UPDATE: A new tape allegedly showing the 52-year-old R. Kelly sexually abusing a 14-year-old girl has been turned over to the Cook County State’s Attorney’s office in Chicago. As we learned in dream hampton’s Surviving R. Kelly docuseries last month, Kelly kept hundreds of tapes of himself engaging in sex acts with underage girls and made them call him “daddy,” which is confirmed in the current video. The acts taking place in the video handed over to the State’s Attorney’s office mirror sexual acts that took place in the infamous 2002 sex tape, including urination and R. Kelly and the girl referring to her genitals as “14 years old.” This is a continued pattern of sexual abuse and control over minors that has continued for over a decade. Anyone still engaged in business with R. Kelly is complicit in this abuse.

Lifetime’s ‘Surviving R. Kelly’ is a damning investigation into R. Kelly's manipulation and decades of alleged sexual abuse of young Black women and girls, and those in the music industry that have not only enabled him, but profited from him.

As recently as this past May, credible reports concluded that Kelly was still holding women and underage girls captive in his homes — isolating them from their families, physically assaulting them, and hiring den mothers who train them to please him sexually. Experts who study violence against women see stark similarities between R. Kelly's alleged activities and those of sex trafficking rings. In light of the seriousness of these numerous allegations and their overwhelming credibility it's past time for Pandora, Spotify, Apple Music, iHeartRadio, and Tidal to take a stand a drop R. Kelly's entire music library.

No company should be profiting from a man who physically, mentally, and sexually abuses Black girls.Kelly is able to continue to prey on young Black girls because music streaming services provide him an ongoing revenue stream to maintain his sex trafficking operation and a veneer of public credibility. But it doesn't have to be this way. We’ve already seen artists like Chance the Rapper, Ciara, and Celine Dion remove their collaborations with R. Kelly from streaming services. It's time Spotify, Pandora, Tidal, iHeart Radio, and Apple Music show they are unwilling to support the ongoing abuse of Black girls at the hands of R. Kelly.

The lives and safety of Black girls are worth more than any song and it is our collective obligation to show up for Black women and girls — and to demand a cost from companies who won't.

Here is the Petition:

We're calling you to immediately remove R. Kelly's entire music library from your platforms.

Lifetime’s ‘Surviving R. Kelly’ makes R. Kelly's decades of manipulation and alleged sexual abuse of young Black women and girls unignorable. As recently as this past May, credible reports concluded that Kelly was still holding women captive in his homes — isolating them from their families, physically assaulting them, and hiring den mothers who train them to please him sexually. Dozens of lawsuits from women and their families alleging sexual abuse include stories that Kelly loitered outside of Chicago high schools and at choir rehearsals prowling for girls. One young woman alleged he forced her to have an abortion.

Kelly’s habitual manipulation and sexual abuse of young Black women is not the story of just one sexual predator, but the story of those who enable him and continue to profit off of his exploitation of Black girls, including companies like Spotify, Pandora, Tidal, iHeartRadio, and Apple Music. Over the past 20 years, numerous Black women and girls have come forward with credible allegations of sexual, mental, and emotional abuse at the hands of R. Kelly, but they’ve been met with disbelief, ridicule, and a lack of justice. Streaming platforms can't continue to fail Black girls like this and cannot continue to profit from and enable a man who physically, mentally, and sexually abuses Black girls.

Sincerely,