Pitchfork

When we last left our hero...psyche! Like I'm gonna give away the story thus far. And "Trapped In the Closet" is all story, in case the "Part Two of Five" up there didn't tip you off. So, without revealing any narrative details, here's what's great:

"Trapped in the Closet" is a tale of a night of lovemaking gone wrong, delivered in five parts as a lead-in to Kelly's new album, coming in July. Kels has people excited over what basically amounts to a 1930s radio play; stations are already using the new chapter as a tease to ensure listeners from switching over when they go to commercial. Conceptually, if nothing else, it makes it (them?) the best single of the year so far. This is also the apex of Kelly's slow transformation as a singer, from the sphincter-rupturing overblowing of "Bump'n'Grind" to the sing-songy, weighted-and-metered flow he perfected around Chocolate Factory. Which is good for what basically amounts to talking in rhyme for 20 minutes by the time it's all over. (Though it's not quite rap. It's too drawn out and unsyncopated.)

Here's what's crap: I know it's not "the point," but this has his weakest karaoke backing yet. A busking hobo would refuse these keyboards as an insult to his pride. I guess you could be kind and argue that the backing works in a similar way to the music on the last Streets album, scene-setting rather than grooving per se. Or he could have written it on a cocktail napkin in the hotel lobby. Which leads me to...

Here's what's typical: R. Kelly has no taste and hasn't spent a minute outside of his own head in the last decade or so. It's part of his charm-- it's why he's a genius-- but it's his Achilles heel too, what makes his classic material so damn idiosyncratic and excuses his more workmanlike material, for good or ill. The same guy who can make something sound so understated, eerie, quietly avant-garde, and gorgeous as "Half on a Baby" goes and makes "U Saved Me" (the song), which might as well be a stack of Reader's Digest "Inspirational Moments" delivered in chest-thumping "I Believe I Can Fly" stylee. And they're both great!

"Trapped in the Closet" is pulp, in all senses of the word. The story is so boilerplate it doesn't exactly transcend itself so much as elevate its own boilertplateness to a holy state (i.e. it's more surreally trashy than secretly artistic). The sloppiness of Kelly's writing has long ago become its own style. Amazing turns of phrase share space with boners that would shame anyone who's ever attempted to make words work for them. He accepts no division between baroque silliness and high seriousness. You cannot imagine him cracking a joke. Ever. (Don't even whisper the word irony.) I can't possibly wait to see how it all turns out.