I got an e-mail last week from my friend Lane. "Let's go to the R. Kelly show at Madison Square Garden," it read. Of course, I was on board. I've been a fan of Kelly's for years and have written extensively about him (frustratingly, my essay on the greatness of Double Up is somehow not available online), but have never gotten the chance to see the man in person. What I got was incredible. The concert was full of Kelly-isms, surreal moments and (naturally) hit songs. But the greatest thing I saw all night was this:

If it's unclear (as most iPhone photos are), that's a station set up featuring two giant airbrushed murals of R. Kelly that you could stand in front of to get your picture taken. The price? $20. And the line to get these pictures was huge. When Lane attempted to get a closer look, he was chased away by the proprietor of this particular vending station. It was pretty remarkable, especially considering that the airbrushing wasn't even that good. I could understand paying a few dollars to stand next to a wax statue or a realistic stand-up of Kels, but a cheap airbrushed mural? I was taken aback.

Still, in typical R. Kelly fashion, he saved the real insanity for the stage. Read more...

Unfortunately for the President, Oprah Winfrey and the residents of the city, Chicago will not be hosting the 2016 Olympics. The announcement came down this morning, and it's an especially bad beatdown for the Windy City, as it was the first nominee eliminated. Soon, the rest of the cities — including Tokyo and Madrid — before Rio De Janeiro, Brazil, won the competition, marking the first time that the Olympics will travel to South America. (The only continents left who haven't hosted an Olympics are Africa and Antarctica — the latter of which seems unlikely to change any time soon.)

Clearly, the U.S. is disappointed, but the city of Chicago is especially crestfallen (the footage of the disappointed crowds gathered to hear the announcement was heartbreaking). The Olympics is always a logistical nightmare for host cities, but they ultimately do an excellent job of boosting commerce and exposing urban centers to the world at large.

But Chicago shouldn't get too down about it. Despite not getting the Olympics, they've still got Lollapalooza, deep-dish pizza, Schuba's, Wrigley Field, that cool building from the cover of Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, Wilco and R. Kelly. In fact, having R. Kelly is just like having the Olympics — he even sang at the opening ceremonies at the 2002 Winter Games in Salt Lake City! So Chicago, this video of Kelly's "I Wish" is for you.

When the 15-year-old Aaliyah first appeared on the scene in 1994 with the smash hit "Back & Forth," she was already a confident, cocksure young woman with an incredible sense of melody and a penchant for deceptive sexuality. She seemed to debut fully formed, which is why it seemed like she was around for a lot longer than she actually was when she died tragically eight years ago at the age of 22. Aaliyah managed to be the bridge between two great R&B universes: The silky smoothness of R. Kelly's post-New Jack Swing groove (Kelly wrote and produced much of Aaliyah's debut album Age Ain't Nothing But a Number) and the futuristic stutter-funk of Timbaland (who treated Aaliyah like a muse and gave her some of his best beats, like "Are You That Somebody?"). In an era when R&B seemed destined to wallow in the rut created by stuff like K-Ci and JoJo, Aaliyah was a catalyst for looking to the future.

Though she only spend eight years putting out music, Aaliyah built up a pretty impressive greatest hits collection: The tough "Down With the Clique," the playful "If Your Girl Only Knew," the faux-psychedelic "Rock the Boat," the twitchy "More Than a Woman," the unnerving "4 Page Letter" — the list goes on and on. Since her death, the R&B world has stagnated a bit, with Missy Elliott's career on a downward slope and TLC derailed by the death of Lisa "Left Eye" Lopes. Even Timbaland doesn't seem like the same producer — just compare recent, too-busy stuff like "Throw It On Me" with the simple robo-burbles and computer tweets of 2000's "Try Again," which earned Aaliyah a Grammy nomination.

Welcome to the weekly Newsroom Poll, where we will give you a sneak peek into the lives and minds of some of the correspondents, writers, editors and producers here at MTVNews.com. Every week, they'll answer a poll question that will reveal some of what we talk about behind the scenes here in the newsroom. Enjoy!

Nothing gets us excited like a good list, so when MTV News' James Montgomery made a list of the best albums of 2009 so far, it sparked a ton of debate amongst the staffers here. We also had long talks about whether or not Drake's mixtape really is the greatest we've heard so far this year. All this back-and-forth led to this week's question: What's the best song of the first half of 2009?

