8.23.2007

Who's in on the Joke? Jody Rosen and R. Kelly Make Two.

According to Slate's music critic (is this also the guy who praised Mariah Carey's miasma?) Trapped in the Closet is a joke*. Granted, i've only seen the MadTV and Weird Al parodies, but if R. Kelly needs to be known as the Subtle Ironist, then I think it's high time I gave up on life.

Money quote:

This is where Kelly comes in. He began his career in the early 1990s by playing to type—crooning come-ons and pleas without a trace of irony, accompanied by the usual pelvic thrusts. But as the years have progressed, Kelly has learned, as Kelefa Sanneh wrote this week in the New York Times, "that a subtle joke, or an unsubtle one, can make a slow jam feel more intimate and therefore more effective."


Baby please, don't tease
I'll tell a subtle joke
To make you squeeze
My ribs with laughter
And then after
We'll make love
Under the cov-
Ers, Now that's an unsubtle
rhyme, but give it some time
For an unsubtle joke
Like you are so fat you eat so much
Then drink a diet coke
Our love don't make no sense
I ask for dollars but you give me cents
oooh
oohh
yeah
pelvic thrusts now, unironic
we'll smoke up with the chronic
ahh
yeahh
ooohhhh



*That R. Kelly is in on.

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