From The Desk Of Jakob Musick,
Secretary-General Of Nothing,
Winter Park, Florida, USA
July 19 (Thermidor Begins)1 Thermidor an 225 de la Révolution
Gregorian year 2017
Juche year 106
Year 28 of the Catastrophe
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On Hot 97...Marriage, Abuse, & R. Kelly
When the family of an alleged victim of R&B singer and acquitted sexual offender R. Kelly gave a rather oblique press conference, announcing that their daughter, who lives with the singer, had been "brainwashed" by him, the media went absolutely crazy. Perhaps for good reason. R. Kelly was sued for sexual relations with a 15 year-old in 1997; He allegedly entered an 'illegal marriage' with 15 year-old Aaliyah in 1994; & In 2002, his biggest scandal began when an unknown source sent a sex tape to a newspaper in Chicago. The video, which was posted on the internet and is now infamous, is extremely graphic, showing sexual acts and urination allegedly between the singer and a a girl who was not of legal age. R. Kelly said it was not him in the video. He was indicted on 21 counts of child pornography. When authorities searched one of his homes, they found child pornography, starring the girl who was in the video. Kelly's defense thus broke down. American Culture, pulsing at the bizarre rhythm that it does, was in that very year showering attention and money on Kelly. One of his biggest hits, "Ignition" (Remix) went to #2 in the USA, and topped the charts of New Zealand, Australia, Ireland, and the United Kingdom. "Ignition" sold more than one million copies as a CD single in the United Kingdom. The song was listed by Rolling Stone Magazine as the 494th 'best song of all time.'
It is not as if the video, the discovery of child pornography, and the attendant charges were a non-event in the news media. Of course American cable news lives for stories like these. News programmes would even show (censored) clips of the sex video on television, leading to the snaking back of a black teenage girl becoming one of the indelible images of the era . The 'bad behaviour' seemed to work in some sort of symbiosis: as things got 'hotter', he got 'hotter'. Now widely known as a sex criminal, R. Kelly scored 5 US Top 40 hits post-Ignition, to 2005. His 2004 LP sold one million, five-hundred copies. His 2005 album even more(!) at 1.52 million. What was going on? A jury acquitted Kelly of the charges in 2008, wrapping up one of his most successful periods.
Almost ten years later, new allegations have emerged. In the meantime, the consensus has grown. As one of Hot 97's callers plainly states, Americans generally know that R. Kelly is not just very sexual, but that his love objects tend to be young women, and what he engages in skirts the limits of legality. Despite the fact that the initial family at the press conference did not supply much evidence at all beside saying their daughter was "brainwashed," there was a former "cult member" also speaking to the media. Because of R. Kelly's past, these allegations are believable by many in the public (though it is not the 'court of the public' that matters legally.) When more comes out about this alleged "stockholm-syndrome sex-cult" (and it will, because the media will profit enormously from this story) we will be able to determine whether there is validity to this claim, whether these young women are the new 'Family' of Charles Manson.
That being the background, Hip Hop's premiere station, New York's Hot 97 decided to cover the subject. Completely appropriate. They have played Kelly's musick and definitely contributed to his success, and have leverage when it comes to his career and shaping attitudes towards it. Instead of talking about Kelly and the specific allegations that the families were making, the crew of 3 (including Ebro, the main talker) were inspired by the allegations to invite callers to weigh in on a segment that became "My Friends/Family Made Me Join An Escort Service" on Youtube. The salacious title, which is obviously designed to be clickbait, has nothing to do really with R. Kelly, or with families of hookers forcing the career upon them, as it is clear to hear. When a title is misleading in journalism, when a headline is more than the sum of the story, you can usually count on something being amiss. This is usually harmless, just an invention of writers who are trying to perform the jobs their editors want them to. However, journalism can also be extremely damaging, and can ruin lives, as well as harm the cause of tolerance. This is an instance of the media not being responsible. Not that the creators understand what they are doing, I am not necessarily alleging that. They are clearly ignorant of the lifestyles of a wide swath of people that are not necessarily always open about their relationship with sex.
