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You had to be impressed." Kelly's debut, "Born Into the 90s," sold more than a million copies. "He was singing original material and he had dance steps to match-all at a small backyard barbecue. "We were all outside just talking and eating and I heard this guy singing songs I'd never heard before," says Wayne Williams of Jive Records. "I discovered the power you get from being onstage." In 1990 a music executive discovered Kelly while he was singing at a barbecue. He knew he'd found his calling after a talent show in which he donned shades and a brown suit to sing Stevie Wonder's classic "Ribbon in the Sky." "That night it was like Spiderman being bit," says Kelly. Kelly began performing while he was going to junior high on the South Side of Chicago, influenced by Marvin Gaye and Donny Hathaway. Kelly's mother died of cancer in 1993, and there are moments of real pain here, including a short track on which Kelly sings, to the accompaniment of the ocean, "Heaven, if you hear me / I need you / Please come back home." and a moving gospel tribute to his mother that was arranged by gospel trail-blazer Kirk Franklin. Kelly also works in a driving rap that features The Notorious B.I.G. Still, the album is lush, dreamy and romantic. Kelly" isn't as funky as "12 Play," and it's clearly influenced by producer-of-the-moment Sean (Puffy) Combs. The new album may surprise the singer's hard-core followers. "I've been through a lot in the last two years and I've learned a lot about myself. "The bump-and-grind period of my life was just a mood," he says. Now, with a self-titled album due out, the 28-year-old has love and death-as well as sex-on his brain.
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The singer is best known for the explicit lyrics on last year's multiplatinum album "12 Play." The title of Kelly's wonderfully craven single "Bump and Grind" became a catch phrase in urban communities, and won the sensually bald singer a legion of female fans ready and willing to fluff his pillow. Kelly is a changed man-but he hasn't changed that much. The R&B superstar-best known for graphic pillow talk like "Your Body's Callin'" and "Freak Dat Body"-is shooting a video for a new ballad called "You Remind Me of Something." The video is meant to showcase Kelly's sensitive side, and it finds him lounging comfortably in silk pajamas on a gold-plat-ed chair while a young woman in black lingerie feeds him grapes. deep in the mountains in Canyon Country, Calif.