It’s the most consistently entertaining and lasting of R. Kelly’s albums yet—particularly impressive because of its length, running just shy of the eighty-minute mark and sporting a whopping nineteen tracks with no skits.  Full text...

Kelly knows how to party.   Full text...

Double Up boasts its share of filler, and it seldom strays from self-parody. But that's probably because Kelly realizes, deep down, that he's at his very best when he's at his very worst.  Full text...

Double Up is one of Kelly’s funniest and funnest records to date.  Full text...

Double Up is R. Kelly’s 13th album (not counting the unreleased Loveland) and easily his most interesting. Perhaps not his best; but definitely his most interesting.  Full text...

On Double Up's opening salvo, "The Champ", he claims, "I've confessed my sins and still didn't find peace." His moment of reckoning is moving closer, however slowly. But, until then, he's chuckling; comedy, after all, is just tragedy plus time.  Full text...

Fewer slow jams and more boisterous guest rappers is the order of the day, adding stylistic schizophrenia to the title’s sexual implications. Often ludicrously adolescent and seemingly endless, this offhand epic is rarely boring nonetheless.  Full text...

Kelly has sex on his mind, and lets his libido do the talking on Double Up, where he flirts with hip-hop — but doesn't score  Full text...

2007's funniest lyrics meet its blandest music in an all-out sex duel!  Full text...

Trouble is, the act is starting to wear a bit thin. How much longer can Kelly, now 40, stay up in the club before he crosses the thin line from ass-crazed nymphomaniac to old and irrelevant ass-crazed nymphomaniac? A Midnite Vultures-esque reinvention would do wonders in making him something close to culturally germane instead of the circus side-show he’s recently been, but if Double Up is any indication, no renaissance is in the works.  Full text...

Frustratingly, R Kelly's rampant delusions have seen off the last hints of the talent which once made him great. He's always lived in a ridiculous world, where every night's a club night of velvet ropes, Cristal and willing females. But he used to write good songs to go with it. Without them, he's just plain ridiculous.  Full text...

He is addicted to exposition. He may think his endless capacity for pillow talk proves his sexual endurance, but it should make any rational sonic fuckee want to smother him.  Full text...