Yahoo! Music Review

Released on 04/06/07
Label: Jive

Ladies and gentleman, please be upstanding and make way for R Kelly and his monumental ego. Breathe deeply or we might not fit it all in. That's right, the bump'n'grind lothario, the former R&B hit machine turned R&B caricature, has finally gone full-on Michael Jackson, right down to the sequined glove and la la delusions of grandeur. He's now to be found inhabiting an alternate dimension where he's "the king of R&B" and his new album doesn't sound like he phoned it in from D-Wing.

Perhaps Kelly's thinking of entering a plea of insanity when he goes on trial to answer those charges of having sex with a minor. Maybe he's going to enter "Double Up" as evidence. It's the only possible explanation for his recent interview claim to be the Ali, Marvin Gaye and Martin Luther King of his generation, or, for that matter, on opening track "The Champ", where he says the same with a choir chanting "the champ is here, the champ is here."

And it's pretty much downhill from there as his tenuous grasp on reality and good taste slips and he plummets into a tawdry, gratuitous and self-congratulatory flurry of misogyny, expletives and reggae. It's not big, it's not clever and it's not pleasant. Worst of all, it's not very good. The crowded guest list of Snoop Dogg, Chamillionaire, Usher and Kid Rock promises much, but for the most part it's depressingly by numbers; the Nelly-starring club thud of "Tryin' To Get A Number" being the only thing close to a genuine chart contender.

Left to his own devices though, "Double Up just gets worse. Those with weak stomachs should look away now. As if satin sheet soiling slow-jam "Sex Planet"'s "Girl I promise this will be painless / We'll take a trip to planet Ur-anus" wasn't bad enough, seduction masterclass "Zoo" issues the unparalleled: "I got you so wet it's like a rain forest / Like Jurassic Park except I'm your sex-o-saurus".

"Real Talk" is a disturbingly venomous torrent of recriminations, delivered with such anger and violence that it's hard not to picture him slapping the "triflin' ass bitch" in question from one side of the living room to the other. Meanwhile, "Rise Up" is ill-advised in the extreme; a sincerity-free sludge in tribute to those who lost children in the Virginia School Massacre. Like they haven't suffered enough.

Frustratingly, R Kelly's rampant delusions have seen off the last hints of the talent which once made him great. He's always lived in a ridiculous world, where every night's a club night of velvet ropes, Cristal and willing females. But he used to write good songs to go with it. Without them, he's just plain ridiculous.

    by Dan Gennoe