R. Kelly - worst. song. ever.

What the hell was this pissing-on-teens moron thinking when he put together "Trapped in the closet", his 'urban opera'? This thing's a goddamn travesty!

For those who don't know (meaning those who don't watch VH1 as an emergency backup when Cartoon Network switches to anime at 12:30 like I do), "In the closet" is a multi-part 'urban opera' by R. Kelly. Currently, there are five chapters, each with a separate "song" and video, and word is there are more chapters to come over the summer. For those who don't know even more, R. Kelly is an R & B/hip hop artist who was famously indicted for having sex with minors because he was videotaped having sex and urinating on a 16 year old girl. I may just be kicking a man while he's down, but I seem to recall the teen was his cousin or some disturbing thing, as well. But I could be wrong about that. In any event, he's wealthy, so he got good lawyers and got off.

So back to the worst song ever. Let's break it down a bit. The premise seems to be that R. Kelly is a married man who is having an affair with this woman. He has sex with her, inciting a frantic bit of truly horrible songmaking and caterwauling, then she tells him he's got to go because her husband's home. She tells him to hide in the closet, but he refuses because he needs to go home to his wife and wants to go out the window. She assures him that would be fine, except she's on the fifth floor (I know, I know...I didn't write this shit. I'm just the humble reporter). He ponders for a moment, then suggests he hide in the closet (remember how this was her idea a minute ago?). The husband comes in, and they start having sex, then R. Kelly's phone goes off. (This leads to a particularly excited bit of 'singing' that climaxes around the phrase "I tried my best to quickly put it on vibrate") Hubby gets angry and starts searching the house, comes back to the bedroom, looks under the bed, R. Kelly pulls his gun, then hubby comes and opens the closet door.

And that's the end of chapter 1. Oh, how I wish it was the end of the whole series and had only been played once...but no such luck. I am fortunate enough to say I haven't suffered through chapters 2 - 5, but I'm confident I don't need to. On to chapter 5:

Now he's with his wife. He comes home and they start having frantic sex (more caterwauling here). She rolls him over to be on top, and he complains that his leg is asleep. She refuses to stop, and they argue until he angrily throws her off of him. I wish I was kidding, but his leg falling asleep during sex and the ensuing argument are seriously a major part of this song. So he sits on the edge of the bed to think about his anger with her, pulls the sheet back for some reason, and finds a used condom. Big argument ensues, where he threatens to beat her, then she says she did it because he was out with some other woman. He doesn't believe her, but she says she saw him at the club because she was there with her new beau. He pulls his gun again, thinking maybe the guy's in the house, then they argue for a while about what his name is (actual lyric: "and then she says uh uh I say uh what") We never hear the name, but she gives a lengthy explanation about several of her friends that R. Kelly knows peripherally who introduced him to the cop who stopped him in chapter 4 - and is now her lover! What a twist!

So here are some of the many, many problems with this piece of shit.
1. R. Kelly wrote a story that an eighth grader in lit class would get a "C" for. It's really just a lame storyline, and the dialogue is incredibly bad.
2. He sings every word. No metaphorical conversations, no shorthand, we get the whole dialogue and every action sung to us ("Then I'm like woman I called this house And a man picked up my phone Then she said calm down Did you forget My brother Twan came home Oh...And thats all I could say was oh Wit a stupid look on my face Said I forgot he came home today."). This means every expression on their face, every "um" and "whut?" and this memorable exchange: "she says ok wipes her nose then asks me about a girl name tina I thought to myself says it sounds familiar then said that’ll I probably know her if I seen her and then I said any way girl what the hell has that got to do with this man." It's just excruciating.
3. His singing is the most god-awful nonsense I've ever heard. It's like the lit class eighth grader wrote their crappy story, then gave it to their 5-year old sister to sing it - it's seriously just two super simple themes strung together over and over, with occasional emphasis on words like "bathroom", "vibrate", etc.
4. Could he possibly reinforce any more stereotypes about black culture for us? Let's see...he's been stopped and resents the cops, he carries a gun and pulls it at the slightest provocation, he's married and having an affair with a married woman whose husband is having an affair. They do their cheating at "the club". He threatens to beat her. She cowers, then gets the upper hand and starts with the hand in the face, neck-bobbing attitude.
In short: R. Kelly has produced the worst. song. ever.