Here's a Timeline of All the Strange Shit R. Kelly Sings in His 45-Minute Origin Story Song

R. Kelly had a deep talk with GQ recently, digging into areas of his life and story he normally doesn't (while still managing to avoid offering up much) but today they unveiled a video of the Chicago singer delivering his life story in song. Notably absent are all of the controversies that have come to scar his name and reputation but there is a whole lot of mystical self-mythology on display here, a fair whiff of total nonsense, and if you look deep enough, some tense, touching moments. But no normal person has 45 minutes to block off for the R. Kelly creation myth. So we laid out all the good parts for you. The McDonald's jingle is godlike. En…joy?

01:35 The R. Kelly creation myth opens strong: he fell from the sky, then he became the sea, then a fish in the ocean, then a whale in a pond.

02:40 His gift is “ignited” when he asks the world to rescue him.

04:20 Lifts hand to reveal a lit cigar as he recounts a dream he had as an eight year old where Future Kells sits at a white piano and plays the melody to what would become “I Believe I Can Fly.”

05:00 The dream comes true, as Kelly finishes the song as an adult, tear-struck when he remembers how the melody first came to him.

05:50 After a strange silence he writes a hook on the spot about growing up in the hood and overcoming adversity, a whooping melody he hangs onto for half a minute.

07:20 A rant about not regretting his past inexplicably leads to an impromptu aspirational song fragment about dealing with adversity being the measure of his worth.

08:00 He gives thanks for the ability to breath and launches startlingly into another self-help song hook.

08:40 He discovers echo, reverb, and confidence singing in the bathroom shower while his sister bangs on the door demanding he “stop calling hogs.”

10:50 Kelly drops out of high school to become a subway street performer, in search of more echo.

11:20 No one can hear him sing because the trains drown him out, and he questions why they’d send trains through his performance space but learns to project trying to “find a way to rise above the noise.”

12:30 Kelly figures out that if he just stops singing when a train passes, people can hear the whole performance. This teaches him patience.

15:00 Adding observational humor to the subway act helps Kelly to connect to his “audience.” An onlooker’s lunch springs a fully formed McDonald’s jingle. It's good. His salary jumps from tens of dollars to hundreds.

16:00 We hitchhike cross country on a motorcycle, an 18-wheeler, and a broken down truck to Venice Beach, California, where he slept under bleachers for six months.

17:00 On Venice Beach, R. Kelly performs with a skating guitarist. A spirited vamp about paying dues comes from nowhere.

18:00 The cigar is still lit but he hasn’t smoked it yet.

18:30 He hits the talent show circuit in Los Angeles but no one gives him the time of day as a “hooper” in cheap basketball gear. He learns how to deal with failure.

19:45 He pities the stars in the sky because though they sparkle, they don’t go anywhere. He wants to be a shooting star.

21:35 He also wants to be a “scientist of music” but he’s told to stay in an R&B lane. He doesn’t think “The World’s Greatest” is R&B.

22:55 R. Kelly zooms back in time and breaks into song about his father leaving when he was born.

24:30 Another song surfaces about longing for the absent dad.

26:10 “In a son/mother way, I had a serious crush on my mom.”

26:20 “I even asked her to marry me one day. She said no, but you know what? I understood.”

26:50 Away on tour, he finds out his mother is ill with cancer no one told him about.

27:40 He sings about her not wanting him to see her looking sickly in the hospital when he rushes to visit. She passes away as he promises to become one of the greatest singer-songwriters of all time.

31:30 “Sex is life,” he says, and chides people judging him for making gospel and bedroom records with the same glee, closing with the chorus from his 1996 Notorious B.I.G. collaboration “Fucking You.”

32:30 Kelly compares his gift with sex metaphors to Bruce Lee, swinging imaginary nunchaku. “Bruce Lee was Ali, Ali was Michael Jordan, Michael Jordan was Superman, Superman was Spider-Man, Spider-Man was Batman, Batman was Martin Luther King, Martin Luther King was Moses.”

34:00 He attributes his career longevity to deciding to learn his “balance” before he started his “climb,” so when he’s “on top,” no one can remove him, asserting that one-hit wonders are prideful amateurs who lose balance on the climb. Reiterating the point in song, he dramatically sings the word “climb” as a rising scale, eyes and hands aloft.

37:00 “I love music. I’m pregnant by it. I’m having apelets. And I’m gonna love my babies. I’m gonna raise em. I’ll burp em. They’re gonna poop. All those things. Our melodies.”

37:30 Somehow we’re back at age fourteen, and Teen Kelly is riding a dinky Huffy bicycle around his block, melodically imitating the sound and motion of a motorcycle. He gets shot, and men he thinks have come to help rob him for the bike. The family leaves the bullet in rather than risk damaging a nearby nerve in surgery. (His 2012 memoir sets the story three years earlier.)

44:50 We close out with a motivational anthem about staying positive on the road to success as a child from a bad neighborhood.

45:45 The cigar never comes into play.