I’m not going to lie, I fronted on R. Kelly for a long time. But dude is completely amazing. The new Interview Magazine has a great feature with Kelly interviewed by Will Oldham / Bonnie Prince Billy.

Consider this exchange:

KELLY: I get interrupted in my sleep all the time. You know, “Lost in Your Love” I was going to sleep on my living room couch and [sings] I want to bring love songs back to the radio . . .  came in my head and I was awakened. So I’d go down to the studio, and when I go down to the studio, I be in there, you know, I don’t know what time it is. It’s pretty much like Vegas in there, you know? Like, whatever.

OLDHAM: Is there someone waiting there in the studio to push record? Or do you go in, push record yourself, and take notes and things like that?

KELLY: Well, my engineers kind of switch shifts like bus drivers, you know.

A lot of the interview is about Kells’ new album, Love Letter which is a different zone than his other work.

“I was working on the Zodiac album, which was all, like, the bump’n’grinds- I couldn’t work on it because I was so overwhelmed and overpowered and pretty much musically abducted by this other period. So I switched and started working on Love Letter, and the next thing you know, “When a Woman Loves” came out and I was like, I was like, “wow.” You know, my music comes to me like that. It talks to me. It just teases me sometimes.”

Read the interview and if you’re not up on the Pied Piper of R&B’s back catalog like you should be, go get this impeccably mixed 69 track mixtape from Matthew Africa.