this was a bond between us.’ As if the sexualisation of women by the press and allegations of abuse were in any way equivalent.
Finally, though, something has tipped. In Gaga’s apology, she explains: ‘I made both the song and video at a dark time in my life’ before she’d had therapy for the ‘trauma that had occurred in my own life,’ caused by a sexual assault. Referencing the song’s title, she adds: ’I think it’s clear how explicit twisted my thinking was at the time.’
It’s not perfect, which Gaga admits, writing ‘I share this not to make excuses for myself, but to explain,’ and by declaring she believes victims of all genders and ‘of all races’, she avoids the argued point that too many people find it easy to protect R Kelly’s innocence because all of his alleged victims are black women.
Yet, after years of proclaiming to support victims of sexual assault, it begins to undo a hypocrisy.
Gaga’s spinetingling Golden Globe-winning song, ’Til It Happens To You, - also mentioned in the apology - soundtracks a documentary about campus rape, and is based on Gaga’s own traumatising experience. Introduced by then-vice president Joe Biden, Gaga performed the track at the 2016 Oscars ceremony alongside dozens of survivors, all holding hands.
How ignored must R Kelly’s alleged survivors have felt at that point? Gaga could summon the strength to sing her heart out about her own abuse, about some others’ abuse, but not the alleged serial abuse of her ex-collaborator? An ex-collaborator who was still financially benefitting from the proceeds of that work, an ex-collaborator who could now use Gaga’s force as a campaigner against sexual assault as a defence of innocence by association?
Of course, it’s not only Gaga who’s worked with R Kelly, and it’s not only celebrities who need to #MuteRKelly. Too many of us have played a part in upholding him - he’s been wrongly cast a hero of the black community, and in the white mainstream, he’s an ironic throwback, enjoyed by drunk people at house parties, who just can’t get enough of mock-rapping along to Ignition, because the song might sound creepy but pretending to be black for a song and a collective nostalgia for Year 9 means more than what a black man does to some black girls, right?
The groundbreaking thing Gaga has done here isn’t in the words of her apology, which ends ‘I’m sorry, both for my poor judgement when I was young, and for not speaking out sooner. I love you.’
The precedent is her actions, as she declared: ‘I intend to remove this song off of iTunes and other streaming platforms and will not be working with him again.’ No-one else has tried that on R Kelly.
The track is still, right now, available on Spotify, and has already stormed into the Top 50 (from outside the Top 1500) since Gaga made her announcement.
But if Gaga can use her power in this situation to get R Kelly in his purse, a place where his power truly lies now that his reputation is finally waning, then she has laid out a route for others to follow. People might question her motivations for the apology - is it so she’s squeaky-clean, ahead of the Oscars race she is set to be a part of? Is it so she looks good? Is it just empty virtue-signalling? Nope. It’s getting stuff done, showing a support of black women that she couldn’t quite put into words.
Oh, and before you rush to Spotify to listen to the R Kelly version of the song, instead might we suggest a ‘clean’ version of the song, with Christina Aguilera, a woman who has also survived domestic violence and unfair sexualisation by the press!
Surviving R Kelly will be aired on February 5th on Crime+Investigation (Ch156 on SkyTV) on the 5th of February at 10pm