The songs you know from Double Up are “I’m A Flirt,” “Real Talk,” and “Same Girl.” If you never went to a bar mitzvah around 2007, a primer.

The definitive document of who he is as a man and as an artist is Double Up, released in 2007 during the most Teflon point in his career.

He’s released 14 albums it’s not much fun to slog through any of them front to back, and if you pick the wrong one up it’s easy to see why you’d be confused that he’s hailed as such a genius, or eccentric, or both. Mostly you have to wrestle with the worldview of a man who is clearly morally bankrupt and monstrously stupid who sees women as lower than dogs whose response to being busted for statutory rape was to deny it was him in the video and then troll his listeners by calling himself the “pied piper of R&B.” Robert Kelly is one of pop’s truest and boldest auteurs. He’s never made a classic album because the spaces between great singles and astoundingly brave caprices are generally filled with failed experiments or garbage crossover attempts. You’ll have to accept that about half the record will be dreck.

R kelly double up album youtube