After Tiffany hugged her lawyer, she smiled and hugged me. I didn’t know how to react. On December 21, 2000, Abdon and I put her name in a daily newspaper, reporting what a man ten years her senior had done to her when she was fifteen, and noting that she’d taken his money and signed a nondisclosure agreement. That had to be an incredibly difficult day for her. She had never talked about any of it, not when we called or rang her doorbell, and not when television producers working with Bunim/Murray and Lifetime dug it all up again and offered her $10,000. They told her they couldn’t ethically pay people to appear in their docuseries, but they would pay for her photographs. She declined the offer. They used her photo anyway.
Tiffany was not eager to revisit that part of her life. She’d lost a lot, and she’d done things she was ashamed of. She regretted all of it, but she’d decided it was finally time to talk. Alexander informed her that as her attorney, he had to advise her that telling me what happened to her from 1991 to 1993, or talking about the lawsuit she filed in 1996 and settled in 1998, would break her NDA, placing her in legal jeopardy. Tiffany laughed a quiet, nervous laugh, then smiled wide, a gorgeous smile flashing bright white teeth. Then we talked for the first time, for two and a half hours, for the new digital recorder that replaced my old Sony Pressman.
I’d had some assumptions for almost two decades that turned out to be wrong. Tiffany had been a volleyball player; I’d assumed basketball, because that was his thing. She’d been a straight-A student who got into Kenwood Academy through its magnet program; I’d thought she’d struggled, since she eventually dropped out of high school. She’d been credited on Age Ain’t Nothing but a Number as a rapper, but singing had always been her passion, and her strongest talent. As I went back to talk to some of her classmates again for this book, they said she had a voice like Whitney Houston’s. Powerful. Beautiful.
I’d never known Tiffany toured as one of Aaliyah’s backing vocalists, performing across the United States, as well as in London, Paris, and Amsterdam, a long way from the South Side of Chicago. She had never been jealous of Aaliyah. They’d become best friends, two teenage girls seeing the world for the first time, part of a great adventure, a new chapter in their lives—the Second Chapter, as they called their posse. “And when she left home, for them to get married, you know, she ran away,” Tiffany said. “Her parents were on the phone with me, back and forth, and they’re like, ‘Aaliyah ran away, and the only place she would go would be to your house!’”
Tiffany split with him when she got pregnant at age eighteen. I will not use his name again, because she didn’t, not very much, and because it doesn’t need to be in this book one more time. She asked him to take a paternity test, because she wasn’t 100 percent sure who’d fathered the child she was carrying. He refused. It turned out to be another boyfriend, not him, but the fact that he wouldn’t take the test infuriated her. Every girl I interviewed had a different trigger that prompted her to leave. And like every girl I interviewed, Tiffany said she loved him, and she thought he loved her.
“I was really pissed off that he wouldn’t take that test, and the whole spiel he gave me, you know, the mind tricks he tried to pull on me. I remember he was on tour with Toni Braxton. I’m on the phone with him, and I can hear the crowd waiting for him. The crowd is roaring and roaring. And I asked him to take the test, and, you know, he’s like, ‘No.’ He goes to me, ‘You and me better both know that that is not my baby.’ He said he didn’t want to hear anything else about it. Then he said, ‘Now tell me you love me.’”
Tiffany told me about the seven-and-a-half-hour deposition she gave to his attorneys, and about the horrible, invasive, and insulting questions they asked her about supposed lying, sleeping around, trying to shake down their client, and spreading venereal diseases. She also told me about the things she said.
“He used to call me ‘Madam’ and ‘the Cable Girl,’ because I used to hook him up, bring him girls, bring my friends. And you know what? That’s exactly what I was at the time. I’m not even going to lie to you. It was like I wanted to be around and I knew what I had to do in order to stay around, you know? And I didn’t want to do it, but there were girls who didn’t mind doing it. So, it was kinda like, ‘Okay, cool. All right, let’s go.’”
