Sony Music has decided to dissolve its working relationship with R. Kelly, Variety has learned. No external announcement of the move is planned in the immediate future, says a source, who added that the company took its time to wade through the issues “responsibly” and avoid legal ramifications. R. Kelly was removed from the RCA Records website, which lists the label’s signed artists, shortly after 10 a.m. PT on Friday, Jan. 18. Kelly’s back catalog will remain with RCA/Sony. Kelly’s last release with the label was a Christmas-themed album in 2016, although he has released several songs independently since that time, presumably with Sony’s consent, and Tweeted earlier this year that he has a new album on the way. Contacted by Variety, reps for both RCA Records and its parent company, Sony Music, declined comment. His current adviser, Don Russell, told Rolling Stone that several record labels are “very interested” in working with Kelly. “We understand RCA’s position: they have to remain transparent for the sake of the other artists that they represent and generate wealth for,” he said. “They’re not in the position of dealing with the kind of stuff that has come about with R. Kelly. He has no issue with RCA. I think he’s outgrown RCA. He’s ready for the next level of life, anyway.” TV journalist Jawn Murray tells Variety that he learned from a Sony Music source that Kelly was informed of the label’s decision to part ways with him last Thursday. A rep for Live Nation, which formerly promoted Kelly’s tours, told Variety Friday that it has not done so in many years, although it did occasionally do one-off concerts with him via regional promoters, but “not for more than a year.” Sony’s move comes after years of public calls, and even a petition from members of the #MuteRKelly movement, for the company to part ways with Kelly. Those calls intensified in the wake of Lifetime documentary “Surviving R. Kelly,” in which multiple women accuse him of sexual misconduct. In recent weeks a plane commissioned by the women’s organization UltraViolet and carrying a sign reading “RCA/Sony: Drop Sexual Predator R. Kelly” flew over Sony Music’s Los Angeles offices and a protest was staged outside of Sony’s New York headquarters. But an insider notes that efforts to extricate Sony from its contract with Kelly had been ongoing for several months before and “[the plane] had no influence.” Allegations of sexually abusive behavior by Kelly toward young women date back more than 20 years. Most infamously, Kelly was charged with child pornography in 2000 after a video surfaced that purported to show him having sex with an underage woman (Kelly was cleared in 2008 after that woman declined to testify against him). In 1995, when he was 27, he briefly married the late singer Aaliyah, who was 15 at the time (in “Surviving R. Kelly” an executive who formerly worked with the singer says he forged Aaliyah’s birth date on the marriage license to say she was 18, and another witness says she saw Kelly and Aaliyah having sex). Just last year, reports of Kelly essentially holding women captive in a “sex cult” were published. Multiple other reports have surfaced over the years. Through it all, RCA — Kelly’s label home for the entirety of his solo career, both directly and as part of its partnership with Jive Records (which merged with RCA in 2007) — has stood by the singer, primarily, sources tell Variety, because he has never been convicted of a crime and has steadfastly maintained his innocence. Attempts by music companies to construct a morality barometer for artists is a precarious task, as Spotify learned last year when it attempted to ban artists — particularly Kelly — from its playlists based on behavior it vaguely defined as “hateful conduct.” Spotify ended up briefly penalizing two artists — Kelly and rapper XXXTentacion, neither of whom had been convicted of the relevant charges of sexual misconduct — before walking back the policy due to its vague definition and execution. Entertainment attorney Leslie Frank, a partner of King, Holmes, Paterno & Soriano, told Variety that some major-label contracts have provisions stating that if [an artist is] “convicted of a felony or a crime of moral turpitude, generally speaking it is the label’s right to terminate the contract,” although Kelly has not been convicted of either. However, whether or not such wording is in a contract, she said, “Any record company — or, really, any party to any contract — can decide they no longer want to be in the contract,” Frank continued. “The question is what can happen as a result of them asserting their desire to terminate the term of the agreement. R. Kelly could sue for damages. If R. Kelly does not want to terminate the agreement and instigates a dispute saying that it’s a breach of contract by RCA, if RCA is concerned about the cost of litigation and how a court might decide, they could try to come to a settlement with R. Kelly.” However, the outcry that has followed “Surviving R. Kelly” grew so intense that it likely forced the label’s hand.<doc-sep>For years, R. Kelly had seemed untouchable. Acquitted on charges of child pornography, accused of misconduct with underage girls, Mr. Kelly long remained embraced by the music industry. He toured widely, appearing at Grammy parties and making records with stars like Lady Gaga and Jay-Z. But on Friday, Mr. Kelly — once one of the biggest and most influential stars in pop music — was dropped by his record company, RCA, in the music industry’s highest-profile casualty of the #MeToo era. RCA’s agreement to part ways with Robert Kelly, confirmed by a person briefed on the move who declined to be identified because the deal was confidential, came after weeks of protests. A recent television documentary, “Surviving R. Kelly,” drew wide attention for its visceral testimonials by women who said that as underage girls they had been lured into sexual relationships with Mr. Kelly, and abused by him mentally and physically. Yet as pressure had mounted on RCA — including from other artists on its roster — the company remained silent. The news of Mr. Kelly’s departure was first reported by Billboard, and RCA, a unit of Sony Music Entertainment, made no formal announcement; by Friday afternoon, Mr. Kelly had simply been scrubbed from the label’s website.