Posted by Andrew Unterberger on 09/04/2012 at 2:30 PM News

The Popdust Files: r. kelly

In the words of today’s birthday girl, R. Kelly told you to give him a minute and he’ll be right back. Kells had taken a brief pause from doing anything Aziz Ansari would want to parody to record some more PG-rated jams that would make great wedding music for people in their 30s and 40s—cool stuff, but not the true R.—but he allayed the fears of an anxious nation in a phone conference in which he denied that the Bumping n’ Grinding R. Kelly was dead to rights:

Absolutely not, and I tell people all the time man…Make no mistake about it, R. Kelly is not going anywhere, it’s just that R. Kelly has such a unique talent, and I’ve been blessed to be able to do all type of genres of music … I’m exploring my gift right now.

Good news, with even better news to follow, as Robert revealed his bad self would be re-appearing relatively soon:

The name of my next album is Black Panties — that’s my next 12 Play…I’m going to have some fun on it.

If it really is a return to 12 Play—which, for the unfamiliar, had hits with titles like “Bump n’ Grind,” “Your Body’s Calling,” and “Sex Me (Parts 1 & 2)”—then we imagine we’ll have some fun listening to it as well. Trey Songz will probably be filling the middle-aged-party-music void soon enough anyway.

[HitFix]