Last week Shabazz, senior editor of the thug-lifestyle quarterly Don Diva, drove his girlfriend’s white Lexus to a storage locker in the shadow of the downtown Greyhound station. In the locker were 200 unopened boxes, neatly stacked, each containing 12 R. Kelly bobbleheads.
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The bobbleheads were made for the R. Kelly and Jay-Z “Best of Both Worlds” tour. They sold well in six cities, where they were priced at $29.99. “We sold 1,000 between Saint Louis and New York,” said Shabazz. New York, of course, is where the tour ended in October, after a member of Jay-Z’s entourage allegedly attacked R. Kelly with pepper spray. R. Kelly claimed he saw two audience members flashing guns and abandoned the stage at Madison Square Garden. Jay-Z kicked Kelly off the tour, then Kelly filed a $75 million lawsuit against Jay-Z and Jeff Sharp, the tour’s Atlanta-based promoter.
He said he showed the prototype to Kelly, who “loved it.” But there were problems from the start. Shabazz ordered the toys from a factory in China two weeks before the tour’s first date–September 29 at the Allstate Arena in Rosemont. They didn’t arrive in time for opening night. “They were air-shipped to Saint Louis, where they first showed up,” he said. “We paid $4 per bobblehead just to air-ship them.” By then things had already soured between the two headlining acts: the Saint Louis show ended with Kelly storming off the stage midsong and accusing the lighting techs of purposely lighting him in a less flattering way than they did Jay-Z. Later that night Kelly got behind the counter at a local McDonald’s and began serving customers.
South-sider Chris Mines was browsing in the store when Shabazz dropped the dolls off. He bought one five minutes later. “This is something for the mantelpiece,” he said, inspecting his purchase.
