YMMV / R. Kelly

• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: R. Kelly has had one during his live show, as Aziz Ansari describes in his standup Intimate Moments for a Sensual Evening. It contained a short break showing a video of him playing basketball, and goes back on stage without a mention of the reasoning behind the video.
• Eclipsed by the Remix: Despite the fact it contains the lyrics "It's the remix to 'Ignition'", many don't know that there's a non-remixed version of "Ignition". It's almost never played on radios either.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • Let's face it, pretty much all of his music now that he's a convicted sex offender. A lot of his songs, such as the famous intro to "Bump N' Grind", have a theme of "I know I shouldn't be doing this, but I can't help myself."
  • R. Kelly, enraged in the Gayle King interview back in 2019, can somewhat display itself as this because he gave everyone thirty years of his musical career - Kelly then finds himself receiving 30 years in prison in 2022.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • It's the remix to ignition / [insert topic] edition / this line's here to setup the / punchline rhymes with ignition
  • The favourite of children everywhere: "I believe I can fly / I got shot by the FBI / All I wanted was a chicken wing..."
  • Any mention of R. Kelly these days will immediately be proceeded with a piss joke.
  • "My mind's tellin' me nooooooooo...BUT MA BODYYY...MA BOOODYYYYY'S TELLIN ME YEEEEEEAAHUUUUUUUSSSS" ^Explanation The opening lines to his song "Bump N Grind".
    • "I don't see nothing wrong... with a little prison time"^ExplanationThe chorus of "Bump N Grind", edited by fans to allude to his guilty verdict and subsequent incarceration.
  • "Y'ALL KILLING ME WITH THIS SHIT!!!" ^ExplanationHis outburst during his interview with Gayle King.
    • "Robert." ^ExplanationGayle King's calm attitude towards Kelly's behavior, which people found hilarious compared to his exaggerated emotional fits.
    • The exaggerated crying he gives during Gayle King interview too.
    • "I'M FIGHTIN' FOR MY FUCKIN' LIFE!"
    • "I don't know how to hog tie people."
  • "...AND SO I PULL OUT MAH GUN!"
  • It wasn't me!^note When his infamous sex tape with an underage girl was leaked, Kelly's only defense was expressly denying that he was the person in the video, even though he obviously was. This drew almost immediate comparison to Shaggy's 2000 hit song "It Wasn't Me," where Shaggy advises his friend who was caught cheating to use similar tactics. The term "Shaggy defense was even coined in response to Kelly's denial.
• Never Live It Down: His crimes against women and girls over the years will always overshadow any of his accomplishments in music.
• Overshadowed by Controversy: Even people who aren't fans of him know about his brief marriage to Aaliyah (who was fifteen at the time) and his arrest for urinating on an underage girl, and his subsequent acquittal despite the existence of video evidence, which many found to be a disgusting example of Screw the Rules, I Have Money!. While Kelly's career was slowly going down by the late 2010s,^note Spotify stopped promoting his music on the grounds of "hate content", while his concerts were being boycotted and radio stations stopped playing his music during the rise of the #MuteRKelly movement. That said, his albums still did pretty well in the charts, with his final album 12 Nights of Christmas being the only one that could really be considered a bomb the bottom eventually fell out in 2019 following the release of the Lifetime documentary series Surviving R. Kelly, which showed evidence and accusations of him running a sex cult, his attempts to cover up his sexual abuse allegations, the backstory behind the trial, and having sexual affairs with women who tended to be underage. The success of the documentary saw Kelly lose virtually all of his remaining fans, with many of Kelly's collaborators (such as Lady Gaga, Jay-Z and Céline Dion), and many of those formerly close to him (his ex-wife Drea Lee and Sparkle) backing up the documentary and regretting working with him publicly, a search warrant was issued for his manager in Georgia, and RCA Records dropped him publicly. Ultimately, Kelly ended up being charged with 10 counts of sexual abuse. He also didn’t help things by going on a violent, hyperbolic rant in the middle of being interviewed by Gayle King (and at the same time made King a Memetic Badass for just calmly sitting there and not appearing the slightest bit flustered).
• Signature Song: "I Believe I Can Fly", "Bump N Grind" or "Ignition (Remix)".
• Sweetness Aversion: The overly sweet and vaguely inspirational "I Believe I Can Fly" for some people.

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