[PATREON PREVIEW] Rotted: R. Kelly & Aaliyah

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1:23You guys welcome to another Patreon episode of Beyond the Blinds. My name is Troy McEady. And my name is Kelly Williams. And we got a real dooser today. This is one for the books. I was just telling Kelly that I'm not gonna lie when I was shaking the notes. I was like, I'm eating a bit. I'm leaving no crumbs. These notes are fucking nuts. Yes, I have read through them and just want to give everyone a heads up. This isn't gonna be some fun light episode. If you think anything about Alia and Arkelly will upset you, do not proceed. That's right. Yeah, this is like the true, this is really what happened. I got most of my notes from court documents. Oh my god. So I read through 82 pages of the court. And I actually, I had already read them. So luckily I had them summarized because some of my notes are from like 10 years ago. But I expanded on it like a lot. Because so much stuff has come out since the last time I talked about this,

2:26there's been documentaries and the deity stuff added to the Alia stuff. And then the Jay Z stuff added to the, I mean, you know, so. Yeah, and I feel like when it comes to Alia and Arkelly, everybody knows that they got together underage. But like outside of that, I think it's been pretty under wraps. Yeah, the details of the events that took place are actually like really crazy. And I don't, I agree. I don't think a lot of people know the wedding stuff, the pregnancy stuff, just all of it could be like a crazy like lifetime movie, because it feels so unbelievable. But I also hope lifetime never gets their hands on it. Oh god. Oh god. Yeah. Because they already tried to do the Alia thing, which was insane, but I couldn't imagine their version of like Alia and Arkelly, like they did with Brittany and Justin. It would be awful. It'd be insane. So like you were saying, Alia and Arkelly first met in the 90s. She was 12 and they started dating in February of 92.

3:28They got engaged in June of 94. They got secretly married in August of the same year. And they very quickly got it annulled because her family freaked the fuck out and was like, what are you doing? They very famously falsified documents. And this is such old school journalism because it's like, he was trying to lie about falsifying the documents, but then like a magazine would get the photo copy of the actual document and be like, no, you really did do it. Like it was like such old school 90s. Carrying stuff through the grapevine, like slow news cycle stuff, you know? And it's so crazy to me that Arkelly had such a massive career even after this. I'm even bigger. Yeah. He only got more popular. Like it took people a really long time to be like, I give up on I believe I can fly. Yeah. Yeah. Which is just insane. Like that is true psychosis. Like when Tokyo Tony says that we're under spells, that is a spell.

4:30When it comes to Arkelly, I always think whenever we do Chicago live shows, somebody has an Arkelly story. And I think at our last Chicago live show, there were like three people in the audience who were like, no, Arkelly used to hang out outside my middle school. Yeah, one of the people that are show knew a girl that like, like he was like trying to go after at their school, which is crazy. Yeah. So they were introduced by Arkelly's manager and Gladys Knight's husband, Barry Hankerson, who was also Alia's uncle. Arkelly was hired by Alia's uncle to be her mentor in the 90s. And he helped write and produce her album, age eight, nothing, but a number. And he named it and he wrote it. And he wrote songs about her as a teenage girl being in love with him. And he put himself on her album cover. And he did all of her press with him. They're dressed as twins.

5:31Like when you rewatch this stuff, you're just like, are the adults in the room? It's absolutely insane. And Barry Hankerson could have like his own episode, honestly, with how many people he fucked over in the music industry with those awful contracts. But again, even like trying to find those interviews, I remember you talking about them very early and beyond the blinds. Like maybe our first 50 episodes you would bring it up. And I watched them then, but they are kind of hard to find now. Yeah, they've been really scrubbed. Like I really had to dig. And what's crazy is like, that's her album cycle. To hear the rest of this episode, make sure to sign up for Patreon. The link is in the show notes. Can't wait to see you there.