R Kelly - Down Low

This is an amazing song. Secret lovers on the 'down low' and the video is pretty much up there as an all time favourite. Released in 1996, this is also one of R Kelly’s first outings as music video director, and it shows; a massively self-indulgent fantasy. I’m sure I remember watching a Hype Williams interview on MTV in the late nineties, where in some cases Kelly would think up a video concept and then base a song around that – I love dat style. I can’t remember if he said it directly about this song, but it’s a technique I think only Kelly could pull off with such aplomb.

Now, if you were going out of town ‘on business’, would you leave R Kelly to look after your wife? Would you give him ‘a pile a’ cash’ and the keys to the Bentley? And what would you do with the kids? Mr. Big got checked. That’s Ronald Isley of the Isley Brothers, and the love interest ‘Lila Heart’ is played by Garcelle Beauvais, who ‘spoke to me’ as a teenager… fuck yeah.

All in, it’s a slack, slack song, and easily one of Kelly’s best. The video only serves to make this a classic. Favourite part? Has to be the part where he’s dragged out to the desert in convoy, dumped on the cracked ground and told ‘I did this to you!’. Isley drives off and leaves Kelly to raise his bloodied fists to the sky and wail! Oh, and any bit with Garcelle Beauvais.