R Kelly has unveiled plans to finish an album he began making recording with Michael Jackson. The R&B singer said they had completed several tracks before the King of Pop died on 25 June.
"Michael liked the way I would try to sing the songs just like him," Kelly told Black Voices. "I recorded five joints for [him]." Jackson had long been working on a comeback record with producers and songwriters such as Akon, Will.I.Am and Ne-Yo. These newly revealed sessions, in Kelly's basement recording studio, were likely part of this. "We had been talking on the phone about his new album, and I was going to finish what Michael was doing at the time," Kelly said.
Though the fate of Jackson's unreleased recordings remains in doubt, Kelly is determined to finish what he started. "We're going to get it out," he promised.
Kelly previously wrote Jackson's 1995 hit, You Are Not Alone. Two years ago, a Brussels appeals court ruled that the melody of this song had been plagiarised from Eddy and Danny Van Passel's unreleased 1993 track, If We Can Start All Over. Since then, You Are Not Alone has been banned from being broadcast in Belgium.