We are, it seems, trapped in that closet, and executives at Jive Records must be ecstatic. Weeks after "Trapped in the Closet" first leaked out on the radio and online, conversations still revolve around the five-chapter song/soap operetta/saga by R. Kelly, who is everything you could want in a hype machine: singer, criminal defendant, phenomenon.
Hits magazine estimates that Kelly's "TP.3 Reloaded," which includes the "Closet" opera, will sell 500,000 copies in its first week, one of the best debuts of the year. BET aired all five chapters of the video for "Trapped in the Closet" in a special last Tuesday night, the night the album was released, and BET spokesman Michael Lewellen says the half-hour program drew 2.8 million viewers, making it the ninth most-watched telecast in BET's 25-year history. There's a seductress who rips off her wig, a protagonist who waves a gun in your face, and "down-low" Christians. All that in Chapter 1!
If you have no idea what we're talking about, let's bring you along. "Trapped in the Closet" -- both video and song suite -- finds R. Kelly, aka the Pied Piper, hiding in his lover's closet when her spouse comes home unexpectedly.
Spouse walks into tainted bedroom and proceeds to ravish cheating wife.
Then: Pied Piper gets cell phone call. Fumbles to silence ring tone (which plays Cassidy's "I'm a hustla, I'm a-I'm a hustla!"). Cuckold husband's ears perk up. He leaps off the bed while wifey's biting her nails. " Nails! " our corn-rowed hero sings. "Right now I'm sweating like hell." (So are we, Kellz. So. Are. We.) Husband "checks under the bed, then under the dresser. He looks at the closet -- I pull out my Beretta. . ."
He walks up to the closet.
He goes up to the closet.
Now he's at the claw-SIT.
Now he's opening the claw-SIT.
(The closet door starts to creak, and leaves us hanging at the end of Chapter 1.)
"It had everyone listening in the D.C. metro area on the edge of their seats," says Jeannie Jones, a DJ at WKYS-FM. "That is one of the hottest topics in the clubs, in the streets. Who's sleeping with who? Are you straight or bisexual? If you marry me, are you going to cheat? Everything in 'Trapped in the Closet' is part of the day-to-day saga in D.C."
But not everyone appreciates Kelly's love under fire. For starters, the singer is facing 14 counts of child pornography-related charges in Chicago after a sex tape surfaced in 2002, allegedly showing him having sex with a minor. He has pleaded not guilty. The next pretrial hearing is set for July 20.
