A New R. Kelly Album Appeared On DSPs, But It Wasn’t Uploaded By Him Or His Label

Surprise album releases have become pretty commonplace in the streaming era, but music fans were still baffled — and somewhat appalled — to see a new album from incarcerated R&B star R. Kelly on their streaming apps this morning. Furthermore, its title, I Admit It, raised more than a few eyebrows, considering he was convicted of both sex trafficking in New York and child porn in Chicago. So, how did a new R. Kelly album end up on streaming?

Billboard did a little digging and discovered that, although the credits appear to cite Sony Music’s Legacy Recordings as the responsible party, the label said that it was not involved at all. Sources at Legacy were conducting their own investigation with Apple, Spotify, and the rest of the streamers to figure out how the album was delivered.

Apparently, the actual upload seems to have come from Ingrooves, a distributor under the Universal Music Group umbrella. Ingrooves says that is “severing a relationship” with a label called Real Talk Entertainment, which released the album under a supposed subsidiary called Legacy Recordings — i.e. the same name as Sony’s imprint. This seems like a little sneaky maneuvering on behalf of whoever actually uploaded the album to make it seem like a legit release.

Sony, which dropped R. Kelly after the Lifetime docuseries Surviving R. Kelly spurred the #MuteRKelly movement, still owns his Zomba/Jive and RCA catalog of early recordings. Meanwhile, R. Kelly’s reps told Variety today that I Admit It, named for Kelly’s 20-minute 2018 track in which he admits to very little, was not uploaded by him. It looks like this might be another case of rogue fans or scammers uploading a fake album and trying to profit from the resulting publicity. Since the album has been removed from DSPs, it doesn’t look like a winning strategy at all.