Album: R. Kelly (Jive)
Songwriters: R. Kelly
Hit #1: March 9th, 1996 (7 Weeks)
After forty years in the game, the legendary Isley Brothers found a new generation of followers in the mid-90's thanks to younger acts incorporating their classic sound in contemporary hits. Following the success of Biggie's "Big Poppa", based off a chunky sample of the Isley's bedroom standard "Between The Sheets", R. Kelly reached out to members Ronald and Ernie for their aid in his wide-screen infidelity epic, "Down Low (Nobody Has To Know)".
With a simmering arrangement influenced by the satiny, guitar-laced grooves the Isley's embraced in the 1970's and '80's, "Down Low" scripts an engaging tale of secret lovers. Kelly plays the "other man", feeling uneasy by his disgraceful role in another man's worst nightmare. Focused solely on her needs, the adulteress gets off on having both a wealthy husband and sexy side fling. Most men would enjoy the ego boost of being the cause of her deceit ("She wants me/ But he needs you/...While making love to him/ You're silently calling on me"), but Kelly delves deeper into the emotional ramifications. He only goes along with her devious plan in private hopes that she will one day ditch the hubby and make their union legit. "Tell me, tell me," he pleads, "We'll always be together".
Ronnie is thrown in as representation of Kelly's guilty conscience, imagining what her husband would think if he ever found out; his fluttery tenor adds a haunting presence to the hook with heartbreaking moans of "How could you be so low?" underlying the scandalous request to "keep it on the down low".
The accompanying music video was equally impressive, planting the affair in a gangster setting and introducing Ronald's mafioso alter-ego "Mr. Biggs". The collaboration between the two male R&B icons was a winning match in chemistry and after proving to be so popular with audiences, the men would continue the storyline through several different projects over the years, keeping fans locked in with the on-going plot's every twist and turn.
Best Moment: The "Live To Regret It Remix" which further fleshes out the details of this "fucking threesome of affair".
DL: "Down Low" (YFH)
DL: "Down Low (Remix)" (YFH)
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