<doc-sep>R. Kelly performs in concert at Barclays Center on September 25, 2015 in the Brooklyn borough of New York City. Photo : Mike Pont ( Getty Images ) Wow. It finally happened. According to Billboard, sources are confirming that Sony and R. Kelly have agreed to part ways. Advertisement The R&B singer’s relationship with the record label was quite familiar. In the early 1990s, Kelly initially signed to Jive, which eventually became a part of Sony BMG. In 2012, he signed a contract with Sony subsidiary RCA. This news comes just a few days after several organizations called for RCA to finally take a major stand, following Surviving R. Kelly’s debut on Lifetime. The label had previously announced it would hold off on releasing any new music from the singer. “As a result of the brave testimonies of R. Kelly’s survivors in ‘Surviving R. Kelly’ and growing public pressure to hold R. Kelly accountable, RCA is taking the right step toward acknowledging their role in enabling the singer’s abuse, which had gone unquestioned by the label for too long,” Color of Change Senior Campaign Director Brandi Collins-Dexter said in a Jan. 14 via press release. “However, it is laughable to think this alone is enough. RCA needs to take a stand and immediately drop him from the label. When Color Of Change’s 1.4 million members began the charge to #MuteRKelly in 2017, we focused on RCA because for over three decades, the label promoted and profited from music by a man who engaged in decades of sexual, mental and physical abuse of Black women and girls. The time is now: if countless civil suits and a trial for 14 counts of child pornography weren’t enough for RCA to stop profiting off the sexual predator, then the testimonies of the women in ‘Surviving R. Kelly’ must be enough. RCA: do Black women and girls one better and drop R. Kelly immediately,” she added. Billboard has also confirmed R. Kelly has been removed from RCA’s website. (The Root has reached out to Sony/RCA and R. Kelly for comment.) #MuteRKelly, indeed. Update: 1/18/2019, 4:03 p.m. ET: Since news of the split broke, Color of Change has released a statement in response to the announcement, acknowledging the progress made and also calling for further action from streaming services to follow suit. Said Arisha Hatch, Managing Director of Campaigns at Color Of Change:<doc-sep>
After years of pressure peaked with the much-watched debut of Lifetime’s Surviving R. Kelly docuseries, Sony subsidiary RCA Records finally dropped the singer from its roster. Billboard reported Friday that Kelly and the label "agreed to part ways" after a week that found #MuteRKelly protestors demonstrating outside of Sony’s Manhattan offices, radio stations banning his songs, and former collaborators apologizing for working with him. Even in the #MeToo era, it's rare for labels to release musicians over charges of misconduct, as the music industry has proven resistant to the kind of reckoning that's rocked Hollywood. "The film industry has addressed it. They’ve not only exposed accusers and refused to work with them, they’ve addressed it in terms of psychological counseling, seminars, executive coaching," said Dorothy Carvello, a former music executive and author of a memoir, Anything for a Hit, in which she described her own experiences of sexual harassment over the course of more than 20 years in the industry. "The music business acts like it’s not happening," said Carvello. "It has a culture of male enabling," where powerful men "scratch each other’s backs at every label, and they protect each other. And the women are the last on the totem pole." While Sony dropping Kelly is well-deserved in the face of a quarter century's worth of assault allegations, the singer hasn’t exactly been churning out the hits for RCA in recent years. His last release, a Christmas album that dropped in 2016, reached its Billboard peak when it debuted at 177 on the charts. His penultimate record, 2015’s The Buffet, was the singer’s worst-performing studio album ever. Kelly is very much a performer whose biggest hits are behind him, not before him. And though RCA won't be releasing his future music, Billboard noted that Sony is keeping ahold of Kelly’s back catalog. This is particularly notable given the fact that the interest in Surviving R. Kelly seems to have made some music fans more likely to listen to Kelly's hits. In the wake of the documentary series, Kelly’s songs experienced a 16 percent jump in their digital streams. Interest in the singer gave his old songs enough of a bump to land them back on the Billboard charts. So while it’s great that Sony has pledged to no longer work with Kelly, the company is still reaping the rewards of his name being back in the headlines, and will presumably continue to do so whenever legal proceedings or future allegations place Kelly back in the news. Some of Kelly’s former musical collaborators made a more definitive move to sever ties with the artist when they decided to pull their songs from streaming services. Chance the Rapper, Lady Gaga, and Céline Dion all removed songs featuring R. Kelly from services like Spotify, Apple Music, and YouTube. "I intend to remove this song off of iTunes and other streaming platforms and will not be working with him again," wrote Gaga in an apology statement posted to Twitter. "I’m sorry, both for my poor judgment when I was young, and for not speaking out sooner." Removing these songs was more than just an empty gesture—it cost the artists real cash. Spin reports that in the period between Lady Gaga’s apology for working with Kelly and her removal of "Do What U Want," the song had experienced a more than 13,000 percent sales boost. Gabrielle Bruney Gabrielle Bruney is a writer and editor for Esquire, where she focuses on politics and culture.