The New Yorker Radio Hour - The Producer dream hampton Talks with Jelani Cobb about “Surviving R. Kelly”

Episode Date: January 18, 2019

For decades, it’s been an open secret that R. Kelly has allegedly kept young women trapped in abusive relationships through psychological manipulation, fear, and intimidation. His domestic situation has been compared to a sex cult. He was acquitted of child-pornography charges even though a video that appears to show him with a fourteen-year-old girl was circulated around the country. It was described only as the “R. Kelly sex tape.” Why has it taken so long for the reckonings of the #MeToo movement to catch up to him? Lifetime just aired “Surviving R. Kelly,” a six-part documentary by the producer dream hampton that airs the full breadth of the accusations against Kelly. (He continues to deny all charges of illegal behavior.) One young woman featured in the documentary left a relationship with Kelly, whom she met when she was a teen-age supporter outside the Chicago courtroom where he was being tried. “He was cruising eleventh graders on that trial,” hampton tells the New Yorker staff writer Jelani Cobb. “I mean, the hubris!” Cobb and hampton discuss the complicated dynamics of accusing R. Kelly. “It’s a deep shame black women have, handing over black men to this system we know to be unjust and that targets them,” she says. “At the same time, black women are black people, and we too are targeted . . . . Most sexual-violence survivors don’t find justice in this system, regardless of race.” Update: After our program went to air, RCA Records dropped R. Kelly from its roster.  New Yorker Radio Hour listeners, we want to hear from you.  We have a few questions about the show and how you listen to it. The survey takes about twenty minutes, and your feedback will help us make our podcast better.  Take the survey here.

From One World Trade Center in Manhattan, this is the New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of the New Yorker and WNYC Studios. Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. Of all the reckonings to come out of the Me Too movement so far, the case of the R&B star R. Kelly has been a glaring omission for years. Allegations of abuse have followed R. Kelly for three decades, and to be clear, it's not the story of a star just hooking up with a groupie. Kelly has been accused of something like running a cult. Women have said that they were kept in his home as prisoners, abused physically and emotionally. A sex tape emerged and was viewed around the country, and it seemed to show that Kelly was molesting a minor.

He was tried in 2008 and acquitted. Kelly has denied everything, and by and large his fans and everyone around him have stuck by him. That may finally be changing because of a six-part documentary called surviving R. Kelly, which just aired on Lifetime. A Georgia DA is now investigating Kelly, and there were protests last week at his record label covered on WNYC News. We are tired of their silence. We are tired of the news cycle moving on, ignoring the brave

testimony, stories, and fights of black survivors. We believe. We believe black survivors. We believe black survivors. We believe black survivors. We believe black survivors. We believe black survivors. We believe Black Survivors. The New Yorkers, Jelani Cobb, wrote this. An expose typically indicts the character of its subject. Surviving Arkelly indicts a public that knew of his character and did nothing about it, a public that constructed an elaborate architecture of denial

and has chosen to live in it. Jelani Cobb sat down to talk with Dream Hampton, the documentaries producer. Just want to start with a basic question, which is, who is Arkehap? He is both a beloved, you know, songwriter and singer who I'm from Detroit, and he is someone who made music for black people in the Midwest, who do this thing called Stepping, who have loved R&B, even as hip hop came and went.

Maybe hip-hop is still here, I don't know. But he's also a man who has had an open secret. and we've known who this man is for a very long time in terms of him being a predator. You and I are in the same age range, and so you were one of the first people in our generation that was really kind of carving a niche as a music journalist. And one of the notable things about it has been your writing on specifically these questions of misogyny and sexism and the way that patriarchy has operated in popular. culture. And I wondered, what were you thinking about when Lifetime approached you?

Quite frankly, I'm not a reality. I like cooking shows and home. I like Home Network, but I don't watch Buna Murray, and I thought they were going to do some silly reenactment thing. And when they told me that they were interested in a more serious approach, something that they'd never done before, I thought it was a time that I could redeem myself for a profile I had done of Arkelley in Vibe magazine of 2000, where I just kind of wrote about his process. This was post his marriage to Aaliyah, but pre-Jim Dira Goddess writing about all of his predatory behavior and the lawsuits about him. I felt so whack about how that happens, like my article coming out in November and then Jim's reporting coming out in December that I never wrote

another magazine profile on an artist again. Mm. BuzzFeed has published an explosive report detailing accusations against artists R. Kelly. According to the report, he's keeping a household of young women in a cult-like atmosphere. The accusations coming from a nine-month-long investigative report.

And just to take a step back about this when you say Alia, Alia was a 15-year-old rising R&B artist and under the tutelage of R. Kelly at the time. And then, because notably, came out and the Vibe magazine published the documents around it that R. Kelly had married her at age 15 when he was at that time in his late 20s. And I think a lot of this explaining that you're having to do for your audience is another part of the reason that I did it. R. Kelly is uniquely our problem. And by our problem, I mean black folks. He didn't really cross over.

He had a crossover hit. Even the songs that he wrote for other people like Maxwell or, you know, Michael Jackson and arguably even Celine Dion were R&V hits. Going back 10 years ago, I was involved in an effort that had what I thought was a modest objective in my naivete, which was that we were requesting that radio stations not play his music during the trial. I thought that his music being played on the radio sent a very contrary message to young women who were dealing with issues of sexual violence and assault. And, you know, a group of us said that just for the time of this trial, his music shouldn't be on the radio.

