R. Kelly

OK, you out there, stop the snickering. Turn off that Dave Chappelle spoof on YouTube. We can hear you all the way from here. To some, R. Kelly might be one of the least cool names in music, but he did beat the rap and he has the artistic clout to remain one of the towering figures in R&B, the definitive R&B figure of the 1990s and the first part of this century too. We expect that he’ll pull tunes from his mega-hit catalog, but which? “Bump N’ Grind”? “Sex Me”? “I Believe I Can Fly”? “If I Could Turn Back the Hands of Time”? So many hits, so little time. When an audience fracas broke out at a concert earlier this tour, Kelly kept his composure and sang for security without missing a beat. Now that’s keeping cool.