OLDHAM: But do you remember the day when it started? When did you start to think, I’m making a record about love?

KELLY: Well, a party that I gave at my house influenced me. I gave a Christmas party last year—well, two Christmases ago—where I did a Sam Cooke show. I didn’t perform as R. Kelly. I performed the Sam Cooke show from 1964, when he performed at the Copacabana.

OLDHAM: You performed the whole set?

KELLY: I did the whole set. I invited, like, 1,000 people out to my house, and everybody had to be dressed like it was the ’60s. People had the long-stem cigarettes and the zoot suits and all that stuff, man. It was just a good time.

OLDHAM: And that was before doing the Sam Cooke miniset that you did on the tour?

KELLY: Oh, yeah—way before that. It was about a two-and-a-half-hour show that I put together in my living room. Built a stage and catwalk. I had the bulb lights and everything. I had tap dancers. I had a girl with me who sounded just like Billie Holiday. I had a guy who sounded just like Frank Sinatra. And then I did Sam Cooke. We had the marquee on the outside of the door, and I went and got old-school pictures of myself and we put them up like I was born back then and performing back then. We had a sign that said, “One night and one night only.”

I STILL FEEL LIKE I’M ALONE AT TIMES—EVEN IF I’M IN THE MIDST OF A MILLION PEOPLE. BECAUSE NO ONE—INCLUDING ME—UNDERSTANDS MY MIND, CREATIVELY.R. Kelly

OLDHAM: There was only one show?

KELLY: Just the one show. I did that show, and I was afraid of doing it, but I knew I wanted to do it because I’ve always wanted to go back in time—I’ve always said that I wished that I was working back in the Sam Cooke days so I could feel the spirit of that music, because I love that music. So the only way for me to capture that was for me to become Sam Cooke for one night and do all his music and really try to nail it. So I had a full band. I had an orchestra, horn sections, upright bass, all of that stuff, man. Brought in background singers. And I came out with a suit on and everything. It was very classy. People loved it. I mean, they got with every song. I was shocked. We had a ball. But I think I was bitten that night, like Peter Parker being bit by the spider. I had this feeling that we really tapped in spiritually to that time. We did go back in time that night. And when I came back to the present, if you will, I’d brought back some goodies, because when I went in the studio—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, “What?” I was like, “Wow!” You know, my music comes to me like that. It talks to me. It just teases me sometimes. For two days that’s all I heard in my head [sings]: “When a woman loves . . . ” You know, we recorded the show. We had three cameras recording it because I didn’t want to lose what we’d done. And when people would come over to my house—be it celebrity company or just my friends from around the way—I would play it for them and we would drink and have a ball just looking at it. The more I would play it for peo­ple, the more I saw they was enjoying it, and the more I saw they accepted me in this area. So I was like, “If I did a whole album of this, boy . . .” You just never know— it might be a great thing, you know? So that’s when I started really deciding I’m going to go and do an album.