Joel Hanek
Even though the mixtape this song debuted on Kanye's blog last summer, I'll have to go with Kid Cudi's "Day N' Nite." Sure, I may be biased because he's a fellow Clevelander, but that song has a long shelf life (probably due to the countless remixes that are put out). Everything he does is catchy, from Kid Cudi's style (which is something that straddles singing and melodic rapping) to the track itself (from the major scale synths to sampling bands like RATATAT and Band of Horses). I don't think a song without a proper album has been this successful since Lisa Loeb's "Stay." (Lisa Loeb / Kid Cudi comparison = Success!)
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It's hard to believe, but there are actually places that multi-platinum R&B superstar R. Kelly hasn't performed. In fact, he's never been to Africa, though he'll be rectifying that soon. Next Saturday, Kels will close out ARISE Africa Fashion Week with a concert in Johannesburg, South Africa. It will be the first show of a multi-city tour that will also take him through South Africa, into Nigeria and end in London. The show will close out the inaugural ARISE Africa Fashion Awards, which seek to point the spotlight at the explosion of up-and-coming African fashion designers. Kelly said in a statement, "I'm very excited about my first visit to Africa, I've dreamed about this for a long time and its finally here. It will be one of the highlights of not only my career but my life." Kelly is working on a new album, which he hopes to release later this year.

I have to say that after listening to R. Kelly speak on BET’s “R. Kelly Speaks,” I was disappointed. There are a lot of questions that I thought should have been asked — that need to be asked — given that Kelly apparently isn’t going to discuss his child-pornography trial further, and yet so many rumors, allegations and speculations remain unaddressed. Here are some questions Touré did not ask:

If multiple people have blackmailed Kelly, who were they? What were they blackmailing him about? What happened?

What is the exact relationship that Kelly has with his goddaughter — who allegedly appears with him in the sex tape at the center of the trial — then and now? If nothing has ever happened between them, as the singer claims, why did she not come forward and say so?
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Ne-Yo has won $700,000 in a lawsuit against promoter Rowe Entertainment after he claimed he was dropped from R.Kelly's tour late last year. Although Ne-Yo had no formal contract, he still won the case. Do you think that he should have won the case considering he didn't have a written agreement? And did Ne-Yo really upstage R. Kelly?

Read the complete story of Ne-Yo's lawsuit and let us know what you think.

New Kells? Interesting.

I went to bed last night with 13 "new" R. Kelly records in my inbox. New to me and the rest of the world, but with all the unreleased albums Kelly has in the stash, probably not new to him. Nonetheless, it's the Pied Piper. He's a legend, so I was definitely eager to hear them.

While what I heard didn't constitute a classic LP as a whole, he definitely had some classic moments. Listening to the record in my office, I immediately caught on to the fact that this record would be full of laugh-out-loud R. moments, as you'd expect.

His people say the album isn't coming out until the end of the year, so I fully expect for him to have a whole slew of new songs (if not an entirely different album) once his release date comes.

Check out the full story on MTVNews.com.

The verdict is in, and the trial is over. It's been slightly uncomfortable watching R. Kelly go back and forth to the courthouse in recent weeks knowing that his future was hanging in the balance. Each time I saw him, it felt like even he was uncertain of what his future would be — he was intensely focused, quiet and kept to himself. Given what was at stake, I suppose any of us in his shoes would feel the same way.

All that changed when the verdict was announced this afternoon. He was overcome with emotion inside the courtroom and shed some tears, but he seemed relieved once he was outside. He waved and smiled for what seemed like the first time in weeks. After all those days in front of the courthouse, I forgot what it looked like to see him like that — relaxed. From there, he was off to mark the moment with friends and family.

I felt compelled to wish him well, so we rolled out to find him. He's not ready to talk yet on the record, but this photo says a lot anyway — he's feeling relaxed, relieved and not guilty.

What do you think about the R. Kelly verdict? Vote in our poll, or sound off in the comments section below.

The verdict is in. Despite what seemed like pretty solid evidence, R. Kelly was found not guilty on 14 charges of child pornography today. In the last six years, there's been a lot of talk about Kelly and the videotape at the center of the trial. It's a topic that seemingly everyone has an opinion about, but we want to know what you think.

Vote in our poll and leave your comments below. If you'd like to send a video response, upload it at yourhere.mtv.com.