Famous rappers doing jail time is nothing new. In fact, it mysteriously adds to their “street credit” if they do time because it’s driven by the stigma that it somehow validates their music.
This is exactly what happened with 50 Cent who dealt drugs, did jail time and claimed he was shot nine times at close range as he revealed in his autobiography. It adds to his “hardcore” mystique even though he led a life of crime.
And now this legendary rapper might do some serious jail time as well after these new charges.
You’ve definitely heard an R Kelly song before like “I believe I Can Fly.”
One infamous music video showed the singer allegedly urinating on an underage girl. You might remember that Dave Chappelle famously mocked him and the video with his R Kelly rendition called “Piss on You.”
Rumors about his explicit sexual nature behind closed doors have been around for two decades. And it wasn’t just urination.
Lifetime just debuted a bombshell documentary series called Surviving R. Kelly in January. In the documentary, we received first-hand accounts of women sharing their stories about the infamous singer that range from sexual predatory behavior to pedophilia. One of the accounts even included his former wife.
Now, it seems like his seedy past has finally caught up to him because he was just charged with 10 counts of aggravated criminal sexual abuse against four women and three of whom were minors at the time.
The 52-year-old turned himself in to the authorities this past Friday and he was released on a $1,000,000 bail and is scheduled to appear again on the 22nd of March.
If convicted, he could spend the rest of his life in jail. Each charge faces three to seven years in prison.
High-profile attorney Gloria Allred is representing more than six women who allege abuse from him as far back as 1998. In 2008, Kelly was acquitted on charges of making child pornography even though a videotape showed an alleged encounter with a 14-year-old girl being shown to prosecutors.
Rumors circulated several years ago that he was holding young women against their will at his properties in Atlanta and Chicago. He was even accused of being a one-man sex cult, but all of those rumors were unsubstantiated.
And apparently,Kelly is broke.
Kelly had to put up the bail money ($100,000 ten percent of the total amount) and his attorney, Steve Greenberg, remarked that he, “really doesn’t have any more money.”
That’s bad news for the star rapper because lawyer bills will be considerable for a trial of this size.
Granted, he hasn’t come out with a hit song in a while but even residuals from his hit songs all those years ago should be a nice income – although it might not be enough to pay for his high-priced lawyers.
