Inside R. Kelly's Most Shocking Scandals Over the Years, None of Which Derailed His Success in Any Perceivable Way

.On Aug. 31, 1994, R. Kelly wedded Aaliyah at a lodging in Rosemont, Ill. He was 27. She was 15, yet the marriage declaration erroneously recorded her age as 18. The union was revoked months after the fact. At the 1994 Billboard Music Awards that December, R. Kelly called Aaliyah, whom he had initially met when she was 12, his "closest companion in the entire, wide world." In 1998, R. Kelly won three Grammys for "I Believe I Can Fly," to date his best single. His flawed association with Aaliyah consigned to a bullet at the time and not by and large broadly known outside of the business and bad-to-the-bone R&B fans, the Recording Academy healthily compensated the "Knock N Grind" artist for his Space Jam song of devotion—and kept on remembering him with 19 more assignments amongst at that point and 2015. Dedicated fans kept on purchasing collections and go to shows, while easygoing audience members flew in at whatever point a hit, for example, the irresistible "Start (Remix)" or the much built up "Caught in the Closet" went standard. Kindred craftsmen kept on joining to team up, including Jay-Z, Jennifer Hudson, Justin Bieber and Lady Gaga. On the off chance that lone that irregular blip of a marriage, conceived of an untimely association they had in the studio while taking a shot at Aaliyah's 1994 introduction collection, Age Ain't Nothing But a Number, had been it. However, however the legitimate entanglements he's ended up in have to a great extent worked out to support him, R. Kelly has an inexorably aggravating history with regards to charges of wrongdoing with underage young ladies and ladies who guarantee he's more Svengali than smooth administrator. Another round of charges, including the most recent that he paid a lady not to discuss having an association with him when she was underage (through his lawyer he has solidly denied the case as detailed by Buzzfeed News), spotlights a corrupt course of events that backpedals over 20 years. Maybe the Aaliyah marriage just flustered such huge numbers of in light of the fact that superstar history is creepily brimming with sooner than-May-to-December sentiment. Elvis Presley met Priscilla Presley when she was 14 (however pursued her for a long time before they wedded), and Jerry Lee Lewis wedded his cousin when she was 13 (and his vocation never completely recouped, however he's as yet considered a stone "n" move legend right up 'til the present time). What's more, there's a considerably longer history of the business (and gatherings of people) excusing specialists their embarrassments. "At the point when individuals ask me, I let them know, 'Hello, don't trust all that chaos. We're close and individuals took it the wrong way," Aaliyah told writer Jim DeRogatis in December 1994. DeRogatis, the correspondent who seven years after the fact was sent a duplicate of the tape that would prompt tyke porn charges being documented against Kelly in 2002, has been following and giving an account of the perpetually stomach-agitating assertions against Kelly from that point forward. "I would state I cherished 'liyah," R. Kelly (who was conceived Robert Kelly) disclosed to GQ a year ago. Inquired as to whether he would state "in adoration," he answered, "Well, there's a considerable measure of approaches to be infatuated with a man. I was infatuated with my granddad, you know. In any case, better believe it, I would state I was infatuated with Aaliyah quite recently like I was enamored with any other individual. In any case, in an alternate, companion kind of way." Aaliyah, who was executed in a plane crash in 2001, when she was just 22, sued in 1997 to have the fake marriage authentication erased and it was expeditiously fixed. Vibe magazine had distributed it in 1995. Kelly disclosed to GQ that, "keeping in mind her mom who's debilitated and her dad who's passed," he wouldn't remark facilitate on their relationship. "Keeping in mind Aaliyah, and her mom and dad who has asked me not to actually," he said. "Be that as it may, I can reveal to you I cherished her, I can disclose to you she adored me, we was close. We were, you know, best closest companions." A young lady named Tiffany Hawkins sued Kelly in 1996 for supposedly "captivating in wrong sexual contact," including "aggregate sexual sex with [her] and different minors" quite a while earlier, when she was 15 and he was 24. Hawkins was requesting in any event $10 million in harms. Kelly promptly counter-sued for maligning; the Chicago Sun-Times revealed that Kelly made due with $250,000 in 1998, however his lawyer would just affirm that the two sides achieved a classified settlement. "I'm not endeavoring to down him, since I genuinely think it must be an infection," a companion of Hawkins, who had wanted to affirmed for her benefit at trial, told the paper. "Taking a gander at pictures of me and Tiffany when we were first year recruits—kid, we were appalling young ladies contrasted with what