Ebro begins the segment, "You know we are talking about R. Kelly alleged cult, and the 6 of-age women who live with him....Look man, I don't like R. Kelly. Man, I think he's a scumbag..." On-topic so far. But literally within 5 seconds, "I guess I'm just too close to people who have ran escort services, people who had polygamous relationships, people who live lifestyles who we would all be like 'nah, fam, nah. That's not normal." Who was talking about escort services? The host invited callers, "I wanna talk to people who are living lifestyles people would look at sideways, but they were happy with it and they got money." This would totally be a logical and valid segment if they had received calls from so-called "Sugar Babies" (young, hot women who make arrangements with older (almost exclusively) men to spend time with them for money), or even the Cannes "Yacht Girls." (Models and actresses whose careers have stopped supplying them with enough money to support a Hollywood lifestyle so that they basically do the same thing as 'sugar babies, but on Yachts.) However, the following conversation focused almost exclusively on prostitution, with a detour into a quite large polyamorous grouping. I also have to say a historical parallel, perhaps with Charles Manson's girls would have been appropriate, or talking about the charms that a rich, older man can have on a young girl. These are valid, and with the internet making 'seeking arrangements' more convenient, emergent issues. However, Ebro and his Hot 97 crew used the segment to attack sex workers and further stigmatize non-Victorian conceptions of the family and relationships.
To start with, Ebro, if you really knew people who ran escort services (well) you probably wouldn't know it (why would they blab to someone who literally talks publicly for a living?) Also polygamy is illegal, and denotes actual multiple religious marriage ceremonies, usually restricted to small sects in the west (USA.) 'Cheating,' in the context of a 'conventional' (or Victorian) relationship or marriage is not polygamy. Nor is that polyamory. Also dating multiple woman is not polygamy or polyamory. These two are not 'common' practices, so they are probably not what you think you are describing. While you have valid concerns about R Kelly, and I share them, I really think, with all due respect, you and your co-horts have literally no idea what you are talking about here. And I am glad that they chose the people they talked to as living 'lifestyles people would look sideways at,' because all three of them were totally unapologetic about it!
First of all, at this point, we literally known next-to-nothing about this alleged 'cult.' If it is true, that these women are 'brainwashed' by Kelly, suffering from loving their 'captor,' or (even worse) being physically restrained and abused by him, than comparing them to prostitutes is little more than a complete insult. I don't say that to mean that being a prostitute is an insult (though in society it is), but that prostitution proper usually involves a choice (even if it is choice made of necessity.) No woman (in their right mind anyway) walks into a romantic situation, knowing that she will be controlled, abused, manipulated, and isolated from everything she has known. Usually the refrain one will hear (with remarkable similarity) is "he wasn't like this at the beginning." It is completely inappropriate to purport that abuse victims are "living lifestyles people would look at sideways, but they were happy with it and they got money." Ebro is redolantly asinine here.
If there is 'brainwashing'/abuse/coercion, and multiple girls live with R. Kelly willingly, all with romantic and sexual ties to him, than the situation is different. They may see money as a reward for their companionship with R. Kelly. Or they may desire fame. Who knows? However, even if this is true, this is not prostitution formal. How is this different from one woman marrying a man because he has money? The only difference is the number(?) But a Victorian marriage is not considered 'unconventional' or something that one would look askance at in most people's imaginary. But is it not but just a few stepping stones from prostitution itself? Of course, the Victorian marriage has been stretched to almost untenable circumstances due to Women's Liberation and Feminism (there is no longer a financial/social/religious injunction to marry: a woman can choose whether she wants to or not, for whatever reason.) But the rather-new veil of the love-marriage cannot but hide what pre-feminist marriage was often a time: Socially-sanctioned transfers of sexual and reproductive access for resources. Was this not the motivator in most marriages pre 20th century in the United States? Is this still not the motivator in the south Asian sub-continent and the Islamic world today? The modern (serially) monogamous lifestyle with love-marriage is but an atavistic evolution of what marriage was really intended for-- the exchange of status, money, property, and sexual access. And so the main 'reason' for such an institution has gone for almost everybody in the Western World with sexual liberation, the working woman, birth control, and the lessening of multi-generational families (so a spouse would not longer be an asset in taking care of aging parents, or to be counted on to do that, as in some Asian cultures.) And so marriages, such an old, unwieldy anchor of an arrangement that they are, are hardly an effective vehicle for the post-modern era. And so we see a 'divorce epidemic'. But I digress.
