#R kelly age aint nothin but a numebr trial
#R kelly age aint nothin but a numebr professional

Instead, in the aftermath of the relationship - both before Kelly’s 2006 arrest for the possession of child pornography and throughout his professional rehabilitation in the years that followed, all the way up until the news of his so-called “sex cult” broke in 2017 - their secret marriage was treated as an amusingly soapy celebrity scandal.

It also should have been clear that the responsibility for any such relationship rested with the adult in the room: Kelly. “Theirs wasn’t a love story that defied age,” writes journalist Kathy Iandoli in her 2021 biography Baby Girl: Better Known as Aaliyah “it was a tragedy that Aaliyah endured and somehow moved past to become an icon in her own right without him.”Įven in 1994, it should have been clear just from the sheer age difference and power differential between Aaliyah and Kelly - Aaliyah 15 and a child, Kelly 27 and her professional mentor - that any romantic relationship between them would most likely hurt her. Fans of Aaliyah turned a record store mural of the singer into a shrine after her death. Additionally, since news of Kelly’s continued abusive relationships and his so-called “sex cult” broke in 2017 amid the Me Too movement, discussions about what he did to Aaliyah have acquired a widespread moral outrage that they lacked just a few years ago. Since Aaliyah’s 2001 death, stories that have filtered out from Aaliyah’s friends, family, and boyfriends suggest that Kelly abused her badly. ( Kelly has continued to deny it at his trial.) The wedding was quickly annulled, and Kelly and Aaliyah both denied it ever took place. Kelly and Aaliyah was framed as a love story.Ĭourt records show that Aaliyah and Kelly were married in an illegal ceremony in 1994, when Aaliyah was 15 and Kelly 27. Instead of a story about abuse, the story of R. 1 on Kelly’s indictment, and she is likely Kelly’s first known victim.įor a very long time, however, that’s not how the world told their story.

#R kelly age aint nothin but a numebr trial

On August 18, opening statements began at Kelly’s trial on charges of racketeering and sex trafficking.

Kelly, born Robert Sylvester Kelly, is at the center of the other big Aaliyah milestone of this month. Kelly, the album’s producer and Aaliyah’s alleged abuser. She still is: A 2021 MTV News article declared that listening to her 2001 self-titled album “still sounds like the future.” Yet until this month, the only Aaliyah album available to stream was her 1994 debut, Age Ain’t Nothing but a Number - which meant that listening to any Aaliyah song on streaming meant automatically sending royalties to R. In her lifetime, Aaliyah was celebrated as one of pop’s most forward-looking and futuristic artists. Alongside that anniversary comes a notable milestone: On August 20, Aaliyah’s music catalog began making its way to streaming for the first time. The R&B singer, born Aaliyah Dana Haughton and nicknamed Baby Girl but best known by her first name, died in a plane crash on August 25, 2001, at 22 years old. This month marks the 20th anniversary of the death of Aaliyah. In the Purity Chronicles, Vox looks back at the sexual and gendered mores of the late ’90s and 2000s, one pop culture phenomenon at a time.