From its garish cover, which finds R. Kelly standing on a mountaintop against a fire-red sky (okay, so it's a sunset but it feels more like the apocalypse) looking down at his apparently erect penis, to its pedestrian melodies, beats, and lyrics, TP.3 Reloaded represents everything that's wrong with mainstream hip-hop and R&B today, mainly its obsession with money and sex and its complete lack of soul. More jarring, though, is Kelly's utter lack of talent. Reloaded is like second-rate R. Kelly…which makes it less appealing than smoking a rolled up dookie joint (if you haven't heard the album, this will make more sense in a few seconds). Craft is obviously not something Kelly is interested in: his falsetto is awkward at best and the supposedly sexy/hypnotic liquid drops that permeate several of the album's tracks is more like Chinese water torture.

Which is also a good way to describe the lyrics. "In The Kitchen" helps Kelly reach new depths of misogyny with lines like "Girl, I'm ready to toss your salad" and "Girl, you're in the kitchen/Cooking me a meal/Something makes me wanna come in there and get a feel," while "Remote Control" is yet another 5th-grade level metaphor-laden ballad featuring gems like "Let me put this adapter in you/It will keep you charged up." Is this Prince's legacy? A song filled with TiVo metaphors? Here's another one: "Come and get this sweet lovin' you deserve." Run for your life, girl! Nobody deserves this! Not even Katherine Harris. And forget your everyday flower as a symbol for the vagina; Kelly prefers to liken his girl's "sweet pussy" to a marijuana leaf on "Sex Weed": "Girl, your shit is the chronic/'Cause I could tell by the way you roll it up/Make a playa wanna smoke it up." Wait. Did he just say he wants to smoke her shit? Forget Bobby and Whitney. Now this is brown love.

But this is all to be expected from an R. Kelly album. While it may have been disappointing to hear the independent women of Destiny's Child get all domestic on Destiny Fulfilled's "Cater 2 U" and "T-Shirt," Kelly's "Put My T-Shirt On" makes their Stepfordization even more revolting. He might be the single worst songwriter living today, the final piece of evidence being "Trapped In The Closet," a five-chapter suite devoid of any sort of structural or musical relevance whatsoever but big on laugh-out-loud hilarity (and presumably unintended camp): When he gets caught fucking church pastor Rufus's wife Cathy it's revealed that Kelly isn't the only one hiding in the closet—Rufus has a gay lover named Chuck—and by the end of "Chapter 3" Kelly finds out that his wife is stepping out on him too, ultimately "climaxing" in a tangled (but nonsensical) social web of indiscretion. If Lil' Kim can get a year and a day in the slammer for trying to protect a friend, Kelly should at least get that much for this epic piece of crap alone.

Did you write that or is there a link?

Scorpion said:

YOU REMIND ME OF MY JEEP....

the most important question about this review is this: didja piss on the cd after you finished listening to it?

Handclapsfingasnapz said:

BTW, this shit is #1 on Billboard this week with about 600,000 copies sold.

VoicesCarry said:

I don't get it. he's just very ordinary.

It's yet another WTF?! moment.

You know it's bad when the reviews on amazon.com say so.

Adisa said:

Oh shit!


***** CHILD MOLESTAION FUN FOR ALL!, July 11, 2005
Reviewer: hobo jimmy "fatso griffin" (hell) - See all my reviews

DAMN this cd kicks ass, man i love traped in the closet, who dosnt like listening to a 12 minutes song abou a guy who has sex with sum girl and her husband walks in and turns out ot be secretly gay and then after all that , it turns out his wife has been cheating too? INSTANT CLASSIC! I aprove this cd for all ages!!

Can't he release an album with no more than one creepy sex song? It's cruel, but I'd laugh if he ever became impotent.

hottest album ive heard this year.

whoever wrote that can eat crow.

I completely disagree. I think this cd is very much like the streets a lot of us are from and we can relate to the simplicity of the lyrics and and we appreciate dramatic flair (video,lyrics and the hypnotic water drop,(from disc 2 of Happy People) and anticipate his next move. Music is entertainment, no a lessoned learned and not all of it should have some message of intellect. This cd is good and I would give it 4 stars
Here's to the REAL KING of R and B. You better ask somebody

anniechristian1 said:

i agree

gets 4 stars from me too.

600,000 1st week sales is amazing.

* "Trapped In The Closet" should have been the name for this CD....., July 7, 2005
Reviewer: RB (Oakland, CA USA) - See all my reviews
Because it sounds like someone wrote the lyrics after being trapped in a closet for a few years! I remember the first time I heard this...I was in the car, and, this song came on. The first "chapter" (lol) I guess. Anyway, I was thinking that, after listening to the first fwe seconds, someone was trying to come up with an aiight slow jam...a song with some emotion in it. Then, the lyrics kick in. I had no idea this was R. Kelley, because the lyrics, if you want to call them that, kind of sounded like a pre-teen wrote them after watching a few BET videos. The more I heard, the dumber it got. Then my girl told me that what I heard was R. Kelly, and that there were 5 more songs....like a story. That is when I decided that someone should just sew R. Kelly's mouth shut.

I saw that someone thought that he is genius...man, listen to his lyrics. Are we so dumbed down that this can pass for genius?? WTF??? I'm not saying that all of his music is dumb. He used to have lyrics that were at times, thought provoking. But "Trapped In The Closet" has to be THE DUMBEST idea that I have heard in my life. Dumber than Vanilla Coke. And that was dumb.

I haven't listened to the whole CD, so my review is based on the story of "The Closet." LOL everytime I see that I laugh. But, if this is on there, I can only assume that the remainder of the CD is just as bad, or, God forbid, worse.

Oh, and, for the record, James Brown is still alive.

i loveeee trapped in the closet, them punks need to STFU. The kelly hatin is so old.

TheGodfather said:

Show some love for Mr.Peebody.

alright, who called out mistermaxxx's army?

Well, since I don't plan on buying this CD or any songs on it, I can't comment on the review.
But I just can't look at R. Kelly without the Dave Chappell parody song "I Want To Piss On You" playing in my head.