R. Kelly’s team has claimed that many of his master recordings have been stolen and they reported the theft to police prior to the unauthorized release of his I Admit It album.
TMZ has obtained the police report in question where the disgraced singer’s camp alleged that hundreds of his master recordings were taken from an Illinois storage facility back in February.
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The call to authorities was made by an individual named Keith Calbert, who claims to oversee the property at the storage company and believes the value of the stolen property runs into the millions of dollars.
Calbert estimates that anywhere from 300-500 master recordings were swiped by two roadies, with one of the culprits allegedly demanding $160,000 in exchange for a portion of the music.
Cops didn’t discover any leads or make any arrest, and the case was subsequently closed earlier this year.
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Last Friday (December 9), an I Admit It mysteriously appeared on streaming services under R. Kelly’s official artist pages, but was removed hours later.
The “Ignition” singer claimed the album was “fake” and denied he had any involvement in its creation or release, which he believes was an attempt to sabotage his appeal relating to his sex abuse and child pornography convictions.
“Apparently somebody done faked an album called I Admit It, and put it out there as if it was me putting it out,” he said in a prison recording. “And I’m not putting out any albums, I haven’t put out any albums, I’m not even interested in putting out any albums, ’cause my only focus is the appeal and everything else.
“But it seems like somebody want this album out to mess with the appeal because why would I put an album out called I Admit It? Okay, so that right there make no damn sense.”
He continued: “I wish they’d find out who did this and who’s putting it out there, ’cause they also, on top of that, they’re probably making money off of it. And it’s just messed up that it happens to come at the time when I’m working on my appeal that an album comes out that’s supposed to be from me called I Admit It. It’s just really just fucked up.”
The Federal Bureau of Prisons has confirmed that R. Kelly did not have access to any equipment that would have allowed him to record a new album while in custody.
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I Admit It would have marked R. Kelly’s 15th studio album and his first new project since 2016’s 12 Nights of Christmas.
R. Kelly is currently serving a 30-year sentence at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Chicago after being found guilty of one count of racketeering and eight counts of violating the Mann Act in 2021.
