My curiosity finally got the best of me and I was able to find the time to rent R. Kelly's Trapped In the Closet. The rampant homophobia and midgetphobia, as well as stereotypes of overweight white women, that ran through the piece were exactly what was to be expected from a man who gets his thrills by pissing on underage girls.
Still, I found these twenty-two chapters worth of epic saga appealing. R. Kelly has taken on the role of the minstrel. I don't mean to say that he is rehashing Dust Bowl era minstrelsy such as black face. He is working in an older tradition, a bardic one that stretches back through Chaucer and Homer. His rhymed and sung narrative is cheesy, stupid, and self-absorbed, but something about it makes it an achievement that it is hard to turn away from.
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