R. Kelly returns with quantity, not quality

No doubt, outside of Prince, no one does the sex-u-up jams better than Kelly, and he piles them on throughout the disc, but none of them fires up the bones like some of the tracks on his last great record, ''Chocolate Factory" or like those on the original ''12 Play." He descends into the laughable on ''Sex in the Kitchen" with a slew of clumsy sexual innuendos that work on a grade-school level. ''Burn It Up" sounds like something Prince locked away deep in his vault years ago. This comes from the man who pretty much defined the sexy, salacious love ballad of the '90s with his supreme gift for melody and delicious phrasing.

The club bangers also don't measure up to what we've come to expect from Kelly. ''Playa's Only" features a bland cameo from The Game, and it's time to wonder if he's been hyped beyond his capabilities. Twista adds a little heat to ''Hit It Till the Mornin,' " but Kelly is still wading in mostly shallow grooves here.

Of course, the disc closes with the epic, notorious ''Trapped in the Closet, Chapters 1-5" a set of songs recounting a variety of sexual betrayals including one with a preacher's daughter and, frankly, it's a boring mess. The girl may be doing penance, but do the listeners have to?

As usual with any Kelly record, though, the songs are crisply produced, and there may not be as supple and expressive a vocalist in modern R&B as this Chicago native. But that's not enough to sustain a superstar artist. Perhaps he set the bar so high for himself that a set like this disappoints because there are few of the delirious, hook-filled grooves we've come to expect. Or, perhaps, he's just made a bad record.