Soulless
The Case Against R. Kelly
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In November 2000, Chicago journalist and music critic Jim DeRogatis received an anonymous fax that alleged R. Kelly had a problem with “young girls.” Weeks later, DeRogatis broke the shocking story, publishing allegations that the R&B superstar and local hero had groomed girls, sexually abused them, and paid them off. DeRogatis thought his work would have an impact. Instead, Kelly’s career flourished.
No one seemed to care: not the music industry, not the culture at large, not the parents of numerous other young girls. But for more than eighteen years, DeRogatis stayed on the story. He was the one who was given the disturbing videotape that led to Kelly’s 2008 child pornography trial, the one whose window was shot out, and the one whom women trusted to tell their stories—of a meeting with the superstar at a classroom, a mall, a concert, or a McDonald’s that forever warped the course of their lives.
Soulless: The Case Against R. Kelly is DeRogatis’s masterpiece, a work of tenacious journalism and powerful cultural criticism. It tells the story of Kelly’s career, DeRogatis’s investigations, and the world in which the two crossed paths, and brings the story up to the moment when things finally seem to have changed. Decades in the making, this is an outrageous, darkly riveting account of the life and actions of R. Kelly, and their horrible impact on dozens of girls, by the only person to tell it.
Praise for Soulless
There really isn’t anyone more qualified to write about the saga of R. Kelly than Jim DeRogatis. Jim has done the work. He’s built the relationships. He’s cared about the outcome for almost two decades. It’s clear that Kelly isn’t just his white whale but that he sees the humanity in the women who have survived R. Kelly. We really only need to hear from Jim.
founder of the MeToo movement
“This book tracks the case and asks why the culture was so slow to catch up.”
The New York Times
For the last 19 years Jim DeRogatis has consistently been one of the few white male voices in media speaking up about a criminal whose crimes spans decades. Jim has elevated black women and their work into the public eye, even when the public wanted to ignore what was happening. This Soulless is a deep dive into some of the darkest places in a community and a culture, a post mortem for a predator and for the system that enabled him.
author of Hood Feminism and Amazons, Abolitionists, and Activists
If not for Jim DeRogatis, singer R. Kelly would still be selling out arenas, and the women who accuse the singer of sexual and physical assault would still be unheard. No one has followed their harrowing stories longer than DeRogatis, a mensch and one hell of a reporter. Soulless is an astonishing document of journalistic doggedness, and one man's decades-long pursuit of justice and truth.
Boston Globe opinion columnist
Jim DeRogatis is an associate professor of instruction at Columbia College Chicago and the host, with Greg Kot, of the nationally syndicated public radio show Sound Opinions. The author of Let it Blurt: The Life and Times of Lester Bangs and other books, he spent 15 years as the pop music critic at the Chicago Sun-Times. He lives in Chicago.
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