R. Kelly Acquitted of All Child Pornography Charges

On Friday, June 13, R. Kelly was acquitted of all charges associated with an ongoing child pornography scandal. Throughout the six years of public and legal speculation on R. Kelly's involvement he has managed to maintain a prolific musical career. Since the break of this story over six years ago, has the public image of R. Kelly changed or matured from his persona beforehand?

I'm not amongst the ranks of Tipper Gore and her censorship army. I completely believe in free speech and freedom of expression. But, the way that commercial hip-hop and r&b music has degraded over the past three decades has many questioning the future of where the art form is heading. Boys II Men faded into obscurity in the 90's and here R. Kelly is amongst the same generation of singers who is doing remixes what seems like every two weeks. "Bump and Grind" is one of R. Kelly's most popular songs with other pieces like "I Believe I Can Fly" interspersed to keep his positive artistic credibility in tact.

While R. Kelly and his under aged counterpart may maintain they were not in the incriminating pornography, many agree that the man in the video is unmistakably the R&B singer and that the woman, er, girl is probably close to 13 years old at the time. All of this controversy surrounding the actual video has plagued R. Kelly over half a decade and yet he has maintained an almost arrogant air about himself in the way he conducts himself on the urban hip-hop and r&b scene. Maybe he should have turned some of his Bible beating rhetoric and done a stint of gospel singing instead of associating himself with all of the womanizing fake-thugs of commercial hip-hop.

If R. Kelly is innocent and paranoid about being proven otherwise, he hasn't acted it. The chip on his shoulder seems to grow larger by the hour and only he knows where his career may go next. Maybe an audacious collaboration with convicted sex offenders who record their verses through prison phones? That just screams "street cred" to me.