Aside from radio-pumped singles “I’m a Flirt Remix” and “Same Girl,” it’s a very sexually explicit R. Kelly who greets fans on “Double Up,” due this week via Jive. Opening with the short posturing track “The Champ” (“I’ve been through hell in the belly of the beast/You can hate me, I don’t care”), Kelly isn’t shy about quickly getting down to boudoir business.
The title track with Snoop Dogg outlines a tryst with two females, while additional variations on sexual interplay abound on such cuts as “Tryin’ to Get a Number” with Nelly and “Freaky in the Club.”
After describing lovemaking via two radically different motifs — the jungle (“The Zoo”) and outer space (“Sex Planet”) — Kelly downshifts into traditional mode on the heartfelt ballad “Havin’ a Baby” and the Virginia Tech anthem “Rise Up.” This jarring juxtaposition only underscores Kelly’s Marvin Gaye-reminiscent struggle between the carnal and the spiritual.
