Lady Gaga’s R. Kelly duet video depicted sexual abuse with Richardson directing

Evidence

The music industry also started to confront its predators. In 2017, BuzzFeed reported that R&B singer R. Kelly operated a sex cult, preying on young women. Despite avoiding significant legal repercussions for years—most notably, being acquitted for child pornography charges in 2008—Kelly’s career ground to a halt. This reckoning cast a shadow over Lady Gaga’s 2013 duet with him called, regrettably, “Do What U Want.” At first, she claimed the partnership was an act of solidarity: “R. Kelly and I have sometimes very untrue things written about us, so in a way this was a bond between us.” Later she apologized and claimed, “As a victim of sexual assault myself, I made both the song and video at a dark time in my life, my intention was to create something extremely defiant and provocative because I was angry and still hadn’t processed the trauma that had occurred in my own life.” She shelved the song’s music video—directed by Terry Richardson—in which a group of people sexually abuse her while she lies unconscious on an operating table. — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 470