The Craziest Moments From R. Kelly's GQ Interview

1. He still struggles to read:

Reading remains a struggle. “Since my daughter showed me voice texts on my phone, I’ve gotten a lot better,” he says. “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.”

2. His interesting way of answering if he was in love with Aaliyah:

And these are difficult questions but would you say you were in love with her?
“Yes. I would say I loved ‘liyah.”

But “in love”?
“Well, there’s a lot of ways to be in love with a person. I was in love with my grandfather, you know. But yeah, I would say I was in love with Aaliyah just like I was in love with anybody else. But in a different, friend type of way.”

3. His refusal to answer if it was him in the infamous video:

Sure. But let me ask a simple question: Is that you in that video?
“[pause] Because of my lawyers, to this day I cannot have those kind of conversations. Being advised by my lawyers in this.”

4. He pretended not to know who Dave Chappelle was:

Given that a lot of people believe that the video shows you, some of the behaviors on the video have become associated with you, particularly urination as part of sex. Pissing on people. You must have seen that Dave Chappelle skit.
“No, I haven’t.”

He did several clips on his show.
“David Chappelle? [as though trying to place the name] David Chappelle? I don’t…”

Chappelle’s Show. Very famous.
“Okay…comedian?”

Really famous comedian.
“Okay, a comedian. Okay…go on.”

5. He sang two full choruses of “I Believe I Can Fly” on the roof. By himself.

The person chaperoning our party says that there’s a roof deck on the ninetieth floor, where she can take him if he’d like. He’d like. To get outside, we have to clamber through the building’s gigantic window-cleaning machinery, and then we’re in the open air. Suddenly Kelly spreads his arms and begins to sing, really going for it.

I believe I can fly

I believe I can touch the sky

He does two full choruses, then we take the elevator down and he gets a coffee from Starbucks.

6. This phrase: ‘Wow, life is like a p***y buffet.’

7. He wrote the remix to “Ignition” five years before he wrote the original “Ignition.” WTF.

8. He canceled a Thanksgiving appearance at a homeless shelter because he was tired from recording all night.

“I had no energy when I got out, but I sent my lawyer up there to represent the whole thing, and everybody ate and everybody was good. So that was good.”

9.R. Kelly sleeps in his closet sometimes. That’s a true, real fact.

10. He sees Bill Cosby as a father figure and won’t believe the accusations until “God showed me they were telling the truth.”

11. He maybe possibly lied about what happened when his mother died. There are two stories at the end of R. Kelly’s mother’s death and they show a discrepancy. We don’t want to spoil it, but one of the stories has to be untrue, right?