There are a handful of interviews from this decade that will go down in the history books: Kanye West's appearance on Sway, Charlie Sheen's Tiger Blood interview, and now, R. Kelly's sit-down with Gayle King. The embattled singer claimed his innocence while breaking down into tears. King's been doing a few interviews recently, detailing her interview with Kells. Most recently, she revealed that one of the topics R. Kelly banned was his relationship with an underage Aaliyah.
"They didn’t want any questions about Aaliyah, which I was fine with. I feel we have heard the Aaliyah story," King told The New York Times about the ban on Aaliyah questions. "Really, this interview was about R. Kelly’s reaction to the “Surviving R. Kelly” documentary and the latest charges, and they said he cannot discuss the latest charges because those are still in court."
King explained that Kelly dug his own grave, even if Aaliyah questions were banned, by simply denying that he's ever slept with an underage woman.
“I don’t think he helped himself, because I think 99.9 percent of people who have been following this story believe that he was married and had sex with Aaliyah, she was certainly underage. That’s at least one that we do know about," she said. "Listen, I knew going into it he was going to deny. I expected that. I didn’t expect him to say that he had done nothing wrong. But there was no sign of acknowledgment or contrition about anything."
Shortly after his interview with Gayle King, the singer ended up going back to jail for failing to pay nearly $200K in child support.