There's really been nothing like Trapped in the Closet ever before.
R&B star R. Kelly has been making (and remaking) a series of short music videos that tell a flamboyant narrative in less-than-five-minute installments. The first batch of several dozen appeared online in 2005. Now, there's a total of 40 "chapters" that aired last Friday on IFC, with the latest ones being released online one at a time for the next week.
"He's really an experimentalist and a kind of innovator," says Jason King, a professor of recorded music at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts.