What Charlie Wilson Said About R. Kelly

“My thing is celebrating the woman,” Wilson said. “I feel like we’ve forgotten how to respect women.” Which is why it came as a surprise earlier this year to find that Wilson had agreed to open a concert in Detroit for R. Kelly, the proudly raunchy R&B star accused by numerous women of sexual abuse.

Asked about the show, Wilson paused before saying that Kelly, like Snoop, had given him a hand at a crucial point in his career — in this case by producing Wilson’s 2005 release “Charlie, Last Name Wilson,” which reintroduced the singer as an album artist following those early cameos.

“So I said, ‘Take this, and then that’s it,’” Wilson recounted telling Kelly. “‘Thank you for what you did for me. I’m gonna give you this one, but one is it.’” He brushed his palms together. “Then we stepped out the way. No more.” (Kelly has denied the allegations against him.)

It Was All Good Years Ago

R. Kelly first faced public scrutiny in 2002, after being caught up in an underaged sex tape scandal and ultimately found ‘not guilty’ in the 2008 trial. Nonetheless, in 2005, his homie, Charlie Wilson, felt very differently about him than he does now. Here’s what Charlie said, in a 2005 MTV interview, about working with R. Kelly and how that helped him regain respect within the music game:

Charlie Wilson- “Some labels just don’t see the visions,” Wilson explained. “They’d be like,’Who you trying to target? What fanbase?’ N—a, I’m just gonna sing. Can you put the record out? They was trying to put me in a cubbyhole. For many years they was looking at me funny, I guess. Then after I said I was mingling with R. Kelly, everybody started coming out the woodwork — some of the same people that turned me down! I was like, ‘Dog, I was knocking on your door just last year. You should have hollered.’ “

As y’all can see, Charlie’s changed his tune about R. Kelly as of late. That could be attributed to the fact that in 2005 (when they collaborated), there weren’t nearly as many women making sexual assault claims against him as there are today, in 2019.