For years, R. Kelly had seemed untouchable.
Acquitted on charges of child pornography, accused of misconduct with underage girls, Mr. Kelly long remained embraced by the music industry. He toured widely, appearing at Grammy parties and making records with stars like Lady Gaga and Jay-Z.
But on Friday, Mr. Kelly — once one of the biggest and most influential stars in pop music — was dropped by his record company, RCA, in the music industry’s highest-profile casualty of the #MeToo era.
RCA’s agreement to part ways with Robert Kelly, confirmed by a person briefed on the move who declined to be identified because the deal was confidential, came after weeks of protests. A recent television documentary, “Surviving R. Kelly,” drew wide attention for its visceral testimonials by women who said that as underage girls they had been lured into sexual relationships with Mr. Kelly, and abused by him mentally and physically.
Yet as pressure had mounted on RCA — including from other artists on its roster — the company remained silent. The news of Mr. Kelly’s departure was first reported by Billboard, and RCA, a unit of Sony Music Entertainment, made no formal announcement; by Friday afternoon, Mr. Kelly had simply been scrubbed from the label’s website.
Activists who had been calling for Mr. Kelly’s dismissal cheered the decision, while still criticizing RCA for its slow pace, and they pushed the entertainment industry to punish Mr. Kelly further.
“After years of profiting from R. Kelly, despite their knowledge of his sexual abuse of black girls, Sony’s RCA is finally acting,” Arisha Hatch of the group Color of Change said in a statement.
Time’s Up called on streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music to remove his music. “All allies in the fight against sexual violence,” the group wrote on Twitter, “must take a stand on this toxic issue.”
Accusations of misconduct by Mr. Kelly, 52, date to the mid-1990s, when it was revealed that, at 27, he secretly married his 15-year-old protégée, Aaliyah; their marriage certificate falsely listed her age as 18. The union was quickly annulled. Aaliyah died in a plane crash in 2001.
Lurid reports of misconduct followed, many of them in The Chicago Sun-Times, including accounts from women who said that Mr. Kelly had sex with them when they were as young as 15.
In 2002, Mr. Kelly was charged with multiple counts of child pornography over a videotape that prosecutors alleged showed him having sex with a 14-year-old girl. But he was acquitted of all charges in 2008, after the young woman said to be on the tape would not testify.
Mr. Kelly has denied abusing or mistreating any women. Don Russell, who identified himself as the “top adviser” to Mr. Kelly, said on Friday that other labels were interested in signing Mr. Kelly, though he declined to identify them.
Mr. Kelly, he said, is eager to move on. “Once this thing pivots with the negative press, the defamation of character and the false allegations,” Mr. Russell said, “we will look at repositioning this to allow him to get some of the content he has out there.”
Even as accusations mounted against Mr. Kelly, he continued to have a high-profile career, writing and producing hits and earning an uneasy respect from many music critics who saw him as an innovator and a rare talent. According to the Recording Industry Association of America, Mr. Kelly has sold at least 32 million albums in the United States alone.
But the public opinion began to turn against him again in 2017, after an investigation published by BuzzFeed News said that he had been holding women against their will in an abusive “cult.”
In that report, former members of Mr. Kelly’s inner circle said that he was holding at least six women in a form of captivity, “dictating what they eat, how they dress, when they bathe, when they sleep and how they engage in sexual encounters that he records.”
Online outrage over that reporting led to a social media campaign, #MuteRKelly. “Surviving R. Kelly,” broadcast in six parts this month by Lifetime, reinvigorated that campaign, leading to protests outside the corporate offices of RCA and Sony in New York and Culver City, Calif. Prosecutors in Chicago and Atlanta, where Mr. Kelly has lived, have asked women to come forward, but Mr. Kelly has not been charged with a crime.
Celebrities like Lady Gaga, Celine Dion and Chance the Rapper, who collaborated with Mr. Kelly in the past, distanced themselves with contrite statements; Lady Gaga removed a 2013 track, “Do What U Want,” from online music services.
Asante McGee, a fan who became part of Mr. Kelly’s entourage, said that during her time with him, he forbade her from looking other men in the eye and made her ask permission to go to the bathroom. Ms. McGee said in an interview on Friday that she felt vindicated knowing Kelly was finally facing consequences.
“I am relieved,” Ms. McGee said. “His time is coming to an end.”
For the women in the documentary and their families, the release of “Surviving R. Kelly” also brought fears of retaliation.
On Friday, a man who has been part of Kelly’s management team, Henry James Mason, turned himself in to the authorities in Georgia, after being wanted on a warrant for terroristic threats and acts against Timothy Savage, whose daughter Joycelyn is believed to be living with Kelly. Mr. Mason denied the accusations.
Mr. Savage and his wife, Jonjelyn, appeared in the documentary saying that they had not had contact with their daughter in years. Last year, TMZ published a video in which Joycelyn Savage said she was happy living with Mr. Kelly and was there of her own volition. Last week, Mr. Kelly’s lawyer, Steven Greenberg, called the relationships “perfectly consensual” and said that Mr. Kelly never knowingly had sex with anyone underage.
Terms of Mr. Kelly’s exit deal — including what, if anything, RCA paid him to terminate the contract — were not disclosed. He had been signed to Jive Records — now owned by Sony — in 1991 and had most recently renewed his RCA contract a few years ago, according to two people with knowledge of that deal.
According to the person briefed on Mr. Kelly’s exit talks, RCA had been discussing the move for months with his legal team, well before the release of the Lifetime documentary but after the #MuteRKelly movement had gained momentum.
Yet what will become of Mr. Kelly’s career is unclear. His music remains available on streaming services, and his valuable back catalog — with hits like “I Believe I Can Fly” and “Ignition (Remix)” — will remain the property of RCA. Mr. Kelly was also quietly dropped last year by the Universal Music Publishing Group, yet that company still controls the songwriting rights for his past songs. Mr. Kelly will most likely earn royalties off his past hits for years.
For many in the industry, the question of censorship weighs heavily over any decision to remove music from circulation — particularly in the streaming era, when deletion of an album means it has been all but erased.
Spotify faced criticism over these issues last year when it instituted a poorly defined “hateful conduct” policy that seemed to largely affect black artists, including Mr. Kelly; their tracks were removed from Spotify’s official playlists but remained available for fans to listen to. After an industry uproar, the policy was rescinded within three weeks.
Mr. Kelly’s star has faded in recent years; his last album for RCA, “12 Nights of Christmas,” released in 2016, reached only No. 177 on the Billboard chart. And his most recent songs have been released on the streaming platform SoundCloud, without the involvement of RCA.
Those kinds of outlets, which are often used by up-and-coming artists, may now present an avenue for Kelly to release music in the future.
“Like it or not, R Kelly still has fans and defenders,” said Bill Werde, the director of Syracuse University’s Bandier Program on the music industry.
“There are people who love his music so much, they are willing to ignore or rationalize the awful realities brought to life in the documentary,” he added. “And the modern music business means he still has plenty of ways to reach those people.”
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New York Times
