Who Sang “Already Taken” Better—Trey Songz Or R. Kelly?

Becky Bain | August 3, 2010 3:16 pm

Trey Songz has a track on the Step Up 3-D soundtrack, an emotional (but uptempo) love song called “Already Taken.” What you may not know is that his R&B nemesis R. Kelly recorded a demo of the Polow Da Don song about a year ago, but passed on it. You know what that means! It’s time for Who Sang It Better—and you get to judge after listening to both tracks behind the jump.

First, here’s Trey’s version of the track:

Now check out R. Kelly’s (tagged) rendition of “Already Taken”:

Musically, both tracks are basically identical, and we’d gladly tap our feet to either track. But Kelly’s vocals are just a smidge smoother and the chorus is a little bit more rousing with the crowd-chanting “ay!”s in his take on the R&B tune.

It’s interesting that Songz and Kelly both recorded the same track, since these two artists have been feuding for some time.

“People say, ‘Well, I hear a lot of R. Kelly in your music.’ So what?” Songz told VIBE in April. “R. Kelly took Aaron Hall’s whole style. Two albums straight… You can say what you want about me.” Kelly’s reply in a following interview was simply the ominous threat that Songz should “be very careful.”

Makes us wonder if Songz knew that Kelly abandoned this track and purposefully picked it up just to spite him. We’ll have to wait a few more days to see how well Trey’s “Already Taken” did on the charts to figure out how “careful” he needs to be.

What say you? Who did it better, Trey or Kell?