Take 'Em to Church, R. Kelly is Saved

Upon first listening to R. Kelly’s new double-album,
Happy People/U Saved Me, I paced the room and fretted,
“ Dear God, has R. Kelly become middle-aged?” A
bifurcated collection of Chicago stepping standards and Sunday
morning church music, Kelly spends as much time espousing the
virtues of the health club as the dance club. Could this really be
the same man who wrote, “I like the crotch on you?”

To be fair, that was 1993, and Kelly’s recent albums
attest to a progression beyond the adolescent raunchiness of
“Bump n’ Grind” and “Your Body’s
Calling” to a more subdued, literary metaphor.
“Ignition” is still the most lyrically inventive song
of this millennium, with such irresistible lines as, “Girl
back that thing up so I can wax it baby / We gonna mess around and
get a ticket babe.”

That’s not to say that Happy People is empty of
woman-worship. It isn’t—Kelly just leaves more to the
imagination than ever before. On “The Greatest Show on
Earth,” he coos in a dead-on Marvin Gaye impression,
“Welcome to my bedroom, girl / What you’re about to
witness is unheard.” And it is, because he digresses into
cliche. “Let’s get on this plane of love baby, and fly
on through the night / Our destination is wherever your spot is
baby / and I guarantee I’m gonna drive you crazy.”
Spot? What spot? G-spot? Come on, Kelly, work with me.

Happy People/U Saved Me is deliberately unsexy (ironic,
since everyone knows nothing makes Kelly happier than the company
of fine women, ahem, girls). It’s a prudent move on
Kelly’s part, considering the highly publicized charges of
child pornography leveled against the R&B mogul. But the
scandal, which broke in June, 2002, didn’t keep him from
releasing The Chocolate Factory—an aphrodisiac of an
album. Simple character effacement is too facile an explanation of
Happy People/U Saved Me. It appears that the Pied Piper
simply has a different agenda now.

“This album was designed to touch your soul and put your
spirit at ease,” Kelly announces at the outset of Happy
People. He leads us through a barrage of mid-tempo, Quiet
Storm-ready ‘70s R&B, filled with sunny images of
suburban neighborhoods engaged in neighborly activities, or of
happy couples stepping out for good, clean fun that evening. The
soulful guitar flourishes that made The Chocolate Factory so
tantalizing are back, but share the limelight with Kelly’s
piano, synthetic strings, horns and hand claps.

Kelly’s past albums contain scattered homages to Marvin
Gaye and Frankie Beverly (think “Step in the Name of
Love”), but Happy People is full-blown reactionism.
Kelly didn’t intend for this album to be catchy or
radio-friendly. He just wants to ease your mind and put a smile on
your face, as best he knows how: with the block music that filled
his childhood.

And, for the most part, it works: sure, the songs start to gel
together around track 4, but there’s no escaping that
pleasant sensation that comes over you by the end of the 10-minute
“Happy People.” In fact, it’s probably because
you’ve been lulled into a state of hypnosis that the lines,
“Stop that hatin’ and negativity / Love your neighbor /
said the powers that be / If you’re goin’ through
something / don’t take it out on me / Just ask God to fix it.
/ Now be happy!” sound completely reasonable.

U Saved Me finds Kelly on more familiar territory,
trading in ‘70s R&B for bass-heavy, God-fearing ballads.
The title track, a series of miraculous stories in which Kelly
finds God after suffering some great tragedy, is the most affecting
song of either CD. I can’t tell whether it’s the
passion in Kelly’s voice, or the affect of the Gospel choir
in the refrain, but this is the closest a pop song has ever come to
bringing me to my knees.

Happy People/U Saved Me achieves its goal of imbuing the
listener with good vibes but ultimately fails to satisfy.
It’s simply too one-dimensional, lacking the tension between
praise of God and praise of woman that makes the rest of
Kelly’s catalog so compelling.

But to write this album off as character cover-up is to give
Kelly too little credit. He’s completely earnest (and maybe
just a little crazy) when he advises us to “go to the health
club every now and then.” His omission of sex is conspicuous
only if you fail to consider the explicit agenda he’s set out
for himself - pleasing his listeners. Yet there’s simply
nothing more pleasing than hearing Kelly sing about a woman. Women
just seem to get his creative juices flowing.

As for whether the Pied Piper has finally sowed his wild oats,
that remains to be seen. My suspicion is that there’s still
more toot in his flute.��