R. Kelly's catalog is hella long but one song in particular has really stood the test of time. "Ignition (Remix)" is one of his biggest hits to date, which says a lot considering he's 13 studio albums deep with several platinum plaques for the many singles he's put out. The song dropped in 2003 as the first single to his album Chocolate Factory. Now, whenever a song has the word "remix" next to it, it presumably means that it's been re-worked after the original was made. However, that may not be the case for "Ignition."
Over the weekend, R. Kelly dropped the ball on the reality behind his hit single. "Fun fact: I wrote the remix before I wrote I wrote the song,” he wrote on Twitter alongside a short clip of the music video. As expected, the news came as a shock to some of his fans on the social media platform.
One fan wrote, "Does that not mean that “the song” is then the remix? Not?" Someone replied to this tweet by saying, "Inception."
Another user pointed out his intro to the song. "Never 4get when @rkelly said: "Now usually I don't do this but uh Go head' on and break em off wit a lil PREVIEW of the remix" Then gave us the whole song..."
However, this is actually not the first time he revealed this fact. As pointed out by CapitalXtra, Kelly revealed this detail in an interview with GQ in 2016. He said that he initially wrote the lyrics, "this the remix to ignition/ hot and fresh out the kitchen," five years before actually creating the song. The singer didn't think much of it initially so he kept it on the backburner.