R. Kelly (born Robert Sylvester Kelly on January 8, 1967 in Chicago, Illinois) is an R&B and soul singer, songwriter and producer who found international acclaim in the 1990s for his diverse talents as a singer, songwriter, producer, multi-instrumentalist and musician. Some of his most popular material has had critics compare him to legends like Marvin Gaye, whom they consider Kelly as his heir apparent in terms of soul and R&B music.
Born into poverty and distress in Chicago's Southside projects, young Robert and his two brothers and sister and mother Joanne struggled to survive in the streets. After a shooting by a mugger as a teenager, Kelly looked to basketball and music to get him away from the atmosphere that had consumed so many young Black individuals in the projects. Guided by his teacher Lena McLin, Kelly entered a career in music after wowing his high school friends singing the classic Stevie Wonder ballad, "Ribbon in the Sky" at a talent show in 1984.
By 1988, Kelly had started to develop his unique sounds playing his keyboards and becoming a street performer. A young musical executive by the name of Wayne Williams sought Kelly and helped get him sign to his first and only record label, Jive Records, in the end of 1989. After forming the group Public Announcement, he and the group went into the recording studio in the end of 1990 and recorded much of what would be Born Into the '90s at a recording studio Kelly leased. Within a few months, songs like "She's Got that Vibe", "Slow Dance", "Dedicated", "Definition of a Hottie" and "Honey Love" would be the featured songs in Born Into the '90s, which was released several days after Kelly's 25th birthday in 1992. A huge R&B success, the album would yield the featured songs as the hits and would eventually go Platinum selling over a million copies.
By 1993, Kelly was on his own. It only took him a few months to captivate the sounds that would fully launch the young musician as one of the singular most great talents of music during much of the 1990s. Released that fall, 12 Play fully launched Kelly's career into the stratosphere and yielded the smash hits "Sex Me", "Your Body's Calling" and the monster #1 sex romp "Bump & Grind". Kelly was now so big that by 1994 he was able to produce for other acts. Starting with singer Aaliyah, he found huge success for Aaliyah with the songs "Back and Forth" and "Age Ain't Nothin' But a Number" off the album of the same name of the latter hit.
Kelly and Aaliyah allegedly married in 1994 despite the fact that Kelly was then 27 and Aaliyah only 15. The marriage was quickly annulled and Aaliyah ended her partnership with Kelly going on to a hugely successful career that was short-lived when she died of a plane crash on August 25, 2001. Kelly's alleged antics of falling in love with teenaged women would begin to haunt the singer nearly ten years later but at the time that marriage was brushed off to the side with the denials of their union by both singers.
After his brush with controversy, Kelly returned to the studio to record his third album (his second solo effort) in the studio he now owned. He released his self-titled album in 1995, which, like its predecessor, became a big success selling over 5 million copies and unleashing classics like "You Remind Me of Something" (a Top 5 Pop and #1 R&B record in 1995), "I Can't Sleep (Baby If I)" (a Top 10 Pop and R&B single in 1996) and his collaboration with legendary R&B singer Ronald Isley of the famed Isley Brothers, "Down Low" (a Top 10 pop and R&B record in 1996). That album was hailed by some as the singer's most mature record. Before then, people had perceived Kelly to be a sexual deviant because of the lyrics on 12 Play.
In 1995, Kelly found his huge success as a songwriter penning hits for R&B group Changing Faces and pop and R&B music legends Janet Jackson (producing the remix for Jackson's 1994 smash, "Any Time, Any Place") and Michael Jackson (penning and co-producing the single, "You Are Not Alone" for Jackson's HIStory album in 1995). The latter's singles became the first in music history to debut atop the Billboard Hot 100 at #1.