Jack Antonoff is trying to change the music industry from the inside out. Maybe. In a now-deleted tweet, the face of Bleachers and producer of your favorite songs by Lorde and Taylor Swift, Antonoff says he's had conversations with his record label about dropping R. Kelly following the many disturbing allegations against the artist. Both Antonoff and Kelly are signed to RCA, who did not immediately respond to Refinery29's request for comment.
"I hope my label drops r kelly," the deleted tweet read, according to Stereogum. "i've discussed it with them a number of times."
Of the number of allegations against Kelly, prominent ones include that he is holding women against their will in an abusive sex cult, and that he trained a 14-year-old girl to be his "sex slave." The latter was initially reported by BuzzFeed in July, and relays the accounts of several parents who claim their daughters are being brainwashed and held in R. Kelly's homes in Chicago and Georgia.
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"You have to ask for food. You have to ask to go use the bathroom," Cheryl Mack R. Kelly's former personal assistant, told BuzzFeed about what it was like working with the artist. "He is a puppet master."
In a statement to Variety, Kelly's attorney Linda Mensch said "Mr. Robert Kelly is both alarmed and disturbed at the recent revelations attributed to him."
The former accusation came just this week after a BBC3 documentary featured the account of Kelly's ex-girlfriend Kitti Jones, who says in R Kelly: Sex, Girls and Videotapes that the singer groomed an underage girl like a "pet," and that she was one of many.
"Mr. Kelly is aware of the repeated and now evolving claims of [Ms. Jones]," a spokesperson said after Jones's initial accusations were published in Rolling Stone in August. "It is unfortunate that Ms. Jones, after public statements to the contrary, is now attempting to portray a relationship history with Mr. Kelly as anything other than consensual involvement between two adults."
Antonoff and Kelly did not immediately return request for comment.
If you have experienced sexual violence and are in need of crisis support, please call the RAINN Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673).
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