Posts Tagged ‘Aaliyah’

When Good Albums Happen to Bad People: R. Kelly, “R. Kelly” (1995)

If you’re anything like the latest artist in this series, then you probably like your women how you like your coffee: dark, young, and soaked in your urine.

Yes, Robert Kelly has interesting tastes to say the least. Luckily, he also has effective lawyers and P.R. people, because he is still able to continue making slow-jam bump and grind music to this day, instead of being jammed and ground from behind in a federal prison as an incarcerated child molester.

And while Mr. Kelly apparently owns a predilection to pubescent women and water sports, one thing that he doesn’t seem to have is a sense of shame: when the heat is turned up on Kelly, he revels in it, sometimes turning it into a big joke. Take for instance one of the nicknames which which he has glossed himself in recent years: The Pied Piper. Yes, that’s right, the man who married a 15-year-old, who was arrested on multiple counts of child pornography, who is infamous for a predilection towards female partners under the age of 18, now proudly refers to himself under the name of a fairytale musician who stole KIDS away from their parents and took them away to his “magical land.”

Kelly’s infamy is so great that it isn’t necessary to go into detail about his two most extreme cases of notoriety, but at least a glance is required for completeness:

On August 31, 1994, Kelly married Aaliyah D. Haughton, niece of Kelly’s manager Barry Hankerson, in a hotel room in Rosemont, Illinois. According to a number of sources, including (in 2000) Kelly’s own spokeswoman, Kelly and Aaliyah had been dating for months prior. Unfortunately, Aaliyah was also 15 years old at the time of the wedding, and the marriage certificate had been secured with a fake ID obtained by one of Kelly’s assistants, which listed the young singer as 18. While both singers denied the marriage and any relationship, a Chicago Sun Times investigation found a certificate of marriage for the two on file with the Cook County Registrar. The marriage appears to have been almost immediately annulled with the help of Aaliyah’s parents. (more…)

Bootleg City: David Bowie in Baton Rouge, April ‘78 (Pt. 2)

Late last summer a DVD of the movie August, which features David Bowie in a cameo, showed up at the office where I used to work. If you haven’t heard of it, you’re not alone: it was released in one theater in New York City last July before making a quick exit to video the following month. If it hadn’t been for that promo DVD, I doubt I would’ve heard of it either.

Directed by Austin Chick, August isn’t a terribly compelling film, due in large part to Josh Hartnett’s emotionally distant yet gratuitously beefcakey lead performance, i.e. “Don’t look at me! I mean, check out the six-pack, of course, but don’t look look at me.” (Is it just me, or do you get the feeling Hartnett tortured small woodland creatures as a child? Somebody needs to cast this brooding hunk as a serial killer — or at least a young Tommy Lee Jones — ASAP.) Howard A. Rodman’s script has some clever touches, though, like how it never explains what dot-com guru wannabe Tom Sterling’s (Hartnett) company actually does. I worked for a start-up for just three months in 2000 before being laid off, and during that brief time I had trouble justifying the company’s existence to my friends and family.

The press release that came with the August DVD said that the film “follows Josh Hartnett as a young dot-com entrepreneur who fights to regain control of his company from Ogilvie (David Bowie).” Based on that description you’d think Ogilvie is a major character in the movie, but as I said, the part-time actor only has a cameo. His single scene — at the film’s climax — is an important one, but he’s in and out of August in less than six minutes.

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Chartburn: 8/15/08


Mainstream Rock: Steve Winwood, “Higher Love” (1986)

David Lifton: You couldn’t get a more perfect crossover record than this in 1986: A classic rock legend duetting with an R&B diva on a modern-sounding piece of synth pop-soul. I loved “While You See a Chance” from 1980, so it was good to hear him back on the charts, and shortly after that, I began learning about Traffic and the Spencer Davis Group.

Beau Dure: I don’t begrudge Steve Winwood his ’80s success, but “While You See a Chance” is a worthier song than this.

Ted Asregadoo: I’m not sure if it’s the buildup of toxins in my body due to overexposure to this song, but it seems that ever since “Higher Love” came out, I have not been able to escape it. It might be the fact that I spent 11 years working at an Adult Contemporary station where this song never went away, but I can’t even appreciate it for any of the reasons stated. It’s sludge to me.

Dw. Dunphy: I just had to smile when this came out. Many of Winwood’s contemporaries who were still in “the biz” were so far away from where they once were, in style, in sound, and then he just shows up as soulful, youthful and cool as ever. He did it yet again this past winter at the Clapton / Winwood shows. Clapton, brilliant though he may be, looked ancient next to Steve.

The whole Back in the High Life album is darn near perfect, especially “Freedom Overspill.” You’ll get nary a snarklette from me on this. (more…)