R. Kelly is some kind of mad, bulletproof genius, impervious to scandal and capable of almost anything on record and on stage.

After taking his already wildly successful career to stratospheric heights with “I Believe I Can Fly,” a gospel-based inspirational song, he spent the next few years dodging repeated allegations that he had sex with underage girls.

He still faces 14 charges, all stemming from a videotape that allegedly shows Kelly and a 14-year-old.

But what should have been career suicide has instead turned into a long string of No. 1 albums, most filled with songs about sex, and the insanely inspired “Trapped in the Closet,” a video “hip-hopera” that’s pure lunacy.

How does he do it?

Dude works hard, for one thing. Saturday night at Freedom Hall, Kelly put on an entertaining, even charming, show for around 10,000 faithful fans. From the moment he climbed onto a stage tricked out as a boxing ring, wearing a robe emblazoned with “Champ” across the back, Kelly rarely slowed down.

He also rarely focused. This was ADHD r&b, with Kelly usually singing no more than 30 to 45 seconds of any one song. Sometimes he didn’t even get to the chorus before moving on, and the show was 15 minutes deep before he made it past 90 seconds (on “Double Up,” appropriately enough).

He promised to sing all of his hits, and he might actually have sung at least a verse of each.

Kelly pulled it off by keeping the pace frenetic and the energy high while throwing a few wild punches that didn’t quite connect. At one point, he returned after a costume change in 1920s-style clothes while his pianist played ragtime, then “conducted” a minute or two of Beethoven before segueing into a disco production of “Step In the Name of Love.”

It was bizarre, but then again, this is a guy who’s written a hip-hopera about a cheating wife, gay pastor, trigger-happy thug, trailer-trash girl and a gifted midget. So maybe it was actually kind of normal.

Keyshia Cole and J. Holiday opened with brief sets. Holiday’s bedroom r&b still needs some maturing, but Cole delivered a nice set that had elements of classic r&b dating back to the 1970s sprinkled throughout.

R. Kelly threw a New Year’s Eve party to remember for himself and about 5,000 paying guests on Monday night at American Airlines Arena. For all the self-created trouble surrounding the r&b star, this concert was a genuinely happy occasion and — with some exceptions — a break from the weirdness and difficulty of being R. Kelly.

If he has to face the music in 2008 — if his trial on charges of soliciting a minor for pornography does go forward as scheduled in May, and if he’s convicted — he’ll always have Miami.

Kelly, who turns 41 next week, seemed determined to make this stop on his “Double Up” tour a retrospective affair. “I can’t help it if I wrote all these hits,” he said. But it wasn’t so much a greatest-hits-live set as it was a show of greatest snippets.

Kelly did a handful of songs whole, and some of those performances were masterful. He ravished Your Body’s Callin’, with a long, improvisational coda built around a plaintive piano figure. He then apologized for getting “carried away,” though no explanation was needed for this appreciative crowd. He sang Real Talk a-capella, into a cellphone. As his pealing voice rose and fell throughout the male half of an imaginary break-up, the anger, bewilderment, confusion and good-riddance-hangup sounded both melodramatic and genuine. (Given his exploits, it’s possible Kelly exists in a fixed state of melodrama.)

But DJ method was the order of the evening: Kelly and his agile band hip-hopped their way through his remarkable, prolific career as a singer, songwriter and hit machine.

There were indulgent production numbers befitting a big ego and an arena-sized stage. Kelly entered like a prizefighter, walking through the crowd to The Champ with his face half-hidden under a spangled hoodie. He took a lap dance during I’m a Flirt and submitted to a Nubian queen during a fun-in-the jungle sequence that was beyond silly but well choreographed. He stepped on to a rostrum in white tails to conduct Beethoven’s Fifth, while the Vari-lites above him twirled and beamed on cue.

This was Kelly playing in a million-dollar sandbox and having a blast. Interestingly, he omitted his most famous set piece, Trapped In The Closet, the soap-operatic song cycle. A better candidate for deletion was a big-booty ode that he introduced as brand new. “I tried to service it to radio and they said, ‘Hell, no, Kels, we can’t play that [expletive]. It’s too sexual,’ ” he said.

The sex wasn’t the problem; the insane mismatch of topic and tone was. Kelly set his anatomical ogle to what sounded like a borrowed show tune and ended it with a long, Broadway-esque note that should have had the crowd in stitches.

In any case, Kelly had parts or all of enough familiar and likeable songs — Ignition, Down Low, Step in the Name of Love and at least two dozen more — to occupy a two-hour set that spilled into the new year. The show ended with a shower of confetti and balloons, while Kelly sang Happy People and decorated it with interludes from a pair of hopeful-sounding TV themes: Welcome Back, Kotter and Good Times.

1. The Champ (Feat. Swizz Beatz)
2. Double Up (Feat. Snoop Dogg)
3. Tryin’ To Get A Number (Feat. Nelly)
4. Get Dirty (Feat. Chamillionaire)
5. Leave Your Name
6. Freaky In The Club
7. The Zoo
8. I’m A Flirt (Remix) (Feat. T.I. & T-Pain)
9. Same Girl (Feat. Usher)
10. Real Talk
11. Hook It Up (Feat. Huey)
12. Rock Star (Feat. Ludacris & Kid Rock)
13. Best Friend (Feat. Keyshia Cole & Polow Da Don)
14. Rollin’
15. Sweet Tooth
16. Havin’ A Baby
17. Sex Planet
18. Rise Up
19. I Like Love (Bonus Track)