The Confessions of R. Kelly In GQ Magazine
After his disastrous interview on “Huff Post Live,” R. Kelly decided to sit down with GQ magazine for what may be one of his most candid interviews ever.
For the first time…in a long time, the 49-year-old singer discussed his whole life without restrictions (well, maybe a few).
In the lengthy piece titled, “The Confessions of R. Kelly,” Kellz opens up about everything from his struggles reading to why his fans still rock with him in spite of the allegations.
On His Struggle With Reading
Other kids could read, other kids could write, other kids could spell, they could do math. I felt like an alien, I felt like an outcast. I felt like, ‘What is going to happen to me?’ My mother couldn’t answer it. My stepfather wasn’t really interested in it one way or another. And my brothers and sisters were so young at the time they wouldn’t do nothing but tease me about it. I was the ‘dummy’: ‘How you gon’ do this? You can’t even read!’
I would always hear scrambled music, like an orchestra going off that didn’t know what they was doing. It was so confusing. It was, like, violin’s playing ‘I Believe I Can Fly,’ the bass is playing ‘When a Woman’s Fed Up,’ the guitar’s playing ‘Bump N’ Grind,’ the piano’s playing a gospel song. And then I would end up getting really sleepy and tired.
Since my daughter showed me voice texts on my phone, I’ve gotten a lot better. I’m not a A student, I’m not even a B student, but I’ve gotten a lot better with the reading because of texts. And I can voice-text and say whatever I want to people. And then they text me back and I take my time and I can read through it.
On Being Sexually Abused
R. Kelly also opened up about being sexually molested as a child. According to Kellz, the abuse began around the age of 7 or 8 and lasted until he was 15.
The first encounter was when a male friend of the family tried to coerce R. Kelly into masturbating him for money.
It was a crazy weird experience. But not a full-blown experience, because it didn’t go down. Contact sexual—no. A visual—absolutely. A visual from him showing me his penis and all that stuff.
The next, was a female relative, who continued the abuse for almost eight years.
At first, I couldn’t judge it. I remember it feeling weird. I remember feeling ashamed. I remember closing my eyes or keeping my hands over my eyes. I remember those things, but couldn’t judge it one way or the other fully.
I remember actually, after a couple of years, looking forward to it sometimes. You know, acting like I didn’t, but did. Oh wow. It became a regular thing. Every other day, every other week.
Kellz said the abuse stopped when he got a girlfriend.
When I started having a girlfriend, I felt really bad about it. Then I started getting older and knowing that’s just not supposed to happen—family members. And I think it started getting scary for them because I just started acting really different about it, and I think it became a turnoff to them, and a scary thing.
He says he forgives his relative.
I, well, definitely forgive them. As I’m older, I look at it and I know that it had to be not just about me and them, but them and somebody older than them when they were younger, and whatever happened to them when they were younger. I looked at it as if there was a sort of like, I don’t know, a generational curse, so to speak, going down through the family. Not just started with her doing that to me.
Back then, too young to judge. As I’m older, I’ve only learned to forgive it. Was it wrong? Absolutely. But it’s a family member that I love so I would definitely say no to that one. To be honest, even if my mom, I saw her kill somebody, I’m not gonna say, ‘Well, yeah, she definitely should go to jail.’ It’s just something I wouldn’t do.
Absolutely, yes. It teaches you to definitely be sexual earlier than you should have, than you’re supposed to. You know, no different than putting a loaded gun in a kid’s hand—he gonna grow up being a shooter, probably. I think it affects you tremendously when that happens at an early age. To be more hornier. Your hormones are up more than they would normally be. Mine was.
In a lot of cases, the victim becomes the abuser. Was R. Kelly affected by the “generational curse?” He says, “No.”
Well, you know, just like poverty—poverty was a generational curse in my family, too, but I decided that I’m gonna stop that curse. I’m not gonna be broke, like my mom was broke, my uncles were broke, my sisters didn’t have money, my cousins on down. Generational curse doesn’t mean that the curse can’t be broken. Just like having no father, that’s a generational curse. Which is why, when my kids were born, I was Bill Cosby in the house. You know, the good one. You know, let’s be clear there: how we saw Bill Cosby when we were coming up.
