It’s getting pretty frustrating to be an R. Kelly fan. As allegations and charges of sexual relations with underage girls continue to pile up, one of the few true R&B heavyweights of recent times now carries the burden of those allegations — as yet adjudicated — on his musically inventive shoulders.
Kelly’s albums are consistently memorable, and, in fact, he’s been approaching a masterpiece over his past couple of albums, making his recent misadventures even sadder.
His latest effort, Chocolate Factory, isn’t that masterpiece, but it’s a solid and often exemplary set of new-jack soul that further establishes Kelly as the king of righteous seduction.
Mixing together the typical blend of gospel intensity and smooth-as-silk soul, Chocolate Factory is another group of songs that brings the wholly carnal up to a most spiritual level.
Far more a consistent set of B+/A- songs than a collection marked by A+ highlights, Chocolate Factory is about as solid as anything Kelly has ever produced.
From the beginning drive of the title track, which is somewhat hampered by a belabored and corny extended analogy, and the gently insistent sway of “Step In The Name Of Love,” through to the funky-pretty single “Ignition” and the Latin-inflected strut of “Showdown,” Kelly fills his songs both with detailed (and occasionally embarrassingly frank) explanations of his romantic desires and with effective utilizations of the gospel traditions of call-and-response and vocal improvisation.
One thing that Chocolate Factory is missing is an anthem, the kind Kelly has repeatedly written. The four clearest examples are “I Believe I Can Fly,” the unstoppably beautiful “If I Could Turn Back The Hands Of Time,” “I Wish” and “The Storm Is Over Now.” All four songs seem destined for children’s choirs and church services, and they deserve it.
Accompanying some copies of Chocolate Factory is a six-track sampling of songs from Kelly’s as-yet-unreleased Loveland, an album made post-Sept.11 that, in its full, bootlegged form, finds Kelly exploring intensely personal issues of soul, mind and body in a way that his best songs always have.
The selections from Loveland, along with the two or three that have made their way onto Chocolate Factory, are as high quality as anything on the album, with “The World’s Greatest” — which made its original appearance on the “Ali” soundtrack — being another in a string of barely secular gospel anthems that have become Kelly’s trademark.
Sadly, though, the best song on the Loveland bootleg, a gospel lament called “Spirit,” is not included in this package. Still, despite this unfortunate omission, the Loveland bonus disc is certainly another reason to pick up Chocolate Factory.
Time will surely tell whether or not R. Kelly is the morally questionable human being which the recent allegations have suggested he may well be, but there is no denying that he remains near the top of modern soul music, creating music with rich texture and complicated spiritual orientation.
Throughout his career, Kelly has walked the line between church and bedroom with skill matched by nobody since Marvin Gaye and Al Green (and maybe Prince), and Chocolate Factory is no exception.
Grade: A/B
