Performing to a sold-out Wang Center last Friday night, soul singer R. Kelly, wearing a jeweled wristwatch and a black T-shirt, mesmerized his audience, even dominated them. It was difficult, at first, to know why. The style of Stevie Wonder pervaded his reedy, high tenor. James Brown’s techniques underpinned his stage gimmicks, right down to fainting and being dragged off-stage by two valets at the end of “Sex In The Kitchen” from his new CD TP.3 Reloaded. He rapped to hip-hop beats, and added some dancehall, neither of which is a Kelly signature. He even used a rhetorical device that goes all the way back to classical Roman oratory, praeteritio. He may not have had Cicero in mind when he said “my backstage people told me not to curse on stage,” as he, well, cursed on stage, and “they told me not to feel myself in this area,” as he, well, felt himself up in exactly that area. Cicero’s technique worked well for Kelly. The crowd shared the joke, and raised their hands, embracing him.
