I want to preface this musings post by saying that my thoughts and comments aren’t intended to liken my research, or any potential implications, to the investigative work done by Jim De Rogatis. Mr. De Rogatis compiled decades of tips and information about R. Kelly and his inclination towards sexually abusing and trafficking teenage girls. My work focuses on a much less serious topic and I realize that.
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I’m finally back in the swing of my research after months of personal distractions and tech issues. Compiling sources and creating graphics for the 2002 part of the Riddle On Her Mind timeline was a very intensive process and at this point I have no clue how I can recap things in a clear, concise way. In the meantime I’ve started the 2003 portion of the timeline and I’ll circle back to the 2002 reflections later.
While gathering sources for my 2003 posts I came across a Fox News feature by Roger Friedman. If that name seem familiar it’s because Roger is the same journalist who claimed that Justin’s first solo album was already underway in February 2002. (See this Lost & Found post for a link to the article.) One year later he was reporting about the goings-on of Lance Bass as well as another Jive Records artist, R. Kelly. A wave of disgust washed over me when I read the feature’s title: “Singer R. Kelly Hits No. 1 With a Bang Despite Indictment”. The news blurb reads:
R. Kelly, the Chicago R&B singer/writer currently out on bail for 21 counts of child pornography, has the new No. 1 album in America.
According to hitsdailydouble.com, which counts album sales from major retail outlets, Kelly’s album Chocolate Factory could hit the 700,000 for its first-week sales. Final numbers won’t be in until later today.
Kelly is best known for his pop gospel hit “I Believe I Can Fly,” although Chicago prosecutors are saying that he’s better known for “I Believe I Can Lie.” In June 2002 he was indicted by a grand jury in Chicago on 21 counts of child pornography.
Kelly appeared in a widely circulated videotape that allegedly showed him performing sexual acts with an underage girl. If convicted, he could be sentenced to up to 15 years in prison and fined a maximum of $100,000.
Meanwhile, Michael Jackson, with no indictments or arrests but a reported $20 million settlement for child molestation of a teenage boy in 1993, sold almost no records last week.
Go figure.
Some semblance of justice was finally served when R. was sentenced to 30 years in prison earlier this summer. Law enforcement can be thanked for their efforts but personally I think the investigative journalism of Jim De Rogatis deserves to be praised too. Jim published his first piece about R. Kelly in 2000. He began cataloging and chronicling Kelly’s depravity during a time when many people still turned a blind eye, including upper management at Jive Records. When people like company president Barry Weiss felt that that Kelly’s depravity was “none of [his] business” Jim De Rogatis made it his business and did what he could to expose as much of the truth as he could find.
What I’m doing with Riddle On Her Mind isn’t nearly as important but there are some important lessons from Jim’s approach that I can use to guide my own research. For starters, his research encourages me to explore all relevant avenues and promising tips. I only reject information that can’t be directly cited or lacks corroborating sources. It’s not always easy to verify whether my sources point towards plausible or credible information but I perform due diligence for everything I find so that my archive can be credible overall.
Second, I think one of the lessons from Jim’s work is don’t shy away from reaching further back than you anticipated. Lengthening a timeline widens the scope and sometimes it can clarify things that don’t make sense. For Jim it added to the list of crimes committed by R. Kelly. In my case it shows how long the potential breakup of *NSYNC had been floated by the media. I could’ve chosen to start the timeline at 2002 when the “hiatus” officially started but as I’ve said previously going further back gives more context to what happened starting in 2002. I started the timeline with January of 2001 because that was the earliest information I could find at the time. Since then I saw an Instagram post featuring a 2000 Grammys red carpet interview in which Joey and Lance responded to a question about *NSYNC solo work. Including this video in a [forthcoming] Lost & Found post effectively pushes my timeline to about the 4.5 year mark. That’s a good thing because pushing the timeline back further makes room for more information to be uncovered and preserved.
Overall I think the biggest takeaway for me is that everything comes to light eventually. Or better yet, someone can bring things to light eventually if they stay on their path and keep pushing forward. Jim started writing about R. Kelly’s crimes in the hopes that he would be stopped. That didn’t happen for decades but in the meantime Jim persevered because he believed that it would still happen through his work. I didn’t start with a distinct idea of what I was looking for but 2 years into archiving I’ve started to realize that truth is a goal and a journey. I’m back to plugging away at my research and I believe that eventually I’ll get to a point where the picture of *NSYNC’s breakup becomes clearer for me personally and more accurate in terms of public record.
Riddle On Her Mind 