Earlier this week, R.Kelly made headlines when he walked out of an interview with HuffPost Live. Prior to the disgruntled exchange, Kellz sat down with Chris Witherspoon of The Grio and addressed the low album sales for his latest release, The Buffet, and his lack of fan support from the black community.
As noted by the site, the sales for The Buffet have been slow moving in comparison to Black Panties, which the Chicago singer released back in 2013. As a result, Kelly was moved to send out a video message to fans via Facebook, urging them to support his most recent studio effort.
While talking with Witherspoon, he went more in-depth, describing a lack of support for R&B artists within the black community.
“It’s not about me; it’s not just about supporting R.Kelly,” he said. “It’s about everybody supporting each other. It’s something that secretly nobody really speaks up about it,” he said. “I feel like for a long time our culture hasn’t really supported each other in anything, whether it’s music or anything else. We’ve been putting each other down a lot, and I think that needs to change.”
Prior to the release of Kelly’s aforementioned album, there was an online discussion about whether or not it was “okay” to listen to Kelly’s music, which was sparked by an essay published by Vulture titled “The R.Kelly Problem.”
The veteran crooner responded to the headline, saying, “Hell yeah it absolutely is good to listen to R.Kelly. You always want to support someone who’s overcome something… who didn’t run from something, who faced a monster, the belly of the beast. It’s not a hero movie that you’ve ever looked at on television that you didn’t want the hero to come out of it, and I think that’s what people did with me… especially my fans.”
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