Tiffany said she brought six underage girlfriends into his circle of intimates. She’d actually been the last of the seven teens to have sexual contact with him. “It got progressively worse. The more money and power he got, the worse he got. But I loved him. I wanted to be around him, you know? I looked at him in awe. You know, we would be in the studio, and he’d be writing something and singing, and I would just be like, ‘This man!’ You know? ‘I get to be around this genius!’”
He asked her to cut all her hair off. He asked her . . . well, he asked her to do a lot of things, and I’m not going to report another goddamn one of them. If the case has not been made to you by now, it never will be. I want you to meet Tiffany, like I did. On a sunny Sunday morning when even the endless Chicago winter didn’t seem quite so daunting.
After she split from him, Tiffany tried to kill herself, taking a handful of pills. “I was at home, and my mother was there. She wound up taking me to the hospital, and I had to have my stomach pumped. And that was really hard. You know? It was hard.”
I asked if she’d been disappointed that the state’s attorney declined to pursue criminal charges. “I don’t think it was disappointment . . . more like what I expected. I was a young black girl. Who cared?” She had quickly squandered the money she got from the settlement. She cashed her check, for two-thirds of $250,000 minus costs, and immediately went shopping at the mall. “The money . . . I wish I had done better with it, however I still have people to this day that believe the story about how he’s the reason I live in a decent home, drive nice cars, and am able to travel frequently. Not! I just made the decision not to let my past define my future. I made my life what it is now, because I wasn’t going to let anyone else do that for me.”
With her own money, not his, Tiffany went to college downstate, “with the baby with me,” and then to a Big-10 university, where she earned a degree in radiologic science. Then she got an online master’s degree in management. She runs a hospital’s ultrasound department now. Understandably, she doesn’t want to say where, and she has a different surname these days. She’s been happily married for going on six years, and she has two children. “My son is grown and gone, and I have a daughter, who is awesome.” Her daughter is almost as old as she was when. . . .
“For a long time, no matter what I was doing, if I heard Robert’s music or saw him on TV, my stomach would drop. It would be like, I don’t know, reliving a nightmare. It was something for a long time that I couldn’t get past, because his music was everywhere. And every time, I had to hear it. For a long time, I could not get away from him.”
A hundred million albums sold, his own and those he crafted for so many other artists. Billions of dollars generated. The voice of a generation. Ubiquitous. Untouchable. But she finally, slowly began to tune it all out. To mute it. Tiffany not only survived, but eventually thrived. “I think, maybe . . . I don’t know . . . I’m stronger than most?”
Tiffany gave me another big hug when we got ready to leave. I’d cried, she’d cried, her attorney had cried, and we’d all laughed a few times, too, because, hell, sometimes you just have to. She’d already told me she doesn’t sing anymore. “I tried, later on, several years after that, but the passion just wasn’t there.” I thought of one more question as we were trading email addresses and phone numbers and taking iPhone pics. This one didn’t come from the journalist, critic, professor, father, or husband. It came from the inner thirteen-year-old who fell in love with that Velvets song about a life saved by rock ’n’ roll, who later did a fanzine called Reasons for Living, and who still lives to listen. After all the evidence I’ve compiled of damage done and young lives robbed, of all the painful and horrible things I’ve heard and seen, Tiffany’s ans
wer to that question breaks my fucking heart, every single time I think about it.
I know you can’t listen to him, I said, but can you find joy in any music now?
“No,” she said. “Not really. Not very much. No.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Although it could seem very lonely at times, I was never the only journalist on the R. Kelly beat. I have diligently tried to credit the work of others who contributed to this story throughout the text, but several reporters—and editors, who rarely get public thanks—deserve special mention. These include Thomas Conner, Michael Cooke, Laura Emerick, and Don Hayner, when we worked together at the Chicago Sun-Times; Jessica Hopper, Max Blau, and Theresa Campagna, when we worked together for MTV News; Robin Amer, Maya Dukmasova, and Jake Malooley, when we worked together at the Chicago Reader; and my friends and colleagues at WBEZ, past and present, including Shawn Allee, Collin Ashmead-Bobbitt, Tricia Bobeda, Cate Cahan, Alyssa Edes, Monica Eng, Kate Grossman, Shannon Heffernan, Michael Lansu, Linda Lutton, Chip Mitchell, Natalie Moore, and Adam Yoffe.
