He earned his first Grammy nominations in 1995 for writing and producing "You are Not Alone," the last No. But he managed to remain above it for much of the next two decades, largely due to his talent for generating blockbuster hit singles and albums.
Though the oversight was laid at Aaliyah's feet - she admitted that she had falsely claimed to be 18 - a patina of unseemliness began to creep into Kelly's Mr. The lead single, "Back & Forth" netted Kelly another #1 R&B single, but the triumph was also marked by controversy when it was revealed that Kelly had secretly married his underage protégé in 1994. His next great success came in the latter capacity with Age Ain't Nothing But a Number (1994), the debut album for 15-year-old singer Aaliyah. 12 Play would go on to earn platinum status six times over, and made Kelly an in-demand talent as both performer and producer. "Bump n' Grind" shot to the top of the Hot 100 and R&B/Hip-Hop singles charts and remained on the latter for 12 weeks, while "Sex Me" and "Your Body's Callin'" both landed in the R&B Top 5. Kelly parted ways with Public Announcement after a 1992 and issued his first proper solo album 12 Play (1993), which did much to cement Kelly's public image - for better or worse - as a soulman with a decidedly carnal edge. 1 on the Billboard R&B Singles charts, while a third, "Dedicated" earned Kelly his first Top 40 pop single. Two singles from the LP - "Honey Love" and "Slow Dance (Hey Mr.
The quartet's fortunes rose swiftly in the late 1980s: Kelly's win on the syndicated talent show "Big Break" led to a record contract from Vibe and a debut album, Born into the '90s (1992) which caught the last dying embers of the new jack swing movement. MGM disbanded shortly after its release, and Kelly joined forces with a singing and dancing group called Public Announcement. Reportedly, his tenure in high school was cut short by an unspecified learning disability, and he dropped out to form the singing group MGM (Musically Gifted Men), which cut a single called "Why You Wanna Play With Me" in 1990. He found solace from this turmoil, and from the lean financial circumstances at home, in singing at church and later, at Kenwood Academy, where a music teacher nurtured his nascent talents.
According to Kelly's autobiography, Soulacoaster, his upbringing bordered on the Dickensian in terms of strife: he was reportedly subjected to sexual assault by an older woman, lost his first girlfriend in a drowning accident when he was eight years of age, and was shot in the shoulder by boys who stole his bicycle. Born Robert Sylvester Kelly in Hyde Park, Chicago on January 8, 1967, he was the third of four children raised by his mother in the Ida B. Kelly spun tales of sexual abandon and repentance into chart gold and Grammy wins, but his reign of success at the top of the charts, which included such singles as "Bump n' Grind" and "I Believe I Can Fly," came crashing down in 2019 when long-simmering allegations of sexual misconduct involving minors led to his arrest. Arguably one of the most successful R&B singer/songwriters of the 1990s and 2000s, R.