R. Kelly Cries Foul Over Time's Up #MuteRKelly Campaign
R. Kelly responded to the #MuteRKelly online campaign launched by Time's Up's Women of Color (WOC) branch which led to the cancellation of his shows.
In a statement released through Variety, the hip-hop rapper's management team claimed that Kelly backs up the pro-women objectives of the Time's Up movement, yet he felt that the campaign against him is unfair and called the campaign an "attempted public lynching."
According to the singer's management, the movement chose not to hear the side of women who accepted his support and opted to judge him without looking into the facts. They also said that his music is part of the American and African-American culture that should never be silenced.
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"Soon it will become clear Mr. Kelly is the target of a greedy, conscious and malicious conspiracy to demean him, his family and the women with whom he spends his time," the statement read.
However, Me Too movement founder Tarana Burke responded to the statement to deny that Time Up's campaign is not a public lynching and that it was just a call for public accountability.
"We have seen 24 years of allegations leveled against R. Kelly, and he has gone unscathed. So what the letter does is join the #MuteRKelly campaign, that was well on its way already, and joined the chorus of black women around the country who have been saying we want some accountability," Burke also said in the statement that was published by KACU 89.5.
Because of the #MuteRKelly campaign, the scheduled performance of the "Bump N' Grind" singer at the University of Illinois has been canceled. According to a report from Billboard, more than 1,300 students from the university signed a petition to call off the concert on Saturday, May 5, due to the overwhelming number of evidence of the singer's sexual misconduct history.
But Kelly responded to the cancellation of his show through a video posted on Twitter. He began by apologizing to his fans.
"I don't know why they canceled the show. I never heard of a show being cancelled because of rumours, but I guess there's a first time for everything. So I apologise to you guys and in the meantime, I'm going to try to get to the bottom line of it, you know, as far as my lawyers are concerned, and see exactly what happened and why I was cancelled," the 51-year-old singer-songwriter also said.
Rumors about Kelly's sexual misconduct first came out in March when he was accused of "grooming" a teenage girl to become his "sex pet" based on a documentary titled "R Kelly: Sex, Girls, & Videotapes" that was aired by BBC Three on March 28.
Another report from The Washington Post also mentioned that an unnamed woman claimed that he gave her a sexually transmitted disease and supplied her with drugs and alcohol when she was just 19 years old. The woman also claimed that she was in a relationship with the singer for eight months until February 2018.
Kelly is also scheduled to perform at the Greensboro Coliseum Complex on Friday, May 11, which the #MuteRKelly campaign also aims to stop.