During the fast-moving developments of early 2019, I am not ashamed to say I had to run to keep up with the next generation of intrepid young reporters, in the media scrums at Twenty-Sixth and Cal, and via their stories about the new round of indictments in Chicago. Those who provided welcome company as well as significant illumination included Megan Crepeau, Morgan Greene, Jason Meisner, and Tracy Swartz at the Chicago Tribune; Robert Chiarito, a contributor to the New York Times and other outlets; and my former student Sam Charles, now an ace reporter at the Sun-Times.
I proudly covered the most recent events for The New Yorker’s website, and I thank Michael Agger for his encouragement and deft editing, as well as David Haglund, Sean Lavery, Michael Luo, and David Remnick for their support, and Amanda Petrusich for the introduction and the cheerleading.
No one outside my family has endured my rants for longer or offered more encouragement and morale-boosting than my radio partner, Greg Kot, and my original nemesis, Bill Wyman. My gratitude to them extends to the crew at Sound Opinions, both past—especially Robin Linn, Jason Saldanha, and Matt Spiegel—and present, including Brendan Banaszak, Alex Claiborne, Ayana Contreras, and Andrew Gill. Thanks, too, to everyone who supports the show at WBEZ, not the least of whom are Steve Edwards and Goli Sheikholeslami.
When I called Mary Mitchell a goddess in one interview, I did not overstate my admiration, while Abdon Pallasch is quite simply my brother from another mother. I don’t think I can ever repay him for allowing me to drag him into this for two decades, but I should start by giving him the collected works of Curtis Mayfield.
Damon Dunn, thank you for always having my back, and especially for keeping me out of Cook County Jail, though I must say, it would have been an honor to share a cell with you. You, too, Neil Rosenbaum.
The team at BuzzFeed News included some of the most impressive professionals I’ve ever worked with, until its corporate board ordered layoffs in January 2019. Thank you, Talal Ansari, Antonio Enriquez, Shani Hilton, Matt Mittenthal, Katie Rayford, Matt Schafer, Nabiha Syed, and Linzee Troubh. My primary editor, Marisa Carroll, was especially brilliant, hard-driving, unrelentingly ethical, and inspiring. She stands as a model for what journalism can and should be.
I am very grateful to be a member of the Department of English and Creative Writing at Columbia College Chicago, and I appreciate the support, encouragement, and feedback I get from all my colleagues there. Like Wayne or Garth, I’m not worthy. Special thanks to Laura Johanna Waltje for translating Goethe from the old German and capturing the poetry, no easy task.
A ridiculously talented fiction writer and sharp feminist thinker, Kate Wisel served as my intrepid research assistant and sounding board for the past three years. (Read her first book, Driving in Cars with Homeless Men, due to be published in October 2019.) I have long benefitted from the efforts of Jennifer Grandy, who started helping me as a college intern, became a top-shelf legal scholar and attorney, and still lends me her talents and support. Thanks as well to my former graduate teaching assistant Crispin Torres. Their advice, feedback, and hours of digging and transcribing were invaluable and helped save some measure of my sanity.
