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On Thursday night, Lifetime debuted the first two episodes of Surviving R. Kelly, a docu-series that gives R. Kelly‘s alleged victims a chance to speak out about their experiences with the singer. The docu-series paints Kelly as a serial abuser and predator, and those interviewed put forth shocking claims about Kelly’s marriages to Aaliyah and Andrea Lee, alleged relationships with young musicians, his childhood, and more (Kelly says that these claims are false and has threatened to file a lawsuit against Lifetime). But the most shocking allegation came from a woman named Lizzette Martinez, who said that Michael Jackson’s hit “You Are Not Alone,” written by Kelly, is based on the sexual relationship she and Kelly had when she was just a teenager.
In Surviving R. Kelly, Martinez detailed meeting Kelly at a mall in the mid-90s, when she was still underage and in high school. They began to hang out, and Martinez said that Kelly soon coerced her into a sexual relationship. During her senior year of high school, she “found out [she] was pregnant, and a few days later, [she] had a miscarriage,” she recalled. Around the same time, Kelly told Martinez that “he had something really special that he had been working on,” which turned out to be “You Are Not Alone,” the 1995 single Kelly wrote for Jackson. “When he wrote it, he was thinking of me,” said Martinez. “So when he played it, he called the song, ‘You Are Not Alone.'”
Backup singer Jovante Cunningham didn’t confirm Martinez’s account, but she did say that Kelly’s songs are grounded in reality. “In hindsight, all of the songs, they’re real stories,” said Cunningham. “They’re about different people during those times and different situations that were occurring with him. So, ‘Your Body’s Callin’, ‘Sex Me’, those are real stories. ‘Age Ain’t Nothing But a Number.’ He meant that.”
Watch Martinez discuss meeting Kelly in the clip above. You can stream the first two episodes in their entirety on Lifetime.
