Trapped In The Closet Chapters 1-12 DVD

Back in June, I wrote an article for the Baltimore City Paper about the first five chapters of R. Kelly's "Trapped In The Closet," shortly after the 5th chapter had been leaked on the eve of the release of the otherwise underwhelming TP3: Reloaded album, which also included a DVD of the video for all five chapters. At the time, there had been no official word about any future chapters, and I was pretty unsatisfied with the apparent final chapter's conclusion. But of course, the week the article ran, the news was announced that the R. was working on a whole bunch of new chapters, and while I had a little egg on my face, I was mainly excited about the continuation of the whole pulpy saga.

Earlier this month, a DVD of the first 12 chapters of "Trapped In The Closet" was released in stores, including 7 new chapters, a behind the scenes featurette, and a bizarre commentary track by a cigar-chomping R. In recent years, much of the praise for R. Kelly's music has been either ironic or squeamishly tentative, hanging on the question of whether, by enjoying his over-the-top music and public persona, we are laughing at or with him. If nothing else, this DVD should firmly establish the answer to that question as the latter. Throughout the behind the scenes footage, he's grinning and laughing at the bizarre plot twists of his own creation, and even singing upbeat party versions of "Trapped In The Closet" to himself.

And then, there's the new chapters 6-12, which (SPOILERS AHEAD) feature: a midget, a spatula, and a white woman voiced with a ridiculous trailer trash accent by R. himself. The genuine tension and drama of the early chapters was what drew me in to begin with, and I was initially a little turned off as the cliffhangers became sillier and more contrived. But by the later chapters, the dude is clearly just having a lot of fun with it, and I'm along for the ride. The seemingly arbitrary coincidences that are revealed at the end of Chapter 5 deepen and begin to add up to their own circular logic. As he continues to add characters to the story, he keeps coming back to the other ones and tying them together in ways you'd never anticipate. When he returns to Rufus, Chuck and Cathy in Chapter 12, it's a jarring but perfect capper to the insanity that takes place among the other characters. It's also, strangely, completely different from the chapter that R. performed at this year's MTV VMA's, which concluded with Rufus dumping Chuck and going back to his wife, although it remains to be seen whether that chapter does occur somewhere after 12. But I'll keep looking forward to every new installment that he sends our way.