And the blowback that we got was so extreme. I look at it now as almost a kind of awakening experience. One of the things that you saw with him were groups of people outside the courthouse, and you include some of that in the documentary, the footage of that. But groups of people, very many of them women, very many of them young women, and they were there in support of him. And it was very difficult to hear anything to the contrary, that despite these allegations, there was very much a kind of,

closing ranks around him. I wasn't following the trial as closely in 08, so when I did a deep dive for this dokey series, Geronda Pace, one of his more, you know, vocal victims, a person who broke her NDA, a young woman still, she's not 26 yet,

met him as one of those 11th grade supporters. So he was at his trial, on trial, for having sex with an underage girl, and he was cruising 11th. graders on that trial. The hubris. And he grabbed me and then we started kissing.

And he started fundling my breast. And I stopped him and I said, I'm a virgin. And he said, well, that's perfect. That means I get to train you and I get to take your virginity. So that is among a number of really heinous allegations that come up in the documentary. and, you know, physical abuse, sexual abuse, starvation, people being isolated, kept from their families and so on. What was the hardest thing for you to film? Well, sitting with each survivor was a marathon kind of experience.

I mean, it was hours on top of hours in a studio, just face. facing them. There was not one of those stories that was not hard. The stuff that as a filmmaker that I was most proud of, and in episode five, I fought for every frame, and that was the rescue of Dominique by her mother, Michelle Kramer. And we've flown Michelle in to do what all the other principles had done, which was to sit in front of this green screen and talk to me face to face, you know, for four or five hours. And Michelle said, I don't want to come to the studio. She said, I want to look for my child.

Legal told us we could not suggest this to her. We could only follow what she was going to do. Oh, right, please. She cried like a little girl just hurt for her mommy. And then I say, baby, can I come back, please? And she said, yes, Mama, come back at six. One of the things that people got on the other side of it was, you know, criticism. that they thought that was a kind of tabloid spectacle.

Was there a reason why, you know, Ms. Kramer didn't call the authorities or... Well, try to call the authorities about a missing person over than 18, then tell them that it's an intergender, possibly romantic thing, then tell them that that missing person is a black girl. She has called the police. They all have called the police. I don't, maybe we didn't do a good job of like showing that again and again. They don't get a response from the police.

You'll remember that the police were called on Michelle Kramer. They called the police on this mother. So the police are, I mean, it's this idea that there are like some, you know, there's some police squad waiting to drop out of the ceiling to rescue black girls is a fantasy. Quite frankly, I didn't know we were in. in until the last week on Twitter. On this question about black girls and women, do you think R. Kelly would be a free man

if the young women making the allegations against Timber White? I don't. But then I don't find that question very useful. You know, I think that people prey on people that they have access to. You know, this is the reason why the question by the right, the extreme right, the stormfront folks and the Breitbart folks about, you know, black on black crime. You know, even that invention of that phrase is so wrong.

And I know you've written about this. I mean, crime is committed in communities and who you have access to. And we should say that R. Kelly himself was a victim of crime. In the most intimate spaces, his own home, you know, he was raped repeatedly as a child. Does that complicate, I guess, this equation? Is there some other conversation we should be having about people who are, themselves survivors of sexual abuse and the boomerang effect that that could have in someone's later life.

Well, I would never try to speak as an expert about sexual violence and abuse. What I have been told by people who are experts is that, yes, almost 100% of abusers have been abused, but not 100% of people who have been abused go on to become abusers at all. Arkelley's 51. He just turned 52. And what I wish it happened back when Arkelly was 27 and had had this illegal marriage, which was quickly annulled to Alia, was that his team, people around him, his record label, anyone, his family would have done a deep intervention. Do you think that the fact that Arkelly was so cloistered within black communities explained any of the lag? around taking these allegations more seriously. I mean, I think that we didn't take these allegations

or that he was cloistered, as you say. One of them is we filmed a protest in Detroit of the Mute R. Kelly concert, and you see me outside of the concert asking people, do they feel any reticence to walk into this arena and give their money to this man who for at least 25 years

has been accused of abusing black girls? And they, you know, had the art versus. artist, you know, answer for me and or that he's not guilty. I am an art-kelly fan. It's two sides to every story. I'm here to put the music and nothing else. There is this love that he has from black folks that is both a currency and a protection. And there's this very convenient way that we have talked about him being found not guilty as if he's innocent.

Say more about that. Well, we know that black men are often targeted. in fact, it's a deep shame that black women have handing over black men to this system that we know to be both unjust and that targets them. At the same time, black women are black people and we too are targeted and, you know, treated unjustly in this system. In fact, most sexual violence survivors don't find justice in this system regardless of race. So what do you think should happen with Rkelly? You know, I want justice for these women. And I would like them to define that, you know, what restitution looks like for them.

They're never going to get back what they lost in these, like, very critical years, these formative years in their lives. So I believe that if the criminal justice system can find him guilty, then so be it. I also believe in social death, you know. I believe in boycott and divestment and sanctions. It's been a practice of mine since I became political around South Africa as a 12-year-old. So I believe in that practice, and I think that he's someone that we should have turned away a long time ago. Is there any plan for a follow-up to this documentary?

Absolutely not. I can't imagine. This was one of the darkest years of my life working on this. And I say that with all respect to the survivors who've lived with. this for a lot longer than me. Thank you for talking with me today. Thank you, Jalani. Filmmaker and critic Dream Hampton,

speaking with the New Yorker's Jolani Cobb about the documentary, Surviving R. Kelly. You can find it on streaming services. Kelly and his lawyers have denied the charges in Hampton's film. A Georgia district attorney is now investigating Kelly.

I'm David Remnick, and that's it for the New Yorker Radio Hour this week. I hope you enjoy the show, and I hope you'll join us next time. The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Merrill Garbus of Tune Yards with additional music by Lexus Quadrato.

The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Cherina Endowment Fund.