I have never felt more excluded from everyone else’s reality in my life. Do I need to even articulate the question? Is this a giant joke that no one told me about? I detect millions of dollars being spent here on something that escapes me utterly. It’s achingly, cringingly, painfully embarassing and awful as music, as a joke, as art of any sort. Every encounter I’ve had with it, in any form, leaves me wondering if I’m in a Twilight Zone episode, specificaly the one with the Ellie May chick feeling ugly when confronted by all the hideous doctors and nurses. Yeah, like that.
So what the hell gives with this thing?
(I am reminded because I just saw a full page ad for it in Entertainment Weekly: New Chapters! Gah!!!)
That’s what I figured, but I didn’t know if there was some populat TV show that had an episode entitled “Trapped In the Closet”.
I remember hearing it for the first time on WJLB in Detroit. It was presented like I’d figure Pachibel’s “Canon” were presented for the first time, or Jacques Louis David’s “Death of Marat”. There was an air of reverence taken with it, which I found kinda funny. I’ve always dug R. Kelly’s music, but this was puffed up with so much self-importance, it’s impossible to not poke fun at it, especially when it does such a good job of doing that all by itself.
There’s more to “Trapped in the Closet” than the original song. The man has some sort of ongoing online operetta going on. There are 22 chapters of this thing…and he’s still adding to it.
I couldn’t help but watch some of this when it aired on IFC a couple of nights ago. It struck me dumb…I couldn’t believe my eyes.
The next morning, I wanted to start a thread, but I had convinced myself it was all a bad dream. You describe it perfectly. It’s just so so so bad in every way, it made me doubt my sanity. Afterwards, there was an interview with R. Kelly, where he spoke of it with such pride…I don’t know, I just don’t have the words.
I seem to find it’s something you either hate or love. When I heard the very first one, I thought it was interesting and different. I liked it. Then it just went downhill from there. I do admit to watching it on IFC the other night though.
I been saying it for years; rap and hip-hop are just the new Beat Poetry, complete with obscure inanity and laughable claims that it has some kind of thematic depth that escapes the ordinary listerner. What a load of crap.
It’s absolutely hilarious, that’s why it’s a big deal. And R. Kelly helped matters by acting like the first 12 chapters were Shakespeare set to Mozart. (Seriously, if you ever watch the DVD with Chapters 1-12, watch them again with his brilliant and insightful “commentary” turned on.) Now that we have Chapters 13-22, it becomes painfully obvious he is finally in on the joke.
It’s one of the few instances where the Weird Al parody is less silly and more coherent than the original song.
I had only heard the Weird Al version and heard rumors of the R.Kelly version. My wife was familiar with the R. Kelly version and when she heard the Weird Al version, she tried to explain to me the original version. I was in disbelief. So, she went out and bought the DVD of the R. Kelly version and we watched the whole thing. I will say one thing, it kept my attention. I kept wanting to see just how bizarre this video/song was going to get. I think the R. Kelly version is hilarious.
