R Kelly: Man alleges singer sexually exploited him after asking ‘what he was willing to do for music’

R Kelly’s trial continues in Brooklyn

R Kelly leaves the Leighton Criminal Courts Building on 26 June 2019 in Chicago, Illinois (Scott Olson/Getty Images)

A man has alleged that R Kelly sexually exploited him after asking “what [he] was willing to do for music”.

The man testified on Monday as part of R Kelly’s criminal trial in New York City.

Kelly has been charged with racketeering “predicated on criminal conduct including sexual exploitation of children, kidnapping, forced labor and Mann Act violations involving the coercion and transportation of women and girls in interstate commerce to engage in illegal sexual activity”.

After several days of testimony from women alleging they were groomed and sexually abused by Kelly, a man took the witness stand to say the R&B star allegedly exploited him in the same way when he was a high school student.

The witness told a jury Kelly allegedly lured him to his home in the Chicago area in 2007, with false offers of helping him with his fledgling music career.

Kelly allegedly asked what the man, then aged 17, “what I was willing to do for music”, the man told the court in Brooklyn. He said he replied, “I’ll carry your bags. ... Anything you need, I'll be willing to do.”

“That’s not it. That’s not it," the man alleged Kelly responded before asking him if he ever fantasized about having sex with men.

The man described how Kelly then allegedly “crawled down on his knees and proceeded to give me oral sex,” even though, “I wasn't into it”.

Afterward, “he told me to keep between him and me”, the man alleged.

In a later episode, Kelly “snapped his fingers three times” to summon a naked girl from where she was hiding under a boxing ring to give Kelly and the witness oral sex, the man alleged.

He kept seeing Kelly after that because “I really wanted to make it in the music industry”, he told the court.

Kelly, 54, has pleaded not guilty and repeatedly denied accusations that he preyed on victims during a 30-year career.

If convicted on all counts, he faces 10 years to life imprisonment.

The Associated Press contributed to this report