Double Up
After the pious Chocolate Factory (2003) and Happy People/U Saved Me (2004)-- as well as five years with multiple counts of child pornography hanging over his head-- R. Kelly continues to embrace his flightier fancies.
Since his child-pornography scandal, R. Kelly's output has been characterized by lunatic ambition and ambitious lunacy. His latest, Double Up, doesn't boast an overarching concept as ambitiously insane as the 2004 gospel/ecstatic-pop double CD Happy People/U Saved Me or his Trapped In The Closet multimedia serial, but…
Like most of its predecessors, R. Kelly's eleventh album is stuffed to the gills, with 18-plus songs clocking in at 76 minutes (or longer, depending on which bonus track[s] your edition includes.) And if Double Up is, inevitably, far from flawless, the level of novelty and listenability Kelly manages to sustain for that duration is quite a feat.
Kelly really shouldn’t be making albums like this anymore. Dude’s pushing 40 and lest we forget, dude is still an alleged-felon