he could have had, so I didn't comprehend why he did what he did." Likewise in 1996, Kelly wedded Andrea Lee, whom he'd initially met in 1994—she was 20—when she tried out to be an artist on his 12 Play Tour. He and Lee would go ahead to have three youngsters together, Joann, Jay and Robert Jr., before isolating in 2005 and separating in 2009. It was a December 2000 report in the Chicago Sun-Times that initially nitty gritty Hawkins' claim and the full legitimate story of what occurred with Aaliyah, and in addition uncovered that Kelly had twice been under criminal examination for professedly having intercourse with an underage young lady. The two examinations finished when the young lady wouldn't participate. To the extent Aaliyah stood, "When R. Kelly comes up, she doesn't talk his name, and no one's permitted to get some information about it by any stretch of the imagination," a rep for Virgin Records told the paper. Tracey Sampson, who asserted she had a 10-month association with Kelly that began in May 2000 when she was 17 and filling in as an assistant at Epic Records, sued the vocalist in 2001 for $50,000. In February 2002, an unknown tipster sent a just about 27-minute tape to Jim DeRogatis at the Sun-Times which seemed to indicate Kelly having intercourse with an exceptionally young lady. Days after the fact, Kelly performed at the 2002 Winter Olympics Opening Ceremony in Salt Lake City while Chicago police explored. "It's extremely troublesome for me, however you know, I'm blameless," he revealed to Chicago's WMAQ-TV before he performed, demanding the tape was a fake and drifting a hypothesis about displeased previous workers or colleagues being out to get him. "So it isn't so much that troublesome. It's poo, and that is the manner by which we will treat it." Kelly proceeded with, "The reason these things are occurring, I truly do accept, is a result of the way that I didn't fall back the extent that shakedown was concerned. I didn't give them any cash... All I know is this—I have a couple of individuals before that I've let go... individuals that I've thought were my companions that is not my companions. As far back as at that point, it's been dangers on what they're going to do to me, and...if I don't pay them this, they'll put a story out...and when I decline to pay them, and now here come this story...The world is preparing to watch me sing a melody called 'The World's Greatest,' and you have a tape out there attempting to demolish my vocation." Lawrence Lucier/FilmMagic He settled Sampson's claim not long after and, after dissidents crushed R. Kelly CDs outside the studio of WGCI-FM radio, he brought in to offer no reason for the tape, however to urge his fans to remain by him. "When you're well known, they anticipate that you will work marvels, and I'm not God," he told the station, per MTV News. Sampson's legal counselor said that she had two other female customers who intended to record comparative suits against him. Then, he and Jay-Z had recently discharged their shared collection The Best of Both Worlds (which went platinum) that March. In April 2002, a 20-year-old lady sued Kelly for charged rape, asserting he had impregnated her when she was a young person and afterward constrained her to have a fetus removal. They engaged in sexual relations in the vicinity of 20 and 30 times before she turned 17 (the period of assent in Illinois), bringing about her pregnancy in 1999, offended party Patrice Jones asserted in the "Nothing more will be tolerated," Kelly's lawyer Gerald Margolis said told correspondents at a question and answer session in light of Jones' protestation. "Perhaps...people have gotten the possibility that R. Kelly is some kind of strolling ATM machine they can hit up for money basically by debilitating to sue him. The money machine is closed...In the past, we've brought the more ethical route with respect to a progression of repulsive charges made against Robert. Instead of going to court to guard him against these charges, a procedure that would have debased everybody concerned, we chose to settle the cases unobtrusively. This most recent suit is a gathering of misleading statements, twists and out and out untruths that we mean to battle and beat." (The suit was later settled out of court.) Likewise in April 2002, the young lady in the tape, which had still not been completely verified by experts, was purportedly recognized by her close relative, a rapper who had worked with Kelly. She said her niece appeared to be around 14 in the video. He thusly demanded that the close relative, Stephanie Edwards (who passed by the stage name Sparkle), had an issue with him. "I'm no heavenly attendant, yet I'm no beast, it is possible that," he disclosed to MTV News that May, additionally demanding he was blameless. Inquired as to whether he had ever taped himself engaging in sexual relations, Kelly stated, "I've done a great deal of things that I lament. I've done a considerable measure of things that aren't right, yet shockingly we don't have a great deal of time to