For encouragement and assistance above and beyond, I am indebted to my friends Jamie Ackley; Lorraine Ali; Dino Armiros; Sheila Baldwin; Maud Berthomier; Joe Berton and Gloria Groome; Jessica Blank and Eric Jensen; Barry and Joan Biediger; Lyric Cabral; Louie and Mary Calvano; Stephanie Caparelli; Ann Marie Carlson; Mike and Mary Kay Cobb; Aaron Cohen; Steven Corey; Ken Daley; Kate Darling; Wynne Delacoma; Anthony DiMurro; David Dunton; Robert Feder; dream hampton; Susan Hamre-Keller; Cynthia Taylor-Handrup; Deborah Holdstein and Jay Boersma; Rick Kogan; Bob Kurson; Aviya Kushner; Joe Kvidera; Anders and Julie Lindall; Jennifer Lizak; Todd Martens; Dr. Charmaine Jake-Matthews; Jim Merlis; Keith Moerer; Mark Anthony Neal; Michael Nejman; Douglas and Pegeen Reichert Powell; Helene Stapinski and Wendell Jamieson; Tony and Brandee Tavano; Jim Testa; Kristi Turnbaugh; Tim and Katie Tuten; Jaan Uhelszki; Dr. Annmarie van Altena; Ken Weinstein; Sam Weller; Robin Whatley; my pals at the Military Miniature Society of Illinois; my in-laws, Joe and Marcia Carrillo; and my brother and sister-in-law, Michael and Mary Ellen DeRogatis.
Monika Woods believed in this book since she first emailed me in January 2014 (“Hello from a literary agent”), and she eventually convinced me that living with the darkness I knew it would require was not only important, but necessary. Then it took forever to find a home, but she persisted, and with Jamison Stoltz, we connected with the perfect editor. I mean, this impeccably dressed Oak Park native prints out PDFs, marks them up with a fountain pen, scans them, and sends them back. How fucking cool is that? To be sure, that is only one in a thousand ways he made this book better. Thanks also to Alicia Tan, Lisa Silverman, Anet Sirna-Bruder, John Gall, Devin Grosz, Kimberly Lew, Jennifer Brunn, Gabby Fisher, Mamie VanLangen, Hannah Babcock, Tricia Kallett, Michael Jacobs, Michael Sand, and everyone at Abrams.
Finally, how can I express my thanks for the support and faith I get from mi alma y corazón, Carmél Carrillo? It is beyond me, and I apologize for that, and for the many sleepless nights, tense days, and interrupted vacations during our marriage because of this story. Whenever my energy flagged, the frustrations mounted, or the cynicism threatened to overwhelm me, I thought of my love for my wife and soulmate, as well as my daughter, Melody (whose plays and musical recitals I too often missed), and my mom, Helene (who lived to hear I’d found a publisher, but not to celebrate that news at Sabatino’s Italian Restaurant). Their love kept me pushing forward and reminded me that all the girls I’ve written about have people who love them that much, and who they love that deeply in return. So many suffered for so long because a soulless man perverted the art form that inspires me. I tried to shine a light on that, but it was the voices of these girls and their loved ones that finally stopped it.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Born in Jersey City, New Jersey, the year the Beatles arrived in America, Jim DeRogatis began voicing his opinions about music shortly thereafter. He is an associate professor of instruction in the Department of English and Creative Writing at Columbia College Chicago, and together with Greg Kot of the Chicago Tribune, he co-hosts Sound Opinions, the weekly music talk show heard on public radio nationwide, and at soundopinions.org via podcast. DeRogatis spent fifteen years as the pop music critic at the Chicago Sun-Times and is the author, co-author, or editor of eleven books, including Let It Blurt: The Life and Times of Lester Bangs, America’s Greatest Rock Critic; Staring at Sound: The True Story of Oklahoma’s Fabulous Flaming Lips; Turn On Your Mind: Four Decades of Great Psychedelic Rock; and Milk It! Collected Musings on the Alternative Music Explosion of the ’90s. He has played in bands since age thirteen, but he jokes that he is a drummer, not a musician. His current trio, Vortis, recently released This Machine Kills Fascists on vinyl with Cavetone Records. He lives in Chicago with his wife, Carmél Carrillo, while his daughter, Melody, pursues her
passion for musical theater.
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