The essential account of R. Kelly’s actions and their consequences, a reckoning two decades in the making In 2000, Chicago journalist and music critic Jim DeRogatis received an anonymous fax that alleged that R. Kelly had a problem with “young girls.” Weeks later, DeRogatis broke the shocking allegations—that the R&B superstar had groomed, sexually abused, and paid off young girls—wide open. Still, Kelly’s career flourished. No one seemed to care: not the music industry, not the culture at large, not the parents of numerous girls. For more than 18 years, DeRogatis stayed on the story. Soulless: The Case Against R. Kelly is a work of tenacious journalism and cultural criticism. It tells the story of Kelly’s career and DeRogatis’s investigations, bringing the story up to the moment when things finally seem to have changed.