lay out the majority of my wrongdoings. I wish that I could, however I'm managing it. I got a great deal that is in me that I'm managing actually." He hadn't watched the tape being referred to, he stated, in light of the fact that "why might I need to see something that sickening and insane?" He included, "Possibly when the greater part of this is over I'll say, 'Let me see that thing.' But at the present time it doesn't bode well for me to need to see something that is not me...I have no enthusiasm for seeing some man with a lady whether she's underage or not underage. I have no enthusiasm for that." Kelly was sued again in May 2002, this time for intrusion of security for supposedly furtively taping a sexual experience with the offended party, Montina Wood. (Wood purportedly acknowledged cash in return for marking a NDA.) As the common suits heaped up, the criminal examination likewise proceeded, and in June 2002.... Don't think this would stop

The following January, 2003, Kelly was charged in Florida with 16 counts of child porn after authorities allegedly found nude photos of underage girls on a camera at his house. He pleaded not guilty. Also that month, his new album, Chocolate Factory, debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200. The biggest change in his day-to-day life was having to ask permission to travel from Illinois and Florida authorities, permission that was usually granted. Reality Stars Who Have Been Behind Bars In February 2004, seven of the 21 charges in Chicago were dropped. Weeks later all of the Florida charges were dismissed due to a technicality having to do with the search warrant. His double album Happy People/U Saved Me dropped in August and debuted at No. 2. Meanwhile, he and Jay-Z had teamed up again for the album Unfinished Business and, in a tacit show of support from the rapper, they headed out as co-headliners on the Best of Both Worlds Tour that summer. After several displays of erratic behavior on Kelly's part, Jay-Z pulled the plug on the final 15 dates of the tour. The final straw came when Kelly made a spectacle onstage at Madison Square Garden, accusing audience members of waving guns and stopping the show despite, as he later admitted, not actually seeing any guns with his own eyes. Unfinished Business dropped that October and reached No. 1. Later in November 2004, Kelly was linked to another sex tape, this one reportedly showing him having sex with baseball player Gary Sheffield's wife 10 years prior, when she was a teenager. A man was later convicted of extortion for trying to collect money from Sheffield in exchange for not releasing the tape. Kelly's wife, Andrea, filed for a restraining order against him in September 2005, alleging he got violent when she asked for a divorce. She later dropped the claim but reportedly moved out of the house they shared. Also that year, Kelly's TP.3 Reloaded, featuring portions of the conversation starter "Trapped in the Closet," debuted at No. 1. A trial date of Sept. 17, 2007, finally set in Kelly's child porn case. Despite being estranged, Lee spoke out in May 2007, insisting that wasn't her husband in the sex tape (though she admitted she hadn't seen it). The trial start date was subsequently delayed to May 8, 2008, to allow for the lead prosecutor's maternity leave. Before the trial got underway, Kelly's longtime publicist, Regina Daniels, abruptly quit in November 2007, cryptically saying the singer had "crossed a line." In February 2008, her husband George Daniels told Los Angeles' KJLH-FM that Kelly had gotten involved with their 21-year-old daughter, Maxine, whom the singer had known since she was 7. "I confronted him, and he denied it, lied to me to my face," Daniels said. "Where's the integrity in a man's life when he can turn against someone who loved him like I did? It's a painful thing. It tears at your heart." Finally, in May 2008, Kelly's trial begins. After the jury was seated, the prosecution led off by playing the sex tape at the heart of the allegations. Among the testimonial bombshells: Kelly's ex-assistant swore it was him in the tape; a dozen prosecution witnesses testified to the girl's identity; several relatives of the girl alleged to be in it swore for the defense that it wasn't her; a woman named Lisa Van Allen, who was pregnant on the stand, testified that she engaged in several three-ways with Kelly and the girl on the tape, two of which were recorded; a prosecution expert stated there was no way the tape was a hoax; a defense expert testified that the tape could have been doctored; and Jim DeRogatis, the Sun-Times reporter whom the tape was originally sent to, was scheduled to testify but pleaded the Fifth, meaning he exercised his right to not say anything that might also incriminate him. After just a few hours of deliberations, on June 13, 2008, Kelly was found not guilty on all charges. Despite the salacious nature of the allegations and the years-long build-up, the trial wasn't a huge media spectacle when it actually took place, according to numerous reports. Kelly's