Rated R. Kelly for sex, race and power

WHATEVER view one takes of R. Kelly -- that he is obscene, insane, outlandish, played out, musical kingpin or joker -- one thing is irrefutable: America deserves him. Five years after being indicted on charges of child pornography, dozens of hits into a career spent raunching up R&B, Kelly's enjoying yet another climb up the charts with his eighth solo album, "Double Up." Defenders of morality and good taste must wonder how the honey-voiced potty mouth remains so successful, or at least hope that his flamboyant tastelessness represents the endpoint of sexually explicit pop.

On "Double Up," Kelly comes up with doozies like "Sex Planet," an intergalactic lovemaking tour that makes a memorable stop at Uranus; "The Zoo," in which Kelly's "heated animal" jungle visions give way to monkey grunts; and "Sweet Tooth," a sugar-soaked ode to orality. The album's 15 other tracks offer much groping, shaking and licking, with only a few inspirational ballads puncturing the flow. Even the song about having a baby earns an R rating. It's hard to imagine anyone going farther, outside the exiled realm of pornography itself.

It's difficult, that is, unless one hears Kelly's music as a particularly warped contribution to a musical conversation about sexuality and power in a racist society that certain African American artists have been engaged in for at least 150 years.

Such a reassessment doesn't diminish the shamefulness of Kelly's alleged personal behavior. Nor does it earn him forgiveness for the musical laziness that mars the predictable club bangers on "Double Up" -- likely hits that show guest stars Nelly, Ludacris and Snoop Dogg working harder than their host. (One exception is the excellent "I'm a Flirt," featuring T.I. and T-Pain; Kelly's fully present in this understatement of the hip-hop year.) But it does provide some clues to the Kelly mystique and suggests that his work is only an outpost on a path that just keeps extending.

Take those three much-talked-about songs based on extended metaphors. "The Zoo" is the most shocking; what African American man in his right mind would compare himself to a wild animal? The act opens a Pandora's box of racist "jungle bunny" references, stretching back to the days when P.T. Barnum exhibited a man with a strangely shaped head, William Henry Johnson, as "a Man-Monkey ... found during a gorilla-hunting expedition near the Gambia river in Western Africa."