This story was originally published as part of a column on Saturday, June 20. Read the original column here.

R&B singer R. Kelly, moved to a new cell in solitary confinement downtown at the Metropolitan Correctional Center on a suitcase of child sex abuse and pornography charges, now wants his computer.

Copy, that.

Surfing the web?

Not.

“He [Kelly] wants his computer so he can finish up the record album he has been working on,” his lawyer Steve Greenberg told Sneed.

“My client needs to make money and he has been precluded from doing so because of his legal situation,” he said.

A computer and Kelly claims he can’t read?

Huh?

Although legal filings contend Kelly has a serious learning disability affecting his ability to read, Greenberg added: “Basketball got him through grammar school; and although he couldn’t read or write, he had a high school music teacher who taught him to learn music and sing before he dropped out.

“So he sang in subways for money, went to California hoping to be discovered singing on the street corners, came back to Chicago to continue street singing and finally made it.”

Greenberg claims he is also getting inundated with calls from people who are concerned and support Kelly, and I’m told the jail has been inundated with calls from people also concerned and sending their support.

“However, as disappointed as he [Kelly] was in being put in the hole last week, he has now been placed in a bigger cell in a special housing unit ... a better situation in solitary at the Metropolitan Correctional Center,” added Greenberg.

“His girlfriends are now going through the Bureau of Prison’s process, to see him and I know some of his friends are trying to get Gibsons or Tavern on Rush to send a nice steak over to him,” he added.

Not a McDonald’s hamburger, a favorite of the singer?

“No,” he said. “A Porterhouse steak.”