R. Kelly's past not getting enough coverage after 'Black Panties' release, says Jim DeRogatis

One thing that hasn't received a lot of attention as R. Kelly rolled out his excellent new album Black Panties is the Pied Piper's disgusting alleged sexual past. Former Chicago Sun-Times music writer Jim DeRogatis (who broke the story of Kelly's infamous alleged predation of teenage girls) thinks that journalists have gone soft by not taking Kellz to task and allowing the public to forget his legal troubles.

DeRogatis aired his grievances with the music press at large in an interview with the Village Voice.

"Let's start with the most mundane part. A lot of people who are critics are fans and don't come with any academic background, with any journalistic background, research background. Now, nobody knows everything, and far be it from me to say you've got to be a journalist or you have to have studied critical theory in the academy. Part of what we do is journalistic. Get the names right, get the dates right, get the facts right. Sometimes, on a very rare number of stories, there's a deeper level of reporting required.

There's another reason: People are squeamish. I think a lot of people don't know how to do it, don't care to do it, and it's way too much work. It's just kind of disgusting to have to write about this and bum everyone out when you just want to review a record."

DeRogatis went on to detail some of the horrible acts of which Kelly was accused.

The one young woman, who had been 14 or 15 when R. Kelly began a relationship with her, detailed in great length, in her affidavits, a sexual relationship that began at Kenwood Academy... He would go to her sophomore class and hook up with girls afterward and have sex with them. Sometimes buy them a pair of sneakers. Sometimes just letting them hang out in his presence in the recording studio. She detailed the sexual relationship that she was scarred by. It lasted about one and a half to two years, and then he dumped her and she slit her wrists, tried to kill herself. Other girls were involved. She recruited other girls. He picked up other girls and made them all have sex together. A level of specificity that was pretty disgusting.

Her lawsuit was hundreds of pages long, and Kelly countersued. The countersuit was, like, 10 pages long: "None of this is true!" We began our reporting. We knocked on a lot of doors. The lawsuits, the two that we had found initially, had been settled. Kelly had paid the women and their families money and the settlements were sealed by the court. But of course, the initial lawsuits remain part of the public record.

The story only gets worse from there, with accounts of one underage girl who Kelly allegedly forced to have an abortion.

I have always been able to separate art from artist: Jerry Lee Lewis, John Lennon and (possibly) Michael Jackson all made incredible music while participating in or being accused of some absolutely despicable behavior. DeRogatis concedes this point and admits to liking several artists with terrible personal lives. However, he claims that Kelly's alleged actions cross the line of what is acceptable.

A lot of art, great art, is made by despicable people. James Brown beat his wife. People are always, "Why aren't you upset about Led Zeppelin?" I got the Bonham three rings [tattooed] on my foot. Led Zeppelin did disgusting things. I read Hammer of the Gods, I'm disgusted by the group sex with the shark. I have a couple of responses to that: I didn't cover Led Zeppelin. If I was on the plane, like Cameron Crowe was, I would have written about those things if I saw them.

The art very rarely talks about these things. There are not pro-rape Led Zeppelin songs. There are not pro-wife-beating James Brown songs. I think in the history of rock 'n' roll, rock music, or pop culture people misbehaving and behaving badly sexually with young women, rare is the amount of evidence compiled against anyone apart from R. Kelly. Dozens of girls - not one, not two, dozens - with harrowing lawsuits. The videotapes - and not just one videotape, numerous videotapes. And not Tommy Lee/Pam Anderson, Kardashian fun video. You watch the video for which he was indicted and there is the disembodied look of the rape victim. He orders her to call him Daddy. He urinates in her mouth and instructs her at great length on how to position herself to receive his "gift." It's a rape that you're watching. So we're not talking about rock-star misbehavior, which men or women can do. We're talking about predatory behavior. Their lives were ruined. Read the lawsuits!

For the strong-stomached among us, the whole story can be found over at the Village Voice.