Coming Out of the Closet

R. Kelly does not know how to write. Really. He admitted to Vibe Magazine last year that he isn't good at reading or writing, period. Yet this fact has not prevented the accused statutory rapist from writing "Trapped in the Closet," a monstrous, multipart song that the crooner refers to as an "urban soap opera." So far he's completed videos for parts 1-5, each one more jarringly ill-conceived than the one before it; parts 6-12 are soon to be released, and Kelly has intimated that he may go to 20 or more. (There's a somewhat charming 1,001 Arabian Nights quality to all this, considering Kelly's looming court date.) Adding insult to injury, he's also developing a play and a film for the saga.

But the storyline isn't much of a saga at all -- it's downright boring. So far it goes like this: Kelly hides in the closet after the husband of the woman he's freaking comes home. Kelly argues with said husband, who is a pastor, and who, it is revealed, has a gay lover (?). Talk of being gay ensues. Kelly calls his own wife at home and is shocked to hear a man answer the phone. Kelly races home (getting pulled over by a cop along the way -- the same cop who . . . oh, never mind), berates his woman, does the do with her, then finds a used condom in his bed. Kelly rants about the condom: "Oh my God, a rubber! Rubber! Rubber!" his voice crescendoing skyward.

For obvious reasons (and this is true), The New Yorker has declared that the elements of the work fall somewhere "between John Coltrane's open-ended searching and gospel's time-honored combination of improvisation and hamminess."

Uh, what?

While we hate spoiling endings, we've recently come upon pages of lyrics sheets for upcoming installments of this epic. Here, then, are some of our favorite couplets:

Part 6: "I can't believe that cop done fooled with my girl/If I find him I'ma make his head whirl/My wife says, 'Wait! There's more to this rocky boat!/I haven't yet mentioned, my other boyfriend's a goat! Goat! Goat!'"

Part 7: "After my wife says all this mess/Gotta leave, can't handle the stress/Drive to the club, hopin' the ladies are tight/Gotta get laid at least four more times tonight/That's my plight/What rhymes with plight?/Fight? Might? Lucite? Lucite!"

Part 10: "Decide to leave up out tha club/In the car, hit the gas, wanna find me a cub/Voices in my head, please stop, please!/I'ma find me a girl at Chuck E. Cheeeeeese! Cheese! Cheese!"

Part 15: "Chuck E. Cheese is off the chain/The way these girls look is causin' me strain/Oh shit, a video game/Mayor McCheese/Man, I think I'm gonna hit up Micky-D's/Why are thousands of spiders crawling up and down my arms?"

Part 73: "The seventh-grade girls say, 'We can go to our house, Daddy ain't there'/I say, 'Great! Just show me where!'/And, 'Can I plug a video camera in up there?'/Now the three of us are upstairs rockin'/Ain't no way I'm stoppin'/Look out, the Kelly volcano's about to start pop --" [The rest of the words on this page are smeared and indecipherable.]

Part 1,379: "Now I'm flying a spaceship with 20-inch rims . . ."

Part 73,431: "People of earth/This is your master R. Kelly/You will obey me as I am the one and true leader of all men/Now who wanna go get busy in the kitchen?"