To get back to what is my main point here: The varieties of romantic, sexual, and other relationships is expanding as the conventional marriage begins to fail to satisfy the needs of its participants. Many people, like Ebro, are clearly clueless about the difference between sex trafficking, sex work/prostitution, polyamory, polygamy, etc etc... If the women are his 'slaves' and are being subject to a more powerful abuser day in and day out (like millions of women before them), then it is shameful to be discussing prostitution (a career one chooses) and "getting money from it." He seems to not like R. Kelly, so I would err that he thinks they are being held against their will. Why would you even introduce the conversation of possible abuse by regarding it as a potential "lifestyle"?
& if they happen to be involved in his life, then.....it is what it is. We have to respect the fact that adult women can make decisions, and can choose to live with another adult...no matter what their parent says about it.
The three callers that were allowed onto the programme -- 1) a friend of a woman who was sex trafficked/coerced into prostitution, 2) a man involved in a polyamorous relationship, and 3) a 24 year-old woman who "has no regrets" about being a prostitute for 7 years --as adherents to "lifestyles people would look at sideways" , condemned by the hosts for their abnormality, for "sacrificing their health and wellbeing" are going to be, more and more, the new normal (hopefully excepting the sex trafficking part, but I am sure more people will know of people who become involved in that type of activity as it becomes less stigmatized for the men and women, boys and girls who were forced into the business to speak to their experience.)
"Why are you sacrificing your Health and Wellbeing for your 'lifestyle'?"
Would you ask that question of a coal-miner? Would you ask that question of a service-sector worker, who lives on minimum wage, on her feet all day in a retail store? Would you ask someone who works night-shift? Would you ask that of someone who drives a car for a living? Would you ask someone who is very old and still works that question? What about people who ride horses? What about people who have/shoot guns? What about those men who work on tankers gathering oil in the middle of the ocean? No, you wouldn't, because your concepts of normality are completely shaped by the totems and taboos of an age that is slowly dying.
Would you ask a soldier why they are "living their lifestyle, sacrificing their health and wellbeing" for their job? No, of course not, because that is socially acceptable and prestigious, even hailed. The reason why you look at the prostitute, or the polyamorous couple/thruple/whatever differently, and see that as "a health risk", the only reason you even bring that up, is because you find it personally repugnant. And that is not knowledge. That is prejudice. When you are old and gray and witness the changes that are just beginning to take place now, you will be quite surprised. But then, maybe you will be less ignorant.
Again, I want to state that if the 6 women in question are the victims of abuse, then I sincerely hope that their captor is finally stopped by the authorities. We know of R. Kelly's past. He married a 15 year-old. He had sex with other young girls. There are anecdotal stories of people who have known R. Kelly and said that he would specifically target young girls at their Proms seemingly to give them "the night of their life" with a glamorous celebrity. I don't know what the truth of the matter is, but I do know that this conversation was idiotic and depending on what the truth is-- is either completely blind to the conditions of women in abusive relationships, or , seeing an (albeit unconventional) but consensual relationship as some sort of 'health risk' and akin to having sex for money because he is dating more than 1 of them at a time (with their knowledge.)
To use hip-hop terminology, the discussions generated by this so far have been 'whack,' absolutely whack.
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You can view the press conference here -https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6RELLuCA2c
You can view the Hot 97 segment referred to here-- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zv5xgjnIHKs
