R. Kelly

You know the end is nigh when the summer’s biggest song is a sixteen-minute morality play by R. Kelly. While his latest, TP.3 Reloaded, contains all the key elements of his past albums — the club anthems (“Playa’s Only” featuring Game) and the slow sex jams (the masterfully titled “[Sex] Love Is What We Making”) — the real centerpiece is the epic five-part soap opera “Trapped in the Closet.” The initial three parts are genuinely suspenseful, more David Lynch than Days of Our Lives, but on the latter half Kelly descends into melodramatic plot twists that kill the song’s momentum. Still, you have to give Kelly an A for ambition.