Top 10 Songs by R. Kelly
R. Kelly, born Robert Sylvester Kelly on January 8, 1967 in Chicago, Illinois, is a very successful singer, songwriter and producer. He first hit the music scene as founder and lead singer of the R&B group Public Announcement. Their album “Born Into the ’90s”, released in January of 1992 was a huge success eventually going platinum. To many critics and fans alike this was an R. Kelly solo album because his band mates shared very little of the spotlight.
In 1993 R. Kelly released his solo debut “12 Play”. This suggestive album, packed with sexual innuendos, established Kelly as a leader in the R&B music world and perhaps its most sexually charged performer. The album peaked at #2 on the Billboard Top 200 chart and went on to become 5 times platinum. Following “12 Play” R. Kelly released his second solo effort, a self- titled album, in 1995. Like his first, the second album was a huge success, selling over 5 million copies. But unlike the first it was not full of tales of his sexual prowess. This album remained #1 on the Billboard Top 200 chart for three weeks.
In 1996 Kelly released the hit song “I Believe I Can Fly”, the theme song from the Michael Jordan movie, “Space Jam”. For this effort he received three Grammy Awards: Best R&B Song, Best R&B Male Performance and Best Original Song from a Soundtrack. He was also nominated for Song of the Year and Record of the Year for this song.
In 1998 R. Kelly released “R.”, his most diverse album. R. was also
his top selling album in the U.S. This double album, which peaked at #2 on the charts, went 8 times platinum, selling over 8 million copies in the U.S. alone.
In 2000 Kelly released “TP-2”, the sequel to “12 Play”. In addition to the type of highly sexually charged songs found on the first album “TP-2” included party songs, songs dealing with relationships and even a gospel influenced song. TP-2 was Billboards #1 song for two weeks before going on to become 5 times platinum.
Kelly planned to release a new album, Loveland, in November of 2002 but due to an excessive amount of bootlegging he went back into the studio and recorded another album, Chocolate Factory. This album, released in February 2003 included several of the bootlegged Loveland tracks. Chocolate Factory reached #1 on the Billboard chart and was certified double platinum.
R. Kelly’s second double album, “Happy People/U Saved Me”, in 2004. This two- cd set combined the sex free, feel good dance tracks of “Happy People” with the inspirational gospel anthems of “U Saved Me”. The album reached the #2 spot on Billboard and went triple platinum.
“TP-3:Reloaded” was released in 2005. This was Kelly’s third album in the 12 Play trilogy. This platinum album included “Trapped in the Closet” a five part narrative which R. Kelly calls a “hip hopera”. Kelly sent the song to radio stations one chapter at a time. On August 28 he released Chapter 6 exclusively for the MTV Video Music Awards. Later that summer he released chapters 7- 12 and produced a series of 12 videos to accompany each chapter.
R. Kelly’s next album, entitled “Making Babies”, is set to be released in late 2006 or early 2007.
With so many multi- platinum albums it would be hard to list R. Kelly’s top ten albums let alone songs. However the following are R. Kelly’s top ten songs listed strictly in chronological order:
Honey Love
Slow Dance
Sex Me
Bump and Grind
Your Body’s Callin’ Me
12 Play
Down Low
I Believe I Can Fly
Fiesta (Remix)
Ignition (Remix)
