On Thursday (Jan. 3), Lifetime’s six-part docuseries, “Surviving R. Kelly,” made its televised debut and took music fans (and social media timelines) across the nation by storm. The documentary, which centers around the sexual abuse allegations being made against the R&B singer and features interviews with over 50 people, has garnered reactions from a handful of R&B artists including Tank, Ne-Yo and, most recently; Omarion.
In a new series of tweets posted on Sunday (Jan. 6), Omarion publicly denounces R. Kelly, as well as vowed to retire their collaborative offerings. However, the singer has decided to wait until after the upcoming B2K tour to do so.
“As an artist & a champion of the arts, I am moved to share my position on #SurvivingRKelly which I haven’t seen but felt compelled to voice my position on this very serious issue since #rkelly has written songs for #B2K,” Omarion shared on Twitter, writing a series of posts on the subject. “His artistic genius inspired us all. His music is being muted by the darkness of his actions. The dark always comes to light.”
Omarion, then, noted that in order to avoid disappointing fans; the group will still perform the Kelly-penned tracks, “Girlfriend,” “What A Girl Wants” and “Bump, Bump, Bump,” which appeared on 2002’s Pandemonium! album.
“After the tour, I am retiring those songs from my set list. I too am raising a future queen,” Omarion added.
Another former collaborator of Kelly’s, Chance the Rapper, has found himself under fire due to comments he made during an interview segment that aired as part of the docuseries.
He has since clarified that his comments were taken out of context and issued an apology to fans, while addressing the matter.
“The quote was taken out of context, but the truth is any of us who ever ignored the R Kelly stories, or ever believed he was being setup/attacked by the system (as black men often are) were doing so at the detriment of black women and girls,” the rapper shared on Twitter (Jan. 5). “I apologize to all of his survivors for working with him and for taking this long to speak out.”
The interview in full offers more insight into Chance’s thought process and has since been shared widely online.
“We’re programmed to really be hypersensitive to black male oppression,” Chance says in the original clip. “But, black women are exponentially [a] higher oppressed and violated group of people just in comparison to the whole world. Maybe I didn’t care because I didn’t value the accusers’ stories because they were black women. Usually, n—s that get in trouble for s—t like this on their magnitude of celebrity, it’s light-skinned women or white women. That’s when it’s a big story. I’ve never really seen any pictures of R. Kelly’s accusers.”
As for Kelly himself, the R&B singer claims that while he has not watched the docuseries, he reportedly is planning on “exposing” his accusers as liars on Facebook, one by one. He has also threatened pursuing legal action against the network and filmmakers.
See Omarion and Chance the Rapper’s comments on R. Kelly below.