COLUMBUS, Ga., Nov. 15 — Radio D.J.’s were shouting themselves hoarse in the parking lot, crowing about one of the biggest concerts this town has ever seen. Cars were crawling down Veterans Parkway, trunk speakers abuzz. The local clergy were not amused.

Such was the scene when R. Kelly came to the Columbus Civic Center, here on the western edge of Georgia, across the Chattahoochee River from Alabama. Some concerts might seem anticlimactic after a buildup like that, but an R. Kelly concert consists of almost nothing but climax, one way and another. And for more than two hours he was thrilling, hilarious and downright mystifying, often all at once.

“They were louder in the last city,” he said, baiting the crowd, even though everyone knew that there had been no last city. This was the opening night of Mr. Kelly’s “Double Up” tour, scheduled to last two months, and maybe it was organized as an out-of-town tryout. (The tour’s big-city debut was set for Thursday night in Atlanta, arguably the hip-hop and R&B capital of America.) But despite a few problems with sound and momentum, this felt more like a celebration than a dress rehearsal.

In any case, the tickets weren’t free ($42.50 to $60.50), and Mr. Kelly knew that his loyal but picky fans expected to get their money’s worth. During an extended version of “Bump ’n’ Grind,” an old slow jam, he sang one of his most famous lines — “Seems like you’re ready to go all the way” — and then paused, claiming that people backstage were asking him to keep things tame. This inspired a memorable digression, a fanfare for the common ticketholder.

Waxing operatic, he sang: “We paid. To see. You go. All the. Way!” Then he got specific: “Hair done! Nails done! Toes done! Car washed!” He paused, steeling himself, then roared: “Six! Hun! Dred! Dollar! Weave!” Then he issued a warning, using his own first name to amplify the threat: “Somebody say: ‘Robert. If you. Don’t go. All. The way. We want. Our money. Back!’” For a moment he fought back laughter, then switched moods for an afterthought:

“What happens in the building stays in the building,” he sang, softly and prettily. Having torn through 18 songs and snippets in about half an hour, he seemed to be fully warmed up.

Like Michael Jackson, Prince and Marvin Gaye before him, Mr. Kelly sees no reason that an R&B hero can’t also be an eccentric visionary; no reason that a sex symbol can’t also be, in some (or every) sense, a freak. Even in the early 1990s, when he was building his reputation with a series of aching love and lust songs, he found ways to let listeners know he wasn’t like the other guys. In retrospect, “I Like the Crotch on You,” an infamous song from his classic 1993 album “12 Play,” seems like a mission statement: fair warning that he planned to push bedroom music past its logical conclusion.

It hasn’t just been bedroom music. At different times over the last 17 years, he has been a gospel star, an honorary hip-hop heavyweight and a comic-opera auteur. (Surely the 22 episodes of “Trapped in the Closet” are enough to earn him that last title.) As a songwriter, singer and producer, his output rivals that of any current singer, in any genre; at 40, he is still an A-list hitmaker and an unpredictable force, and “Double Up,” the tour, is named after the hugely entertaining album he released in May.

Right now, he also happens to be a criminal defendant: He still faces 14 child-pornography charges in his native Chicago, stemming from a widely circulated video that reportedly shows him with an under-age girl. That scandal, which erupted in 2002, once threatened to end Mr. Kelly’s career, especially since his songs don’t make it easy to change the subject. He survived it in spectacular form, mainly by refusing to be cowed. If anything, his raunchiest songs got even more outlandish in the years after the report broke; what else could fans do but shrug and grin and sing along?

Needless to say, not everyone is grinning. On the day of the concert here, the local newspaper The Ledger-Enquirer printed a skeptical front-page article that portrayed the concert as controversial. The article seemed to endorse the view of one detractor, the Rev. Johnny Flakes III, an assistant pastor at the Fourth Street Missionary Baptist Church here, saying of the pastor, “He opposes the overall derogatory message that will be inherent in many songs performed at tonight’s concert.”

This low hum of outrage scarcely hurts Mr. Kelly; it makes his whimsical sex songs seem all the more daring, while making his tributes to the fans seem all the more heartfelt.

We are barely a year removed from Mr. Kelly’s last traveling show, which he called “Mr. Show Biz Presents: The Light It Up Tour.” While that production suggested that Mr. Kelly was gravitating further toward musical comedy, this one is more scrambled, more bewildering, and the concert became weirder as it went on.

Singing (when it counted) and lip-synching (when it didn’t), he barreled through the old hits and really came alive during the parts that felt like ad-libs, even if they were rehearsed. He performed “Real Talk,” an angry musical monologue, with a memorable prop: a cellphone. And he turned “Your Body’s Calling” into a quiet, moving tribute to his own history, murmuring, “Somebody’s still calling me, after 17 years, damn.” When he used a word that Pastor Flakes probably disapproves of, he paused to ask if he should censor himself, then evidently decided not to, embarking on a loopy but elegant one-word solo.

Some performers would be well advised to avoid pausing for an a cappella version of an unreleased new song, but Mr. Kelly got a huge cheer when he sang one. It helped, no doubt, that the song was dedicated “to all the big-booty girls.” In mock-inspirational mode, he crooned, “Stand up.” Then, inevitably, he added, “ And turn around for me-e-e.”

He saved most of the strangest moments for near the end: a tribute to Prince (or was it a parody?); an extended jungle fantasia; a conductor skit that had Mr. Kelly orchestrating a light show. And the next morning on the radio the hosts seemed puzzled about why he closed the show with a medley of television theme songs.

No doubt he’ll adjust the sequencing as the tour continues. And with any luck, the opening acts won’t disappoint: on Wednesday night J. Holiday and Ne-Yo appeared, but there was no sign of Keyshia Cole, who was also on the bill.

By now, Mr. Kelly’s track record is so long that any show will seem to be full of omissions. (This one had no “Trapped in the Closet,” no “I Believe I Can Fly” and no gospel music whatsoever.) And it’s no insult to say that sometimes the dancers and production numbers seemed superfluous, or that Mr. Kelly sometimes seemed to have even more stamina than the audience. As the beweaved masses staggered out, the singer was still onstage, looking ready for the next night, and maybe the next 17 years too.