R. Kelly’s ‘Chocolate’: Cut the Baby Ruths

Apparently, there’s no off-switch on this Love Machine. Other crooners facing the prospect of hard time for kiddie-porn might have backed off the X-rated pillow talk for an album or two, or at least made it abundantly clear, in lyrics or liner notes, that their serenades were inspired by ladies old enough to drive.
But R. Kelly is no fair-weather swain. ”Chocolate Factory,” the long-delayed album by the much-indicted singer, is carnal to the core and filled with so much jailbait innuendo that you have to figure the guy is either incorrigible or badly in need of a better lawyer. There’s a fine lover-boy R&B album here, but Kelly’s legal trouble makes it nearly impossible to sit through without cringing, right from the title track and first song, in which he likens his girlfriend to SweeTarts and gumdrops. Given that Kelly is suspected of having sex with a 14-year-old, perhaps someone should have taken him aside and said, ”Hey, R. Isn’t this a little, you know … insane ?”
Sweet talk, of course, is what we expect from Kelly. He became one of the most successful male solo artists of the ’90s with soulful, lusty cooing and singles with enough crossover appeal to hike up both the R&B and pop charts for weeks at a time. (His most famous production, ”I Believe I Can Fly,” is now as unavoidable at high-school choir recitals as flat notes and proud mothers.)
His skill as a producer and songwriter were sought by stars like Michael Jackson, and he helped launch the career of the now-deceased Aaliyah, to whom Kelly was briefly married when she was 15 years old. He produced her debut album, whose title has taken on a leering new meaning: ”Age Ain’t Nothing but a Number.”
His stellar and lucrative career of come-hithers was eclipsed last year by his arrest by Chicago police, who alleged that Kelly co-starred in a homemade sex video with an underage girl. A jury later indicted him on 21 counts of child pornography, all stemming from the same tape. Kelly has pleaded not guilty, but he’ll need to convince more than just his peers in Illinois of that. In January, cops in Florida arrested him for 12 counts of the same alleged crime.
Evidence of all of this trauma is hard to find on ”Chocolate.” It’s mostly mid-tempo ballads, played with keyboards, machine-made drums and the occasional Spanish guitar, all of it dialed back to keep Kelly’s yearning patter at the forefront of the mix. Throughout the album, he switches from the Lieutenant of Lewd to Devoted Paramour. The Lieutenant stuff grabs you the most, in part because it seems so reckless. On the first single, the romping ”Ignition,” Kelly pushes the driving-as-sex-metaphor about as far as it’ll go, then poses a question you probably wouldn’t ask a 21-year-old: ”So tell me, have you ever driven a stick, baby?” He flaunts the danger he poses to kids by declaring himself ”the Pied Piper of R&B,” on the remix to the same song, and stares down an irate father, played and sung by the great Ronald Isley, who shows up at Kelly’s house looking for his daughter, on ”Showdown.”
When Kelly isn’t daring you to assume the worst about his predations, ”Chocolate” doesn’t just believe it can fly–it flies. ”You Knock Me Out,” sounds like the tune that could have given Michael Jackson’s last album some staying power. Fat Joe’s cameo, and a beat that sounds like Bronx-born Flamenco makes ”Who’s That?” a terrific closer.
In the rare places that Kelly alludes to his new infamy, it’s to tsk-tsk his detractors. ”Yeah, I know I need a hug, but you need a hug, too / Cause God is gonna judge me the same day he judge you,” he predicts on ”Been Around the World,” with a vocal assist from Ja Rule. And on ”I’ll Never Leave” he promises his lady that he’ll ”be damned if I’m gonna let this bull crap take me away from you.”
”Chocolate Factory” surely won’t convince many people that Kelly is right about this ”bull crap,” but then again it isn’t a brief for his innocence. It’s more like a candlelight dinner where the guest of honor might just be a high-school freshman. It leaves a listener in a tricky spot. You don’t know whether to feel the love or call the cops.