“Robert has a control problem,” R. Kelly’s brother, Carey Kelly, said during a lengthy interview with unWinewithTashaK on Sept. 10, per Vibe. During the conversation, Carey described his brother as “demonic,” and spoke about the allegations that R. Kelly sexually abused one of their family members (the discussion starts at 38:40 in the video.) “One, that I know of,” Carey said. It was when he was pressed for details that Carey accused his brother of sexually abusing a 14-year-old female cousin.
When asked about the allegations that R. Kelly impregnated the cousin, Carey couldn’t confirm or deny that. “I can’t say…there hasn’t been any DNA for anything done.” Carey goes onto say in the interview that she “actually didn’t get pregnant till she was seventeen… seventeen, I want to say seventeen. Probably seventeen.” When asked if R. Kelly “was still messing with her at the time,” Carey responded that he didn’t know. “What I do know is, when it took place, [there] was a lot of turmoil between the family and different things like that.”
“[T]he only reason why he targets little girls, now that I’m older, I understand,” Carey said in the interview. “He was molested. I was molested [too], but I didn’t turn out that way. I became a protector of children. I didn’t want kids to go through what I went through…especially my daughters.” Carey declined to say who allegedly molested him and R. Kelly.
During the conversation, which was done to promote Carey’s forthcoming book, R. Kelly’s brother also detailed an interaction between Robert and the late singer, Aaliyah. “I picked it up when he was working on her album and he started producing ‘Age Ain’t Nothin But a Number.’ I’m listening to the [lyrics] and I’m paying closer attention to how they’re vibing,” he said. “They’d be right next to each other, hugged up and different things of that nature. That didn’t seem right with him being the age that he was, and her being the age that he was.”
R. Kelly has been at the center of numerous scandals over the years. Most famously, R. Kelly was indicted on numerous counts of child pornography in 2002 after a video allegedly showed him engaging in sex with an underage girl. In June 2008, after a trial that lasted just a few weeks, a jury found him not guilty. Since 2017, R. Kelly has been accused of running a “sex cult.” He responded these allegations in July 2018, denying that “absurd sh*t” in a 19-minute track titled “I Admit.”
Despite the years of allegations against R. Kelly, the “I Believe I Can Fly” singer seemed to remain popular among fans. “Despite the fact that since before I was born R. Kelly has been known to have inappropriate behaviors with young women,” Princess Weekes wrote for The Mary Sue when discussing the complacency against the accusations against R. Kelly, “I’ve never heard any adults in my life question Kelly’s conduct when his music was playing and the intellectual satire at the time did not do enough to address his behavior.”
“A lot of people didn’t believe [the allegations] because of who he is,” Carey said when discussing this support for R. Kelly, “and that’s how he’s been able to sustain in this business as an artist and as human being [without] not being locked away. It’s almost hard to believe that this icon, this superstar, would do things of that nature.”