The Producer dream hampton Talks with Jelani Cobb about “Surviving R. Kelly”

The New Yorker Radio Hour

WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

Politics, Arts, News, Wnyc, Books, David, Storytelling, Society & Culture, Yorker, New, Remnick

4.2 • 6.2K Ratings

🗓️ 18 January 2019

⏱️ 15 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

For decades, it’s been an open secret that R. Kelly has allegedly kept young women trapped in abusive relationships through psychological manipulation, fear, and intimidation. His domestic situation has been compared to a sex cult. He was acquitted of child-pornography charges even though a video that appears to show him with a fourteen-year-old girl was circulated around the country. It was described only as the “R. Kelly sex tape.” Why has it taken so long for the reckonings of the #MeToo movement to catch up to him? Lifetime just aired “Surviving R. Kelly,” a six-part documentary by the producer dream hampton that airs the full breadth of the accusations against Kelly. (He continues to deny all charges of illegal behavior.) One young woman featured in the documentary left a relationship with Kelly, whom she met when she was a teen-age supporter outside the Chicago courtroom where he was being tried. “He was cruising eleventh graders on that trial,” hampton tells the New Yorker staff writer Jelani Cobb. “I mean, the hubris!” Cobb and hampton discuss the complicated dynamics of accusing R. Kelly. “It’s a deep shame black women have, handing over black men to this system we know to be unjust and that targets them,” she says. “At the same time, black women are black people, and we too are targeted . . . . Most sexual-violence survivors don’t find justice in this system, regardless of race.” Update: After our program went to air, RCA Records dropped R. Kelly from its roster.

Transcript

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0:00.0	From One World Trade Center in Manhattan, this is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of the New Yorker and WNYC Studios.
0:10.0	Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. Of all the reckonings to come out of the Me Too movement so far, the case of the R&B star R. Kelly has been a glaring omission for years.
0:21.7	Allegations of abusive followed R. Kelly for three decades,
0:25.5	and to be clear, it's not the story of a star just hooking up with a groupie.
0:29.2	Kelly has been accused of something like running a cult.
0:33.2	Women have said that they were kept in his home as prisoners, abused physically and emotionally.
0:38.7	A sex tape emerged and was viewed around the country, and it seemed to show that Kelly was
0:43.4	molesting a minor. He was tried in 2008 and acquitted. Kelly has denied everything, and by and large
0:51.2	his fans and everyone around him have stuck by him.
1:01.9	That may finally be changing because of a six-part documentary called Surviving R. Kelly, which just aired on Lifetime.
1:09.7	A Georgia DA is now investigating Kelly, and there were protests last week at his record label covered on WNYC News.
1:12.2	We are tired of their silence.
1:18.0	We are tired of the news cycle moving on, ignoring the brave testimony, stories, and fights of Black survivors.
1:20.4	We believe Black survivors.
1:23.4	We believe Black survivors.
1:25.3	We believe Black survivors.
1:27.2	We believe Black survivors. The New Yorkers. We believe black survivors. We believe black survivors.
1:29.0	The New Yorkers Jolani Cobb wrote this. An expose typically indites the character of its subject.
1:35.8	Surviving Arkelli indicts a public that knew of his character and did nothing about it, a public that
1:42.1	constructed an elaborate architecture of denial and
1:45.1	has chosen to live in it.
1:47.5	Jelani Cobb sat down to talk with Dream Hampton, the documentaries producer.
	...

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