R. Kelly is once again on the defense, this times over claims that he ridiculed an autistic fan.
The accusations arose after the R&B star posted a video on his Instagram profile, which showed him meeting fan Lenny Felix, 27, as he was leaving a nightclub in Hollywood.
In the clip, which has since been deleted, the Pied Piper asked the fan to sing his hit “I Believe I Can Fly” before jokingly singing, “I believe that you high … smoking on that (painkiller) Percocet,” and then bursting into laughter.
Following the video, Felix’s family told TMZ they think he was victimized and have met with an attorney.
R. Kelly took to Instagram to explain his side of the story, insisting it was a drunken moment with a fan.
“Now people want to say I’m making fun of people with autism. Totally not true,” he said. “I was coming from a club the other night; I was tipsy… There was a guy coming up to me like a fan, didn’t seem like he had autism to me at all and I apologize to him if he did, but he appeared drunk to me and was singing my songs and security had to get him up off me a couple of times because he was coming a little bit too close, but it was all good. I welcomed the guy, played with the guy, joked with him like I do everybody, had him singing one of my songs, I was singing the song, I was feeling very positive.
Kelly then went on to claim he gets heavily scrutinized for everything he does.
“Seriously, I can’t do anything without people saying something negative about me,” he adds. “It’s just too much, guys. Let me do my work. It’s obviously people trying to blackball me and destroy my career, I understand that.”
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