Two days after R. Kelly went straight back to a Chicago jail after failing to pay more than $160,000 in child support, the singer-songwriter has been released after an anonymous citizen paid the unresolved amount on his behalf. THR reports that Kelly was freed on Saturday afternoon after the Cook County sheriff’s department received the payment, and he made a few comments to reporters on his way out. “I promise you,” Kelly said, “we’re going to straighten all this stuff out.” Aside from his failure to pay child support, Kelly is currently being charged with ten counts of felony aggravated criminal sex abuse by a Cook County, Illinois, judge, in addition to having three separate criminal investigations in the works against him in Atlanta, New York, and Chicago.
Earlier this week, Kelly angrily denied all of the allegations in a heated, and at times combative, interview with Gayle King on CBS This Morning. “Quit playing! I didn’t do this stuff! This is not me! I’m fighting for my fucking life!” he said, among other denials. “You’re killing me with this shit! I gave y’all 30 years of my career! And you’re trying to kill me?! This is not about music! I’m trying to have a relationship with my kids! And I can’t do it! Y’all just don’t wanna believe the truth!” Kelly also said his career is now “assassinated” by the sexual abuse allegations put forth by numerous women in Lifetime’s docuseries Surviving R. Kelly: “They were describing Lucifer. I’m not Lucifer. I’m a man. I make mistakes, but I’m not a devil, and by no means am I a monster.”
