Evolution of Media: Hip-Hop Narrative - Entry #8

It's funny and interesting how the trajectory of an individual's own personal history and public celebrity can go a long way toward shaping outside interpretation of his or her artistic work. As I noted in my last entry, I'm generally in the business of evaluating music and other forms of art purely on their own merits, divorced from my personal feelings about its creator. But sometimes outside influence from components of the artist in name's life can have a great and profound effect on how you view their art, whether you like it or not.

In the case of R. Kelly, it has not only served as a platform for remaining relevant in the public sphere, but he demonstrates with his most recent album, Love Letter, how it can be used as a vehicle for reinvention as well.

If anyone has been paying a minutiae of attention to Kelly over the last decade, they will be able to quickly identify that his songwriting has been on a slow downward spiral into the pits of the lowest common denominator in terms of bizarre sexual metaphors. This already starkly contrasts with the first half of his career, where his music embodied the cheese, smooth soul, and slow-burning romance of 1990s R&B; a style that could be more likened to Boyz II Men. The thing about Love Letter in particular, however, is that it is not necessarily a direct return to the core tenets and styles he initially built his career on. This record sounds much more modern than that. The production crisps, smolders, and breezes by in a rush when its appropriate, and it spans decades' worth of different styles and iterations of R&B and classic soul.

Additionally, all of his shockingly sincere proclamations of love throughout the album carry with them Kelly's knack for being immediate and captivating, since Kelly's effusive personality and lyricism defiantly shirk a lot of qualities that characterizes the much-maligned neo-soul. He's able to convey the sub-genre's soulful earnestness, but in a decidedly charming and lighthearted way.

The kicker about this album that I'm not so sure it would be as head-turning as it is had it been put out by someone like Ne-Yo or Maxwell (the latter of which carried the title of my favorite R&B record from 2009). My sentiments about this record is, admittedly, amplified slightly because of how much Kelly's sexually deviant fantasies have informed his music for the majority of the new millennium. To qualify this statement, it's also worth distinguishing that Love Letter isn't good simply because "it couldn't have gotten any worse." Considering R. Kelly's history, it's tempting to assume that stance. But really, it's a great (amazing?) album because of how effortlessly Kelly channels the spirit of older R&B styles, paying homage and sounding neither antiquated nor self-important while doing so. The suppression of his nefarious ego gives the record its shiny and candid finish; Kelly is, after all, used to deploying his charisma in order to sell tasteless sexual innuendos of epic conceit. These things also contribute to making the arguably greatest voice in modern R&B the focus of his music once again.

While the back story preceding the inception of this album definitely makes the music more interesting, it is also just categorically great and compelling in its own right.

On "Lost in Your Love," Kelly openly and defiantly declares that he wants to "bring the love songs back to the radio." For the duration of Love Letter's 50-minute running time, he has me absolutely convinced that he can single-handedly do just that. Here's to the hopeful rise of one of the most interesting figures in the world of popular music, period.