Kelly may very well believe that’s true. Despite being arrested and charged with 21 counts of child pornography in June 2002, Kelly, 41, has yet to stand trial. The Cook County prosecutor’s office says that Kelly isn’t likely to face a judge any time soon, despite a 26-minute videotape that allegedly shows him having sex with (and urinating on) an underage girl. A bootleg copy, called “Rated R Kelly Triple XXX, Vol. 1,” has been a top seller on numerous porn Web sites and inner-city street corners for years. Yet next week, Kelly will release a new album, “Double Up.” It’s his third CD—since his arrest.

How did this happen? Some of the delays were caused by legitimate, if slightly bizarre, reasons, including Kelly’s burst appendix and a judge who hurt himself falling off a ladder. Kelly’s lawyers have maintained all along that it is not the singer in the video, despite the uncanny resemblance. “This is a cloud over his head as well,” says Allan Mayer, the singer’s spokesperson. “No one wants this over more than Mr. Kelly.” But he’s not acting like a man in a hurry to clear his name. Kelly’s lawyers have always had the option of invoking the speedy trial rule that mandates the case begin in four months or be dropped. They never have. Shauna Boliker, the head of the Cook County state’s attorney’s Sex Crime Unit, says the last five years have been filled with endless legal maneuvers. “His lawyers have filed 25 to 30 motions, and that’s just not the norm in any case,” says Boliker. “And the people who are really suffering are the victims.” Those victims may be the real reason for Kelly’s nonrush to judgment. People knowledgeable about the case, who don’t want to be identified because the trial hasn’t begun, say they think Kelly and his lawyers are stalling until the young girls become adults, when they’ll be less sympathetic victims—and, in the case of the girl in the video, less recognizable. (Kelly’s lawyer did not return calls for comment.) Many Kelly watchers also believe that the case hasn’t moved faster because of racial factors. “If those girls had been white, he’d be in jail now,” says Shakema Long, 18, a coed at Cal State. “But they were black girls, and nobody cares about us.”

You’d think that the state would have a strong case. Kelly had a well-known interest in minors. In 1994, he illegally married the singer Aaliyah when she was 15 and he was 28. Kelly has reportedly been sued four times by women who claimed some type of sexual misconduct; Kelly is believed to have settled all of the cases for unspecified amounts. Some people say there were other incidents as well. “A lot of people knew what was going on and chose to look the other way,” says one of Kelly’s former employees, who admits to being one of those people. “He wasn’t doing this without help.”

But Kelly is too busy to take a spin on the wheels of justice. In addition to his new album, he’s made guest appearances on several others, and he just wrote a tribute song, “Rise Up,” for the students of Virginia Tech. (Does that note of compassion sound strange? It shouldn’t. Two of Kelly’s best-known songs are the inspirational “I Believe I Can Fly” and the lewd “I Like the Crotch on You.” Mr. Kelly is a complicated man.) The single he recorded with Snoop, “That’s That S–t,” just hit No. 1 on the R&B charts. (It’s one of his profane songs.) Snoop doesn’t think a cloud of suspicion should rain on anyone’s career. “You’re innocent until proven guilty in this country, so I can’t judge him,” he says. At the rate his case is going, Kelly could remain unjudged for a long, long time.