Robert Sylvester Kelly (born January 8, 1967), known professionally as R. Kelly, is an American singer, songwriter, record producer, and convicted sex offender. He has been credited with helping to redefine R&B and hip hop, earning nicknames such as “the King of R&B”, “the King of Pop-Soul”, and the “Pied Piper of R&B”. He was convicted for sex trafficking, child pornography, and sexual exploitation of a minor.

Kelly has released 18 studio albums and is known for hit singles such as “I Believe I Can Fly”, “Bump N’ Grind”, “Your Body’s Callin'”, “Gotham City”, “Ignition (Remix)”, “If I Could Turn Back the Hands of Time”, “The World’s Greatest”, “I’m a Flirt (Remix)”, and the hip hopera Trapped in the Closet. In 1998, he won three Grammy Awards for “I Believe I Can Fly”. Although Kelly is primarily a singer and songwriter, he has written, produced, and remixed songs, singles, and albums for other artists. In 1996, he was nominated for a Grammy Award for writing Michael Jackson’s song “You Are Not Alone”, which also was the first song to debut at number one on the Billboard Hot 100.

Kelly has sold over 75 million albums and singles worldwide, making him the most successful R&B male artist of the 1990s and one of the best-selling music artists of all time. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has recognized R. Kelly as one of the bestselling music artists in the United States with 40 million albums sold as well as only the fifth black artist to crack the top 50 of the same list. In March 2011, R. Kelly was named the most successful R&B artist of the last 25 years by Billboard. Throughout his career, Kelly has won numerous awards, including a Guinness World Records as well as countless other awards like Grammy, BET, Soul Train, Billboard, NAACP, and American Music Awards.

Investigations by law enforcement and journalists revealed that Kelly used his fame to seek out underage fans for sex. Video recordings of these encounters led to him being prosecuted for child pornography, but he was acquitted in 2008. The 2019 documentary television series Surviving R. Kelly reexamined Kelly’s alleged sexual misconduct with minors, prompting RCA Records to terminate his contract. Kelly was arrested in July 2019 on new charges brought by multiple jurisdictions. In 2021, he was convicted under the Mann Act and for racketeering. In 2022, Kelly was convicted of three child pornography charges and three charges of enticing a minor. He was sentenced to serve 31 years imprisonment in a combination of concurrent and consecutive sentences. As of 2023, Kelly is incarcerated at FCI Butner Medium I. He is scheduled for release on December 21, 2045.

Robert Sylvester Kelly was born on the South Side of Chicago, Illinois, on January 8, 1967, at Chicago Lying-In Hospital (now University of Chicago Medical Center) in the city’s Hyde Park neighborhood. He has five siblings (three of which are half), two older sisters and brother, along with a younger brother and sister. His mother, Joanne, was a schoolteacher and devout Baptist. She was born in Arkansas. The identity of his father, who was absent from Kelly’s life and later raised two children, is not known. His family lived in the Ida B. Wells Homes public housing project in the Black Metropolis–Bronzeville District of Chicago’s Douglas neighborhood, also on the city’s south side. Around the time he was five years old, Kelly’s mother married his stepfather, Lucious, who reportedly worked for an airline. Kelly began singing in the church choir at age eight.

Kelly described having a girlfriend, Lulu, at age eight, in his autobiography. He stated that their last play date turned tragic when, after fighting with older children over a play area by a creek, she was pushed into the water, swept downstream by a fast-moving current, and drowned. Kelly called Lulu his first musical inspiration.

Kelly said members of his household would act differently when his mother and grandparents were not home. This included women walking around half-naked. Additionally, Kelly stated that when he was at the age of eight, a female in the household asked him to watch and photograph her having sex with a male partner.

From age 8 to 14, he was sexually abused by an older female family member. Kelly’s younger brother, Carey, stated that he suffered from years of sexual abuse at the hands of his older sister, Theresa, who was entrusted with babysitting her siblings. Carey stated that although their older brother, Bruce, was spared and allowed to play outside, both him and Kelly were punished at separate times indoors by Theresa, who refused to acknowledge the abuse when confronted years later.

Explaining why he never told anyone, Kelly wrote in his 2012 autobiography, Soulacoaster: The Diary of Me, that he was “too afraid and too ashamed”. Around age 10, Kelly was also sexually abused by an older male who was a friend of the family. In his autobiography, Kelly described being shot in the shoulder, at age 11, by boys who were attempting to steal his bike, although a family friend later stated that Kelly had shot himself while attempting suicide.