Recently, R. Kelly's been seen cavorting around stage with Lady Gaga on Saturday Night Live and headlining Pitchfork's annual music festival. In spite of numerous unsavory allegations, videotapes, and trial-avoiding settlements, the R&B star remains as popular as ever.

Jim DeRogatis can't help but be disgusted. He was the Chicago Sun-Times journalist who first brought the allegations against Kelly into the public eye and has continued reporting on the story ever since. In a disturbing and detailed interview with the Jessica Hopper of the Village Voice, DeRogatis not only details the allegations against Kelly, he reminds the singer's apologists of just what they're apologizing for.

Those allegations make a harrowing read, and the evidence substantiating them very strong. There are accounts of Kelly regularly picking up sophomore girls outside of a high school and pressuring teenage mistresses to recruit other underage girls for group sex. There is the story of the sex-tape with a girl whom forensic experts identified as 13 or 14 years old. Another story involves Kelly pressuring a teen girl into an abortion against her will. And that isn't even the tip of the iceberg.

DeRogatis explains a continuous pattern of rape and predation with a mountain of sealed settlements in its wake. He also explains that Kelly's victims have all been young black women and raises questions about the ease with which the crimes against them have be swept under the rug. DeRogatis says that the most disturbing part of his involvement with this story is the realization that "Nobody matters less to our society than young black women. Nobody."

The interview and linked cache of documents also brings up the complicated question of separating an artist from the work he or she creates. To judge a work art by the moral character of its creator is clearly misguided. However, DeRogatis wants us to consider that in R. Kelly's case the appreciation of his life and his music are not so easy to separate. Kelly, in fact, has made a career singing about (often exploitative) sexual exploits, caging women onstage during live concerts, and generally using his reputation for perversion as a marketing tool. There are people who listen to R. Kelly and attend his concerts out of ironic appreciation or are attracted to the shock-value of a known sexual predator singing about sex. In these cases, Kelly is actively profiting from the ruined lives of his victims. DeRogatis's coverage of Kelly's Pitchfork performance suggests that he believes such irony and titillation to be the core of the singer's continued success.