Music

Jack Antonoff says he asked record label to drop R. Kelly

In the wake of a new round of sexual abuse allegations against Jack Antonoff tweeted that he hopes his label, RCA, drops the veteran R&B singer, adding, “I’ve discussed it with them a number of times.”

Both artists are signed to the label; Kelly has been on RCA since Jive, the label to which he was originally signed, was combined with RCA as part of the Sony-BMG merger beginning in 2004. (Jive was ultimately shuttered in 2011.) His most recent release was a Christmas-themed album issued in late 2016.

The tweet has since been deleted but was screengrabbed by Stereogum. Reps for Kelly and RCA did not immediately respond to requests for comment, although a rep for the label recently confirmed to Variety that Kelly is still on the label.

On Tuesday, Kelly makes the claim about another woman in a BBC3 documentary, “R Kelly: Sex, Girls and Videotapes.” In it, Jones says she herself was “groomed” by Kelly and forced to have sex with him and others multiple times in a “sex dungeon.” Neither Kelly nor his representatives would comment to the BBC or The Guardian, but he has previously denied accusations of sexual impropriety or violence against women multiple times.

In 2008, he was found not guilty of child pornography charges after he was accused of filming and photographing sexual encounters with a 14-year-old girl. In July, he was Aaliyah in 1994 when she was 15 years old by faking her age; in the BBC documentary, his former manager Rocky Bivens claims to have attended the wedding, which was soon annulled. Multiple reports over the years claim that Kelly has made out-of-court settlements with several other women, including Tiffany Hawkins, who claims she had a sexual relationship with him from the age of 15.

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