R. Kelly: Does Liking His Album Mean You’ve Forgotten his Child Porn Charges?

R. Kelly’s latest album, Black Panties, came out on Dec. 10 — but the music on the album is probably not why you’ve been hearing about him over the last few days. Though the singer’s image as a sex-obsessed, smooth-talking, kinda-silly crooner has been bolstered by innocuous stunts like Benedict Cumberbatch doing a dramatic reading of his lyrics on Jimmy Kimmel Live and Rolling Stone asking him to write a sexy song about dolphins and hockey, his more recent headline mentions have been far more serious. That’s because they’re actually references to the older headlines he made, back before he was known for irony-friendly fare like Trapped in the Closet.

Here’s what happened: This week, as Black Panties continues to receive many favorable reviews, Village Voice published an extensive interview by Jessica Hopper with Jim DeRogatis, a writer who, as a Chicago Sun-Times beat reporter, helped uncover the allegations that R. Kelly had had sex with underage girls. In 2002, R. Kelly was charged with child pornography for videotaping himself engaged in sexual acts with a minor; he was acquitted in 2008. Other lawsuits were settled out of court.

The full interview with DeRogatis is worth reading — it covers how the story broke and DeRogatis’ feelings about it today, and includes copies of official documents from the 2002 indictment. It’s inspired an upwelling of conversation about how and whether the pop-culture world has forgotten about Kelly’s past, the racial implications of the case, and what do to when someone harbors doubts about the accuracy of a “not guilty” verdict. (As for Kelly himself, he’s not saying much about this latest conversation; when asked, he told an Atlanta radio station that “when you get to the top of anything, it’s very windy.”)

(MORE: R. Kelly Sings Emotional Tribute Song For Nelson Mandela)

But, as important as the specific conversation about R. Kelly is, that’s not the only thing that DeRogatis’ interview is, at its heart, about. The larger question at hand — sparked by DeRogatis’ take on Pitchfork’s decision to have Kelly headline their music festival this summer — is about consumers‘ and critics’ moral responsibilities when it comes to considering an artist along with his or her art. Is it okay to discuss a piece of music without acknowledging the musician’s non-musical conduct, good or bad as it may be?

In the interview, DeRogatis draws a fine line in discussing when it’s okay to leave morality out of music criticism. He mentions Led Zeppelin and James Brown as counterexamples: “The art very rarely talks about these things. There are not pro-rape Led Zeppelin songs. There are not pro-wife-beating James Brown songs.” Hence, if you’re writing about “Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag” it’s okay to not mention Brown’s personal troubles, but if you’re writing about R. Kelly’s odes to female genitalia it’s weird (and, DeRogatis posits, wrong) not to bring up his sex-related past.

DeRogatis is far from the first critic to wrestle with this question.

Perhaps the most famous example of an artist’s personal morality affecting the perception of his art is that of Richard Wagner, the composer who is known for writing “Ride of the Valkyries” and being an anti-Semite. Wagner died before Hitler was born, but his music was publicly beloved by Nazis and, like R. Kelly’s, has direct ties to the reason he’s controversial, as his art drew on German mythology and nationalist themes. Even today, you won’t hear Wagner’s famous Bridal Chorus at many Jewish weddings.

And it’s an unavoidable question that any thoughtful consumer of art must face at one point or another — how will the creator’s life affect your opinion of Roman Polanski‘s movies, Orson Scott Card‘s books, Chris Brown‘s music, George Zimmerman‘s paintings? Does it matter more if your consumption of the art, like Pitchfork’s hiring of Kelly, will help the artist financially? Does it matter how long ago the artist lived? Does it matter more if you’re a journalist, separating fact from criticism, versus a fan?

Works of philosophy about the morality of art, which date at least all the way back to Plato, have tended to focus more on the moral role of the art’s content — the topic that led Oscar Wilde to write that books can be good or bad, but not moral or immoral — than on that of the artist, but the two perspectives that come out of that history can still be applied in the R. Kelly question: moralism versus autonomism.

Moralism holds that the purpose of art is essentially a question of morality; autonomism, or separatism, holds that aesthetics are entirely autonomous/separate from morality. Or, to take a less highbrow comparison, is art like Project Runway, where the contestants are judged solely on their work in that one day, or is it like Survivor, where everything they do influences what happens at the tribal council?

There’s no easy answer, obviously — and that’s perhaps the one thing Kelly’s fans and detractors can agree on. As DeRogatis told the Voice: “I think each and every one of us, as individual listeners and consumers of culture, has to come up with our own answer. I don’t think there’s a right or wrong answer.”

(MORE: Chris Brown Was Raped. Does It Matter If He Doesn’t Think So?)