Kellz proved his weight in Pied Piper Saturday (November 24) in Uniondale, NY, with a three-hour extravaganza that was as much career retrospective as high-concept arena tour.
Like the Olympics and Congressional Conventions, Robert Sylvester Kelly saw fit to open his performance at Long Island’s Nassau Coliseum with the National Anthem – so when the iconic singer finally took to the stage, outfitted in diamond-encrusted hoodie and fleet-footed behind a boxing ring, the audience was already out of their seats.

But it’s not like the Pied Piper needed a ploy to get it poppin. Perhaps recognizing that the Double Up tour might be his last for awhile, the singer spent every iota of his extensive performance showing and proving he’s earned his title as Mr. Showman, the king of R&B, beginning and ending with his reedy voice, so familiar and agile. After his grand entrance, he put up his dukes to booming chants of “The Champ is Here” (somebody holler at Green Lantern) and ran through his vast stable of hits – singing at least a few lines from even oft-requested titles like “Bump N Grind,” “Forever More,” “Down Low,” “Feelin’ On Yo Booty,” and “Ignition.” Magnum-powered by a team of six dancers, a live band and a hype-man (Milton?), the three-hour extravaganza was as much a career retrospective as a high-concept, grand arena tour. And, as with any retrospective, there was a little bit of reflection. “I wanna thank you for supporting me through thick and thin, for 17 years,” he noted several times throughout the night, at one point appearing like he might actually cry. Shadowing his gratitude, of course, was his pending trial for child-pornography charges, delayed for years but now finally seeing light with a tentative court date in spring of next year. There was a finality to his thankfulness, as if he, long untouchable, could no longer deny the gravity of his situation.

But with Kells, where there is gravity, there’s always a healthy dose of grandiosity to balance it out.

And that he did, his velvety voice fluttering on every timeless melody, his crowd-captivating charisma on full blast, his Swarovski crystal-encrusted cane waving around erect, a not-so-subtle extension of his, um, thoia-thoing. He performed “Strip for You” behind a camera that silhouetted his body, and definitely dropped his pants. For “Slow Wind,” one of his dancers crawled out from beneath a throne to perform a highly complicated lap dance. He clearly relished every moment. But even as his show got increasingly explicit, he apologized for saying “motherfuckas.” (”Excuse my French,” Kellz disclaimed politely.)

As he launched into a run of his newer songs, it became clear his catalogue, comprised largely of grown-ass bedroom anthems for freaky adults, has gotten younger as he’s aged. The tracks from Double Up are more influenced by contemporary rap than anything he’s ever done – trussed up with jeep-beats and street synths, sung in aggressive cadence. He spent an half-hour performing his biggest hits of the year – most of which were his features on ’07’s top pop remixes, from “We Takin’ Over” and “Promise” to “Buy U a Drank” and, just for good measure, “I’m in Love with a Stripper.” Lacking any guest-stars (he didn’t really need any), he aired a video of his high-powered pals stoking the crowd to shout-outs: Ciara, Snoop, T-Pain, Fat Joe, and Common (who evoked the most applause, which my companion said proved the audience was definitely middle-aged).

Kellz also showed why he earned his reputation as an unmitigated wild man. At his most satisfyingly scripted, he indulged his taste for theatrics with play-acted routines that mirrored the passion of community theatre – and dripped with the kind of performative melodrama that only megastars like Michael Jackson, Madonna, and Prince have the presence to successfully pull off. For “Zoo,” that monkey-hooting sexaphor ballad on Double Up, Kellz’ dancers – donning leopard-print bikinis – “kidnapped” him and tied him up. As he sang, kneeling on the ground with six women lipsynching to the sound of lion’s roars around him, he actually busted up laughing. Anyone who discounts his own self-awareness doesn’t giving the man enough credit. And yet, for all his humor and likeability, his audience cannot forget his alleged infractions. In between songs, hecklers could be heard from the stands: “What happened to Ne-Yo?!” one yelled, referring to the opener who was dropped from the tour amid rumored controversy. And, as the performance began to wrap up, one fan got the courage to holler the worst: “R. Kelly, I’m 13, will you go out with me?”

What could he do? The band played on. “Happy People,” one of Kells’ most gorgeous and transcendent songs, is his vision of a carefree world, where folks could step and love with abandon – his melancholy interpretation of heaven, it’s half-celestial fantasia, half Chi-city club. And so it was right that he ended his concert with that track, a posse of audience members dancing onstage behind him. Dressed in an oversized white tuxedo with coattails, the crowd safely in his palm, he weaved his song into a medley of choruses: “This Christmas,” “Joy and Pain,” and somewhat bewilderingly, the theme songs to long-syndicated TV shows “Love Boat” and “Welcome Back, Kotter.” As he closed out his medley to the theme from “Good Times,” the sky opened up and a blizzard of silver-and-white confetti fluttered down upon the audience, glittering snow from Kellz’ personal nirvana. “Not getting hassled, not getting hustled. Keepin’ your head above water. Making a wave when you can. Good Times.” He belted it like it was gospel. Like he meant it.

At an R. Kelly concert, one would almost be disappointed if nothing deeply weird happened. And he lived up to his reputation Thanksgiving night at the Prudential Center in Newark. He saved his biggest head-scratchers for late in the evening.

First, there was a long video segment devoted to footage of him playing pranks on sleeping members of his road crew.

Then he re-emerged, resplendent in an all-white suit. He released two white birds, which flew around the arena, then mimicked the moves of a classical conductor as a tape of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony played, lights flashed, and fireworks went off in time with the music.

Then came the grand finale. Kelly sang his hits “Step In the Name of Love” and “Happy People” as their dance beats and mirror balls, spinning overhead, turned the arena into a giant disco. Female fans danced onstage, and confetti fell. Inexplicably, he inserted the theme song to the ’70s TV show, “Welcome Back, Kotter,” into “Happy People.”

Kelly, 40, has the résumé as well as the vocal chops to justify the title he used to describe himself in the song, “I’m a Flirt”: “The King of R&B.”

R&B singer Ne-Yo, who was tapped to open for R. Kelly on his Double Up tour alongside Keyshia Cole and J. Holiday, was relieved of his duties just a week into the trek, his label has confirmed.The rest is here.

Ne-Yo later spoke to a radio show and gave his side of the story.

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.