R. Kelly may be the most naturally gifted performer I’ve ever seen. I’ve attended better shows in my life; to be honest, I got the feeling that the R. Kelly who performed Friday night at Reliant Arena was operating at maybe ten percent power. But that’s kind of like saying Einstein only used ten percent of his brain; from the moment he set foot onstage, Kelly had the crowd in the palm of his hand and he barely had to break a sweat to keep them there. I get the feeling that if he ever did channel his full power he’d burn a hole in the ozone layer.

Photo by Marc Brubaker

Not too much to say about openers Pleasure P and K. Michelle, except they were kind enough not to go on for too long. K. Michelle had some fairly impressive vocal chops, running through Whitney Houston and Mary J. Blige covers and a couple of originals. But by far the biggest crowd response she received was at the end of her set, promising that “The Pied Piper of R&B has come to town / And he’s about to show you how he got his crown.”
Which wasn’t exactly the case; Kelly didn’t so much demonstrate the hunger and ambition that helped him climb to the top of the charts back in the '90s as much as he took a somewhat relaxed stroll through memory lane. The show played like one extended medley, with Kelly rarely playing more than a couple of verses of any given song at a time (I only got maybe two bars of one of my personal favorites, “In the Kitchen”). The band was exceptionally tight, turning on a dime for every abrupt transition and following Kelly’s every move when he ventured off into flights of ad-lib fancy. For his part, Kelly was happy to let the crowd sing large chunks of certain songs; the crowd, on their feet the entire show, were more than eager to oblige, whether or not Kelly was pointing a mic at them.

None of which addresses what makes R. Kelly such a hell of an entertainer. A powerful voice and hit-laden discography can’t hurt, but it comes down to pure charisma. Early in the show he asked someone to “move this goddamn rug, I almost tripped three times.” As one of the most miserable looking stagehands I’ve ever seen rushed onstage to roll up the prop red carpet at the stage’s center, Kelly began crooning the sentence to the man over and over again in his white-hot velvet cadence, each time amping up the drama and improvising vocal runs that other singers would spend years in laboratories trying to concoct. He winked at the crowd. “Just you wait, that shit’s going to be all over the radio next year.” The crowd went nuts. The stagehand not so much, but whatever, he’s getting paid.

“I wasn’t going to mention this” he said towards the end of his set, as the band played the opening bars of “I Believe I Can Fly” like they do every night when he gives this exact same speech, “But this is my first tour since my court date.” Oh, shit, that’s right, all the sex scandal stuff. Acquitted on seventeen bajillion counts of videotaping himself weeing on a tween, Kells wisely chose not to address any of the sordid specifics but rather gave an emotional thank you to the fans. “I felt like you were all up on trial with me.” It turns out it’s because of we, the fans, that R. Kelly believes he can fly, and while I didn’t sing along as the music crescendo’d I’ll be damned if I didn’t tear up a little bit. And I’ve hated that song since I was eleven!

It got to be a bit much when Kelly asked “”How many of you believe you can fly? I mean REALLY believe you can fly?” But then again, it was a bit much when he sniffed the panties someone threw at him, then went to a little onstage changing booth to remove his own briefs and throw them into the crowd (this whole ordeal probably took a good seven minutes). But then again, Trapped in the Closet was a bit much. But then again, Michael Jackson was a bit much, and Elvis was a bit much, and Frank Sinatra was a bit much. The pop landscape is such that Robert Sylvester Kelly will never achieve the same level of crossover success that those figures had, but after witnessing what probably wasn’t even one of his best 700 performances, I can say that he is in the same class of performers. Anyway, Frank Sinatra didn’t write “Ignition.”