divorce was finalized in 2009. He returned to music, though he had never really stopped, producing a rather prolific amount while under investigation for years, and then he got to work on an autobiography. In his 2012 memoir, Soulcoaster: The Diary of Me, Kelly wrote about being repeatedly sexually abused by a woman, starting when he was 8 years old. When he was about 12, he was approached sexually by a man in the neighborhood, he wrote. In 2013, Jim DeRogatis, disgusted at music mag Pitchfork for booking Kelly to headline a festival, told The Village Voice in a scathing interview that he had talked to numerous women who had been preyed on by Kelly over the years, flat-out calling the singer a rapist. "The saddest fact I've learned is nobody matters less to our society than young black women," he said. Court Appearances Kelly was asked right off the bat about the story in an interview the next day with Atlanta radio station V-103. "I feel like I got the football, man, I'm running towards the touchdown and stopping and looking back, mess around, I'll get tackled," he said, per the Huffington Post. "And I also want my fans and everybody out there to know that I really appreciate everybody's support from the very beginning of my career. But as you know, when you get on top of anything, it's very windy up there. "It's not just about getting on top, it's about holding your balance once you get up there," he continued. "You have to be spiritually a climber. So I feel good about Black Panties… As long as I got my fans screaming my name around the world and buying my records, and supporting R. Kelly, everybody who doesn't agree with it should listen to the last song on Black Panties." The song he was referring to is called "Shut Up." "I'm going to always have the gift along with the curse," Kelly told New York magazine in 2015, referring to the onslaught of claims against him over the years. "I feel like I got a million people hating me, I've got maybe 8 million loving me. So I've got 9 million talking about me, and in a strange, magical way, it keeps me in the game." The story was called "The R. Kelly Problem." But that was hardly groundbreaking. In 2013, The Daily Beast went with, "Why Has the Public Forgiven R. Kelly for His Sordid, Predatory Past?" Last year, Kelly went public with his new girlfriend, 19-year-old Halle Calhoun, at a party, prompting flashbacks of everything that seems to be wrong with Kelly's dating history. But the Kelly crusade flared again just last month when DeRogatis, writing for Buzzfeed News, reported that various concerned parents have alleged that their daughters were living in properties belonging to Kelly and the singer had formed some sort of "cult" and was controlling the girls' every move. None of the women are underage and police said there was no investigation because no alleged victims had come forward. "Mr. Robert Kelly is both alarmed and disturbed at the recent revelations attributed to him," Kelly's lawyer told E! News in response to the explosive report. "Mr. Kelly unequivocally denies such allegations and will work diligently and forcibly to pursue his accusers and clear his name." Jocelyn Savage, one of the women in question, also spoke up, telling TMZ she was just fine. "I just mainly want to say that I'm in a happy place with my life," she said. "I'm not being brainwashed or anything like that. I just want everybody to know—my parents and everybody in the world—that I'm totally fine. I'm happy where I'm at and everything is okay with me." Her dad, Tim Savage, wasn't buying it, telling TMZ, "You know why Joycelyn didn't tell you where her location at? She's not allowed to tell you her location." Simone Biles Makes Romance With Stacey Ervin Instagram Official Simone Biles Makes Romance With Stacey Ervin Instagram Official Sponsored links by DeRogatis wasn't done, however. Just yesterday he reported for Buzzfeed News on one of the purportedly many women who were paid to keep quiet after having sex with Kelly while underage. Thereby she never spoke out via lawsuit, which would have added to the already numerous public allegations against Kelly. In a statement to E! News Tuesday, a spokesperson for Kelly said, "The allegations against Mr. Kelly are false, and are being made by individuals known to be dishonest. It is clear these continuing stories are the result of the effort of those with personal agendas who are working in concert to interfere with and damage his career. Mr. Kelly again denies any and all wrong doing and is taking appropriate legal action to protect himself from ongoing defamation." But is it, after 20 years of disturbing stories about R. Kelly, just too much for this 24/7 Internet age to handle? After Buzzfeed's "cult" report, four dates on Kelly's After Party Tour were canceled due to reported low demand. Kelly himself mused to New York mag two years ago, referring to the press, "You never know who they gonna get next. I haven't heard anything negative about me in I don't know how damn long." He was right in guessing it would never end.