R. Kelly Apparently Believed He Could Fly Higher Than The Tasmanian Devil

A few months ago, an ad offering items from R. Kelly’s house popped up on the swap-meet site Craigslist, and David Wolinsky from the Onion‘s online offshoot Decider decided to answer it. Little did he know that his query would result in him visiting the house where the singer resided from 1996 to 2000, a renovated church in Chicago that had been transformed into a large manse with a basketball court, a red, white, and black color scheme (that, Wolinsky surmises, was an homage to the Chicago Bulls), a fair amount of Looney Tunes-related effluvia, and a hidden log cabin. Wait, what? First things first, about that basketball court:

Owca says when they staked the place out, the basketball court had an electronic scoreboard that, when not used, would default to display “TAZ: 98, KELLY: 100.” In other words, the fictional carnivorous marsupial was good at basketball, but R. Kelly was just barely better. There used to be an adjacent mural in which Foghorn Leghorn, clad in a “Mississippi Mudskippers” jersey, cheered the singer on with sign that simply said, “Go Kelly!”

But is that all that weird, especially given that Space Jam came out just as Kells was figuring out what sort of drapes to order? Not when you talk about the log cabin underneath the house, which is apparently just off the pool:

It’s eerily quiet and a little cold, but the track lighting, hot tub, and the cherry, mahogany, and cedar walls and ceiling really spruce it up. This is also where R. Kelly allegedly urinated, but there is no toilet here. Owca adds that the floor was originally very porous and they were unable to wash away the creepiness. They have since replaced the floor, but maintained the house’s oddest eccentricity: a light switch in a hallway behind the cabin that illuminates a window, so it appears that you’re spying on another cabin amid a soothing landscape of trees. It’s easy to imagine R. Kelly draped out on one of the couches down here, fastening his robe after a relaxing soak, only to be unhinged by the inability to look through a basement-level window and see another imaginary cabin.

No toilet? Well, maybe it was an homage to fellow Illinois resident Abe Lincoln, who’s at least as awesome as Michael Jordan was. Anyway, the main reason that Kells’ nine-years-gone renovations are still intact is that the house has been vacant since he moved out; there are renovations happening now that will likely result in the place being on the market sometime next year, with a price tag in the multiple-millions range. I’m in for $20! You Don’t Turn Down An Invitation To R. Kelly’s House [Decider Earlier: R. Kelly Would Like To Sell You His Looney Tunes Bar