Soulless
The Case Against R. Kelly
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
The essential account of R. Kelly’s actions and their consequences, a reckoning two decades in the making
In November 2000, Chicago journalist and music critic Jim DeRogatis received an anonymous fax that alleged R. Kelly had a problem with “young girls.” Weeks later, DeRogatis broke the shocking story, publishing allegations that the R&B superstar and local hero had groomed girls, sexually abused them, and paid them off. DeRogatis thought his work would have an impact. Instead, Kelly’s career flourished.
No one seemed to care: not the music industry, not the culture at large, not the parents of numerous other young girls. But for more than eighteen years, DeRogatis stayed on the story. He was the one who was given the disturbing videotape that led to Kelly’s 2008 child pornography trial, the one whose window was shot out, and the one whom women trusted to tell their stories—of a meeting with the superstar at a classroom, a mall, a concert, or a McDonald’s that forever warped the course of their lives.
Soulless: The Case Against R. Kelly is DeRogatis’s masterpiece, a work of tenacious journalism and powerful cultural criticism. It tells the story of Kelly’s career, DeRogatis’s investigations, and the world in which the two crossed paths, and brings the story up to the moment when things finally seem to have changed. Decades in the making, this is an outrageous, darkly riveting account of the life and actions of R. Kelly, and their horrible impact on dozens of girls, by the only person to tell it.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Singer R. Kelly's alleged relationships with underage girls are examined in this exhaustive expos by former Chicago Sun-Times journalist DeRogatis (Let It Blurt). DeRogatis spent nearly two decades interviewing Kelly's family members and former business associates, law enforcement officials, and many of the singer's alleged victims, and here he chronicles how Kelly, born into a poor, sexually dysfunctional family and virtually illiterate, rose to be one of his generation's most successful pop music stars. He also allegedly had a series of sexual encounters with minors. Without getting bogged down in minutiae, DeRogatis covers Kelly's annulled marriage to the young singer Aaliyah, an unsuccessful 2008 child pornography case against him, and the numerous allegations of Kelly holding several women against their will in cultlike fashion, paying them off with out-of-court settlements that required signing nondisclosure agreements. Throughout this riveting story, DeRogatis keeps a sympathetic focus on Kelly's accusers: "It must feel liberating for these women, after years of keeping their hurt feelings bottled up, to finally have the support of a sympathetic audience," he writes. In addition, he extends the blame for Kelly's misbehavior to "the employees of record labels, recording studios, radio stations, video outlets, magazines, websites, and newspapers." DeRogatis captivates in this expertly told narrative.
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