R Kelly
R Kelly (real name - Robert Sylvester Kelly) is an American R&B and pop singer, songwriter, record producer, and occasional rapper. He was born on January 8, 1967 in Chicago, Illinois.
Debuting in 1992 with the group Public Announcement, Kelly left the group within a year for a successful solo career starting with the album, 12 Play (1993). Since then, Kelly has been known for a collection of hit singles including "Bump N' Grind", "I Believe I Can Fly", "Ignition" and the urban hip-hopera "Trapped in the Closet".
During late 2001 and early 2002, Kelly began working on the follow up to his album TP-2.com entitled Loveland. The album was scheduled to be released in November 2002, but like Best of Both Worlds before it, heavy bootlegging led to it being delayed. The singer then retooled the whole album titled the Chocolate Factory did feature several of the bootlegged tracks - and many have cropped up elsewhere, as seen below. it also came as a six track bonus disc with the initial pressings of Chocolate Factory.
In June 2005, Kelly released his next album, TP-3: Reloaded, which unlike Kelly's previous albums, didn't yield a successful pop hit, the most successful being a five-part "mini-opera" titled "Trapped in the Closet". "Closet", which, according to the singer, was inspired by Desperate Housewives, became an immediate hit when released as a single.
In May of 2007, Kelly released his eighth studio album Double Up on May 29, 2007, it had been leaked onto P2P networks on eight days earlier. Double Up included the hit single "I'm a Flirt (Remix)", featuring T.I. and T-Pain. The original track entitled "I'm a Flirt", also produced and co-written by R. Kelly, appeared as a hidden track on Bow Wow's The Price of Fame (2006).
According to the RIAA, R. Kelly is one of top 40 best selling artists in history, with sales of over 33 million albums in the United States.