Time's Up is going after R. Kelly with a #MuteRKelly boycott

The Time’s Up campaign is going after R. Kelly with a call for a full-fledged boycott of corporations and venues tied to the R&B star.

Women of Color of Time’s Up, a subcommittee of the movement that specifically organizes around issues that affect women and girls of color, released a statement Monday morning announcing their support of #MuteRKelly, an online campaign asking organizations to cut ties with Kelly, 51, who’s been accused of everything from sexual and physical abuse to running a cult.

Members of the group include entertainment bigwigs Ava DuVernay, Shonda Rhimes, Jurnee Smollett-Bell, and more, and their #MuteRKelly movement is supported by multiple other celebrities, including musician John Legend and comedian W. Kamau Bell.

Over the past two decades, while Kelly “sold 60 million albums, toured the globe repeatedly, and accumulated hundreds of millions of plays on radio and streaming services,” he was also being accused by multiple women of sexual misconduct, the group asserted.

In 2000, the Chicago Sun-Times broke the story that Kelly was accused of statutory rape with girls as young as 15. More reports followed, including evidence that he married a minor; was sued by at least four women for sexual misconduct, statutory rape, aggravated assault; and was indicted on 21 counts of child pornography. In 2017, BuzzFeed reported that Kelly held young women and girls against their will in a “cult.” Kelly denies the allegations.

Women of Color of Time’s Up is calling for RCA Records, Ticketmaster, Spotify, Apple Music, and Greensboro Coliseum Complex to cut their ties with Kelly. Apple Music told VICE News they're declining comment on the matter, and the other companies did not respond to requests for comment.

“The scars of history make certain that we are not interested in persecuting anyone without just cause,” the group wrote in a press release. “With that said, we demand appropriate investigations and inquiries into the allegations of R. Kelly’s abuse made by women of color and their families for over two decades now. And we declare with great vigilance and a united voice to anyone who wants to silence us: Their time is up.”

Kelly's team issued a statement later Monday:

The boycott call comes just one week after Bill Cosby was found guilty on three counts of aggravated assault: the first conviction in the #MeToo movement.