Let me take you back to early 2003. Times were bleak for Mr. Kelly. He had been hounded by criminal investigations and civil suits concerning sex with minors since Febuary 2002. He was acused of pissing on the girls and worst yet, the evidence seemd insurmountable against him. His own videotaped footage seemed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he was guilty. He was actually charged with 21 counts of child pornography. Who would want to buy the records of a large black man who fucked teenagers and pissed on them? Worst yet, how many millions of dollars and years of his life would this scandal cost R. Kelly? No one knew but life looked like it was about to end for the master muscian who had sung "Sex Me" and "Feelin on Yo Booty" But what people did not realize was that something amazing was about to happen.
So what did R. Kelly do. He reached down to the deepest depths of his being and came out with the soul changing remix to ignition. You knew this song was special from the start when he, himself, told you, "I normally don't don't do this, but I'm going to break you off a little piece of the remix." And bam, you were hit with truly an R&B masterpiece that you could not help but love. It was smooth, it was infectious, it was the song of all songs. My memory of the first half of 2003 has the remix to ignition playing in the background constantly. You heard it everywhere and it was always stuck in your head, and for good reason. But the best part of the song was that it was about getting drunk and getting a girl back to his hotel room. The exact thing that got him into fucking trouble in the first place. Only by doing this, by flaunting society and continuing in his morally loose ways, could he have rebounded so much.
Maybe you're saying, yeah this is all true, so what. But think about it. He needed one perfect song, the most clutch recording of his life to save his career. He was up to bat with two outs in the ninth and he nailed a grand slam. Ignition shot up to #1 on the R & B charts as not only black people enjoyed it, but slutty white girls started using it as an excuse to have sex and get pissed on. When the world looked bleakest for R. Kelly, he came through big time. It was a legendary performance that can not be casually overlooked. At some point in my life, when I'm down as far as I could be, I hope to be able to come up with the guts, the determination and the clutch performance that R. Kelly did. Maybe the song didn't save lives or stop a war. And maybe all it did was help a rich pervert get back in the public's good graces, but what R. Kelly accomplished and how clutch he was cannot be measured.