After storming out of an interview with Huffpost Live after being questioned about past allegations of sexual assault, R. Kelly sat down for for a rare interview with GQ. The piece titled ‘The Confessions of R. Kelly’ touched on a wide variety of topics including his 2008 child pornography trial, his marriage to Aaliyah, Bill Cosby and more.

Read more below.

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R. Kelly continued to refuse to give any real answers on his relationship and alleged marriage to R&B singer Aaliyah who died in 2001. When asked about their relationship Kelly would not go into detail for what he called “respect for her family.” He said,

“I will never have that conversation with anyone. Out of respect for Aaliyah, and her mother and father who has asked me not to personally,” he said. “But I can tell you I loved her, I can tell you she loved me, we was very close. We were, you know, best best best best friends.”

The Grammy winner reflected back on his time as being her producer saying, “I heard first of all this soft voice, but very… a lot of charisma,” he recalled. “And I saw her as a star the minute I heard her sing and dance. Saw her dance. She wasn’t the greatest dancer, but the dance moves she was doing were different than the other dancers that I’ve seen on television. And I said, ‘This girl’s gonna be a star, whether I work with her or not.’ ”

Despite being pressed about the situation and even given the opportunity to clear his name for any allegations regarding his marriage to Aaliyah when she was just 15 years-old Kelly stood his ground saying “Well, there’s a lot of ways to be in love with a person. I was in love with my grandfather, you know. But yeah, I would say I was in love with Aaliyah just like I was in love with anybody else.” When asked if he felt like he did anything wrong when it came to their relationship he said “That’s my answer forever: Absolutely not.”

You can check out the full interview here.

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