Do we like R. Kelly?
Our score: 0 out of 10. Two federal courts convicted him of crimes against girls and young women, and a civil judgment of about $10 million was entered against him, with no verified good to set against it.
Robert Sylvester Kelly was born in Chicago in January 1967 and rose to become one of the biggest names in R&B. A benefit concert in 2015 for his childhood music teacher shows how much of his story was about the Chicago kid made good. That is the version the music industry sold for decades.
The trouble was never new. In 2008 a Chicago jury acquitted him on all child pornography counts after less than a day of deliberating. In February 2019 he was charged with 10 counts of aggravated sexual abuse and turned himself in, and that July a federal grand jury indicted him on 13 more counts. In a TV interview that year he told the host, “I didn’t do this stuff! This is not me!”
The Brooklyn jury didn't buy it. In September 2021 a jury of seven men and five women found him guilty of racketeering, after prosecutors argued that his managers and aides formed a criminal enterprise to help him find girls and keep them quiet. His defence called the accusers “groupies” and “stalkers”. He was sentenced to 30 years, and the 2nd Circuit upheld the convictions and sentence in February 2025, writing that “Kelly exploited his fame to lure girls and young women into his grasp.”
Chicago was a second hit. In September 2022 a federal jury there convicted him on six counts: three of producing child sexual abuse images and three of enticing girls for sex, from videos involving three teenage girls. He was acquitted on seven other counts, including obstruction of justice. He got 20 years, most of it running alongside the New York term, and the Supreme Court declined to hear his appeal in October 2024.
On the harm check, the record is about the abuse of girls and young women, and it's two courts' worth. We found nothing from him on trans rights or the climate, because the convictions say it all. The women from the Surviving R. Kelly documentary won a $10.3 million judgment against him in August 2023. A January 2025 filing says about $9.9 million is still unpaid, and his lawyers called it an outrageous default judgment, saying an appeal was pending.
The recent noise is about whether he gets a second chance. In February 2026 Teddy Riley told the LA Times he'd been looking for investors for music Kelly allegedly recorded in prison. He apologised and cancelled it within days of the backlash. Kelly's side has also been chasing a presidential reprieve. In June 2025 his lawyers said they were talking to people close to the White House, and in July 2026 they filed a formal commutation request that is reportedly still pending.