Music Review: R. Kelly, The Buffet

By Paul Casey

R. Kelly’s thirteenth studio album, The Buffet, is an album of conflicting styles. Up front, The Buffet takes all of the ridiculous sex metaphors from throughout Kelly’s career and amplifies them to an extreme. Like Black Panties and 12 Play before it, things get dark and filthy. You can probably imagine the kind of sexy food metaphors that Kelly employs in pursuit of the perfect dirty song, but here is a quote anyway: “Come and feed me baby / girl put your body on a dinner plate / I just can’t get enough of your buffet and I’m so hungry / baby feed me.”

R. Kelly never gets credit for the humor on his albums, largely because people see him as being mentally challenged. Like him or not, R. Kelly is one of the most important musicians of the last two decades and has more talent than almost all of his generation. It is a shame that he does not come from the culture that can allow him to express the camp masterpiece that is Trapped In The Closet. If that “hip-hopera” didn’t settle things, The Buffet’s opening track “Poem” should decide once and for all that he does indeed know that his music is sometimes very amusing. The pause for slurping is particularly funny.

Like Black Panties, there are songs here that could easily be sung by someone like Drake, particularly “Anything Goes” and “Wanna Be There.” As with so much in R. Kelly’s career, he makes sounding current seem effortless. Unlike Black Panties, however, things are not purely focused on modern sounds. The deluxe version of The Buffet, in particular, is as much a love letter to the music of the 1960s and 1970s as it is an attempt to keep up with modern R&B’s best.

The singles chosen for The Buffet do not represent the best of the album. “Backyard Party” is a lightweight “Happy People” while “Marching Band’ is awkward filth. However, other songs fare better. “Anything Goes” with Ty Dolla $ign is an early winner, featuring the splendid put-down “Pull up in that time machine / ain’t shit I would change though / I could buy your whole life and still have me some change though.” Other favorites are the ridiculous but endearing “Poetic Sex” and the sweet as fuck slow jam, “Get Out of Here With Me.”

The Buffet is an album that you have to live with for a while, and its best tracks are found in its second half when things take a road into Love Land and Love Letter territory with open-hearted, feel-good, old-school love songs. In many ways, The Buffet is an encapsulation of Kelly’s career. While people might think of Kells as a sexual deviant, his mind has been just as fixed on being the Sam Cooke for his generation as it has on being the new Prince.

“All My Fault” is perhaps the best song on the album and could have easily fit on Kelly’s earlier LPs. “Sufferin,” available on the deluxe version, is a straight-up Otis Redding jam, while “Keep Searching” includes more than a few Michael Jackson-isms. The album also includes several good collaborations including “Let’s Be Real Now” with Tinashe and “I Just Want To Thank You” featuring Afropop star WizKid.

It is easier to think of R. Kelly as a brain-dead monster whose creations are worthless. In reality he is a complex individual who has produced some of the most beautiful and best songs of the last two decades. You are missing out on some of the greatest R&B of all time if you can’t get over the person behind the music. The Buffet has as many contradictions as the man himself. It is at times delicate and at times coarse as fuck. It is simultaneously a sequel to both 12 Play and Love Letter and is all the better for it.

The Buffet was released on December 11 from RCA Records/Sony Entertainment.