During a recent interview with Carlos King, Drea Kelly opened up about her allegedly abusive relationship with R Kelly. The two of them first married in 1996, and Drea filed for divorce roughly ten years later in 2006. According to her, the abuse she experienced as a child influenced her decision to stay with Kelly as long as she did. She claims her background initially brought her and her ex closer together. Eventually, however, this became a way for him to allegedly control her.
“The way I grew up was to not love myself, to not think I’m worthy and to feel that there’s no escape from this ’cause not only is it my grandfather, it’s my mother. Now, it’s my husband,” she alleged. “So, that’s why I’m in the place that I am today. F*** y’all with a capital F because you have no idea what it’s like to go from being abused to an abused 19-year-old with a man who has this much power and you’re being abused by him and you have nowhere to go and no money to even do it with.”
Drea Kelly Opens Up About Allegedly Abusive Relationship With R Kelly
Drea went on to call out those who have judged her for keeping Kelly's name despite the alleged abuse. She fired back at claims that she didn't "bring anything to the table” to earn the right to the name. She even slammed critics comparing her and Kelly's dynamic to Ike and Tina Turner's. “You don’t even know what my profession is," she explained. "And at the end of the day, what do I bring to the table if I am the table?"
“I brought a whole womb. I birthed children, so for women to even say something like that is sad to me…and because you can’t clock what I do, because you haven’t done your research, you think it’s okay to go on the internet and say, ‘she don’t do nothing, Tina Turner did something,’" she continued. "The only difference between me and Tina Turner is she sang on the stage with Ike, I danced on one with Robert."
