Did the music industry enable R. Kelly?

As Harvey Weinstein was to film, so Robert ‘R.’ Kelly has been to the music industry. An energetic and profligate figure who enjoyed enormous commercial and artistic success in his heyday, Kelly’s downfall, with his convictions on nine charges of sex trafficking and racketeering, is now total. It looks likely he will be given a life sentence for his crimes, and few, other than his most devoted admirers, will be mourning his entry into the penal system. 

Yet Kelly’s fate, while richly deserved, is not the end of the story. Instead, questions have to be asked of those who were around him while he behaved egregiously behind the scenes. It transpired, for instance, that he had married the singer Aaliyah in 1994 when she was 15, having paperwork forged to achieve his ends: a commonly known secret in the music industry. Two years later, Atlantic and Jive — two of the major record labels at the time — promoted Kelly as one of their leading R&B acts.