Album Review: Double Up by R. Kelly

Set in a dilapidated Veterans Administration hospital, Article 99 may be the first medical melodrama that isn’t about dedicated physicians performing life-saving acts of valor. It’s about dedicated physicians not performing life- saving acts of valor: Their hands are tied by the crisis in veterans’ health care — the calamitous lack of funding, the red tape, the increasingly prevalent policy of refusing to cover conditions (such as heart problems) that aren’t directly related to military service. To function as doctors, the movie’s heroes have to become outlaws in their own hospital.

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Midway through the video for his current single, I'm a Flirt, Robert Kelly fixes the camera with a chilling glare: "Let me remind you," he sings, "that I am the king of R&B." It has certainly been easy to overlook that R Kelly was the master of a peculiarly lascivious brand of urban MOR, the kind of artist who duetted with Celine Dion. It's not so much the 14 charges of soliciting a minor for child pornography he is facing - relating to a 2002 video that purported to show him engaging in sex acts with a 14-year-old girl (most infamously, urinating on her) - that has caused people to forget. It's his bizarre musical response to the charges.

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