On Monday, BuzzFeed News published a story about R. Kelly that alleged the R&B singer has been keeping multiple women in a sex “cult” against their will. Both parents of the supposed captives and former members of Kelly’s entourage spoke to BuzzFeed for their story.
Multiple representatives for Kelly and one of the alleged “hostages,” Joycelyn Savage, denied the claims. Still, Kelly has a long history with sexual abuse allegations that would make joking about joining in on his supposed current arrangement a hard no. For almost two decades, he has been at the center of sexual misconduct scandals. Multiple cases involved minors.
With the most recent Kelly story receiving so much attention, perhaps it was inevitable that a major celebrity would weigh in with a controversial jab. In this case, that celebrity was Diplo.
“Low key sent my cv [sic] for r kelly sex cult membership,” he tweeted, before deleting the post about 20 minutes later, according to Spin, who grabbed the screenshot.
Making a joke about wanting to join a potential harem of young female captives is obviously a horrible decision. Also a bad idea: after he deleted the tweet, Diplo posted a follow-up photo of himself drinking what appears to be champagne with the simple caption, “Cheers.” Yeah, not OK.
HuffPost reached out to the producer’s representation, but did not receive a response by the time of publication.