Um, define teenager

If you was charged with something, and you were found innocent, then you can't be found guilty for being found innocent. - R. Kelly, Esq.

R. Kelly's handlers must be concerned about the effect his infamous, hilarious sex trial has had on his career.

How else to explain the fact that he recently sat down for a 60 Minutes-style interview with Toure on BET, in which the trial was discussed, supposedly for the first and last time?

If I somehow managed to get away with videotaping myself taking a piss on a 15 year-old girl, you wouldn't be able to ask me shit. I'd be like OJ Simpson, after the verdict was announced in his trial, back in the day. I'd be out looking for the real killers!

Er, in this case, the real pissers. Roffle.

I guess the difference is that, in the case of OJ Simpson, his career was pretty much over at that point. The Naked Gun film series had already pretty much run its course. And even if it hadn't it's not like he was about to be in any more movies, with everyone knowing he got away with killing a white woman.

His marquee value was all fucked the fuck up.

Fortunately, he was able to move down to Florida, where he could still draw his pension from the NFL, and there wasn't anything the Goldman family could do about it.

Whereas, R. Kelly probably couldn't draw a pension if he wanted to. I'm not even sure if there is such a thing in the music business, unless you're one of the TIs. (These artists might seriously want to think about starting a union or some shit.)

Plus, R. Kelly's still got a fairly viable career. The guy continued to put out hit albums during the entire six year span of his trial. If anything, as they touched on in the interview, it may have taken him to a new plateau creatively. Relatively speaking, of course.

The thing is, he put out that song "Hair Braider" earlier this year, and no one seemed to give a shit. I'm pretty sure I heard it at some point or another, and I couldn't tell you how it goes. It's definitely been his least successful single since forever, and the TIs at his label must be thinking this is due to the trial.

I wonder, though, if that's really the case.

I know I heard some rumblings at the time about program directors at radio stations hesitating to put the song into heavy rotation, for fears that people might be upset that he actually managed to convince a jury that wasn't him on that tape.

But I always took that to mean that they were just gonna wait it out and see if the song was gonna be a hit before they bothered with it. These were, after all, corporate-ass radio program directors. I seriously doubt they would have given a rat's ass about people's feelings, if "Hair Braider" were the next ignition.

Or who knows? Maybe the TIs are right. You know radio's gonna be playing "Love Lockdown," if they aren't already. And however bad "Hair Braider" was, it wasn't that bad.

So the TIs had Arruh go on BET. I guess they figured he might be able to tell people whatever he needed to tell them for them to stop thinking of him as a pedophile, and he could go back to cranking out those hits. This despite the fact that everyone knows he's functionally illiterate.

As it turns out, this might not have been the best idea in the world. It's not so much that he did any further damage to his brand, so to speak. But I can't imagine that anyone who felt that this guy is a serial child rapist who ought to be banned from radio would come away from it feeling any different.

What the Oprah Lobby wanted R. Kelly to do is admit that he lives to pee on underage girls. And Toure kept pressing him to do it, but Arruh wasn't about to go there. Which was a good move, I think. As I've mentioned before on this site, I question their ability to ever get more than a few fruits to participate in an R. Kelly boycott. As good as those motherfucking songs are?

Hopefully, Arruh's handlers take this as a lesson: There's not anything he could say during an interview that could improve his situation, and most people don't give a shit anyway. If R. Kelly really wants to get back on top, he needs to focus on making another "Ignition" and stop letting the Oprah Lobby dictate the course of his career.