www.nytimes.com/2007/08/20/arts/music/20trap.html
Click Here Outrageous Farce From R Kelly: Hes In on the Joke, Right? Jive/IFC A scene from "Trapped in the Closet: Chapters 13-22," to be released tomorrow on DVD.
Article Tools Sponsored By By KELEFA SANNEH Published: August 20, 2007 What is there to say, really, about a multipart R&B soap opera cum sex farce starring an expanding cast of actors and actresses, all lip-syncing to the increasingly kaleidoscopic story-songs of a pop star once known for slow jams and I Believe I Can Fly?
Enlarge This Image Jive/IFC LeShay Tomlinson as Kathy in Chapter 14 of "Trapped." Because people have been talking about R Kellys unprecedented audiovisual opus, Trapped in the Closet, ever since its premiere, two summers ago. A 5-part single mushroomed into a 12-part DVD, and in retrospect, his timing looks perfect. The DVD arrived in late 2005, just as YouTube was taking off, and Trapped became a viral hit. It was the kind of pop spectacle you had to see to believe; Back then, Mr Kelly promised that Trapped would return, and now it has: the IFC channels Web site has been showing a new episode every day, leading up to tomorrows DVD release of Trapped in the Closet: Chapters 13-22 (Jive). Mr Kellys outlandish achievement seems to inspire overstatement, especially online.
com called it a perfect storm of the worst artistry ever. He seems drawn to the idea of being an old-fashioned all-around entertainer, and he has recently taken to performing beneath a lit-up sign that reads, R Kelly as Mr Show Biz. He already stands as one of the last true giants in the twinned worlds of R&B and hip-hop, and now hes relishing the idea of branching out into IFC territory. And yet there is something slightly unnerving about the kind of attention Trapped in the Closet has received. Many of its biggest fans seem to think theyre laughing at Mr Kelly, not with him, as if the whole thing were some sort of glorious, terrible mistake; Its hard to think of a work that has inspired more parodies, from Weird Al to Jimmy Kimmel, from sketch comedy to cabaret. Why do so many people think the funniest pop star on the planet is the butt of the joke when he is so obviously in on it? R&B lovermen have long been parodied as comically earnest lotharios, blissfully unaware of how ridiculous they sound. But Mr Kelly long ago realized that a subtle joke, or an unsubtle one, can make a slow jam feel more intimate and therefore more effective. No doubt more than a few couples have used Feelin on Yo Booty as mood music, chuckling contentedly when the chorus suddenly morphs into a yodeling demonstration. Listen closely, and you can hear Mr Kelly chuckling too. Ever since the appearance in 2002 of a video that the police say shows him with an under-age girl, his jokes have grown bigger and sillier. Maybe thats an expression of his relief at the way his career has rebounded from scandal. Or maybe its an expression of his continuing anxiety about his forthcoming trial on charges of child pornography. If it is a phase, its an extraordinarily entertaining one. Mr Kellys obsession with comedy is also an obsession with plot and narrative. And his most recent album, Double Up, contains elegant theatrical songs like Same Girl, the hit Usher duet about a two-timing woman; In this last song, Mr Kelly takes an absurd three-word phrase Is you tweakin? and makes it funny, scary, believable and diabolically catchy. Trapped in the Closet may be an anomaly, but its no fluke. Some Trapped fans may think theyre flattering Mr Kelly by praising his alleged insanity or navet, but thats the kind of praise that can easily sound like condescension, especially when directed (as it often is) at African-American performers. And some IFC viewers might not know that Mr Kelly is deploying some of the same dramatic devices you can find in the world of urban theater, sometimes affectionately or derisively called the chitlin circuit.
Tyler Perry, Shelly Garrett, Angela Barrow-Dunlap or David E Talbert. As Trapped spirals out from its soap opera beginnings, the action and the songwriting get looser, in ways good and bad. There are some great and cheerfully extraneous scenes in a church, when the familiar backing track gives way to comic gospel. Mr Kelly adopts more roles, and in Chapter 15 he gets an unlikely co-star: the indie-rock hero Will Oldham, on screen for only a few seconds. And although Trapped isnt tuneless, exactly, Mr Kelly generally recycles the same few tunes, and sometimes chooses exposition over meter. In the new chapters, as in the old ones, there are some marvelous set pieces: scenes full of carefully choreographed cross-talk, an echo of the famous closet scene from Chapter 1, an oddly pretty evocation of poor cellphone reception (Static-in, he explains, sotto voce), an occasional dash of falsetto sweetness. There are missteps too, especially an overlong Mafia scene. You can also feel Mr Kelly drift further from the tension and claustrophobia that characterized the early episodes. In the beginning Trapped was rooted in the first-person narration of Mr Kelly as Sylvester: 7 oclock in the morning, and rays from the sun wakes me. By Chapter 8 Mr Kelly had acquired a second role as the cigar-smoking narrator, broadening the storys scope (we could see things Sylvester didnt) but slightly undermining its intensity. And by Chapter 10 Sylvesters speech had gone third person: Sylvester said, instead of I said. instead of inhabiting Sylvester, Mr Kelly was toying with him or making him a bystander. One odd thing about the new chapters is that nothing much happens to Sylvester. No one likes a spoiler, but suffice it to say that Mr Kelly finds a clever way to bring the story back to its sex-and-deception roots, culminating in a mesmerizing song composed of phone-call fragments. Its eerie and funny, a reminder that Mr Kelly can make great music more or less whenever he feels like it. And, just when you thought this was all an elaborate joke, the ending is surprisingly sad. Surely Chapter 23, whenever it comes, will bring well, it would be foolish to guess. But heres hoping Mr Kellys dramatic phase isnt over yet.
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