Earlier this year, R. Kelly’s team reported the theft of 300 to 500 of his master recordings that the culprits later allegedly demanded money for, per TMZ.
Back in February, a man named Keith Calbert called police to report the theft of the disgraced Chicago’s recordings from an Illinois storage facility. He said the recordings were valued millions of dollars, but he also told authorities that two roadies had moved the masters to California sometime in 2021. When he asked one of them to return the material, the alleged thief demanded $160,000 to return them. Police investigated the incident, but it’s unclear why it took Kelly’s team nine months to report it.
The theft could potentially be linked the release of R. Kelly’s I Admit It album, which was pulled from streaming services just hours after its release. According to his attorney Jennifer Bonjean, the record was not authorized by his team.
“It’s stolen music,” attorney Jennifer Bonjean told The Hollywood Reporter last week. “A police report was filed some time ago because his masters were stolen, but there’s not much of an appetite to investigate these things. People have had access to his intellectual property rights that they are attempting to profit off of, but unfortunately that does not include Mr. Kelly.”
In the statement she provided, she noted that Kelly had his studio equipment seized by authorities and his masters were believed to be “missing.” She noted that the “music is somewhere out there, but who has it and who has profited off it—we don’t know entirely.”
Kelly is currently serving a 30-year prison sentence on charges of racketeering and sex trafficking.
