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Well before the docuseries, Surviving R. Kelly put a spotlight on the singer’s sordid past with teenage girls, Dave Chappelle called him out in a now infamous skit on the hugely popular Chappelle Show.
According to IndieWire, during a recent appearance on The Breakfast Club, the Chappelle Show co-creator Neal Brennan was asked about the sketch, which is now being brought back into the limelight thanks to the success of the Lifetime documentary.
—New R. Kelly Allegations: Former intern says he sexually abused her at 16—
In March of 2003, Comedy Central aired a mock music video titled “Piss On You,” which starred Chappelle as R. Kelly. The satirical remix was set to the beat of Kelly’s hit Ignition, and mercilessly mocked the singer’s 2002 legal troubles after a video allegedly showed him urinating on a 14-year-old girl.
The video went viral before viral was even a buzzword, and is often cited as one of the comedian’s most popular sketches. However, Brennan says that not only was Kelly unable to take the joke in stride, he even threatened Chappelle afterward.
“R. Kelly wanted to fight Dave,” Brennan said during this week’s radio segment. “Literally, his goons stepped to Dave in Chicago and Dave’s goons intervened. The goons negotiated.”
—Mississippi police officers investigated after man dies after arrest—
During Surviving R. Kelly the women featured say that in the past their stories were never taken seriously and were often used as punchlines for jokes. When these complaints are made, “Piss On You” is often the first example that comes to most people’s minds with writer Aisha Harris even accusing it of normalizing R. Kelly’s deviance in a recent article in The New York Times.
When asked how he felt about those accusations, Brennan explains that context is everything when critiquing comedy and the role it plays in pop culture.
“I don’t think people understand what comedy is supposed to do,” he said. “We will observe things, we will make fun of things. Did people want us to round up a posse and go arrest R. Kelly? Like, what were we supposed to do?”
“Our job is to poke fun at things,” Brennan concluded. “And even if it’s bleak, we still poke fun at it. We were trying to humiliate a guy who was known for peeing.”
People were mad last week that we did an R. Kelly sketches 15 years ago. Here’s me explaining comedy to them. pic.twitter.com/FQoxIALqkr
— Neal Brennan (@nealbrennan) January 15, 2019
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