And there you have it, a way to make the R. Kelly messiness even messier. Living, breathing red flag R. Kelly, plus American Media Inc. (the parent company of the National Enquirer), plus a million dollars that would be paid in the shadiest way imaginable, equals everything you’re about to read.

The Daily Beast got their hands on some documents that reportedly detail a plan hatched by Dylan Howard, Senior Vice President of AMI. Dylan reportedly wanted to produce a docu-series about R. Kelly, and really wanted R. Kelly’s active participation in it. The only problem was that Dylan didn’t want to come right out and offer R. Kelly the money, because Dylan thought it would look gross to hand over $1 million to an (alleged) prolific pedophile. That’s right, the company that reportedly tried to blackmail Jeff Bezos with his own dick pics and threatened Terry Crews that they’d publish a story about him hiring prostitutes suddenly cared about PR optics.

Dylan and R. Kelly’s rep Don Russell negotiated for months about how R. Kelly would get paid. And it’s no secret that R. Kelly needed that money. But Dylan told Don that no network would ever pay R. Kelly for a docuseries, so they’d have to get creative. Here’s what The Daily Beast claims Dylan explained on a taped phone call:

“I license music from you. I license locations from you such as homes, et cetera. And that is how you get profit participation in such a production, because no network is even going to allow a production company’s books to show, on their books, that there is a money trail going to you…So it would have to be a production company through a shell company through to whatever company is designated on your end for the licensing of locations, licensing of music, and other things we can creatively come up with.”

Don Russell allegedly responded favorably to Dylan’s scheme, but stressed that it all had to seem legit.

“So I gotta make sure that if we are doing this, that then is considered by all parties that we have to make sure he can pay legal fees, bills, and all that kinda stuff. Because that puts him back into position for the next steps down the road, which is the movie of R. Kelly once he reigns supreme with this.”

Reigns supreme as…what, exactly? The number-one man you never want to see in the parking lot of an all-girls high school? Because he’s already got the metaphorical crown for that one.

Now here’s where it gets even messier. The Daily Beast received a written statement from Dylan Howard about all of this, and he claims he was approached by R. Kelly’s people, and that the conversation never went further than initial discussions, and that the conversation never involved anyone else at AMI. He also claims the convo was mostly about how serious the allegations against R. Kelly were, and how challenging the series would be to make. It honestly sounds like the most challenging part about it was finding a wholesale distributor for all the shells needed to hide that money.

Don Russell also spoke to The Daily Beast that he “didn’t know” Dylan like that, and that they never spoke about any potential docuseries. I guess Don wasn’t aware of the alleged phone conversation The Daily Beast had listened to?

And finally, all this scheming made its way back to R. Kelly, who actually sounded genuinely surprised that someone was negotiating a secret $1 million payday for a potential docuseries. R. Kelly spoke to his attorney Steven Greenberg on Monday from prison and had this to say:

Greenberg told The Daily Beast: “This is literally what he said: ‘I have no fucking idea what you’re talking about. I don’t have any fucking idea. I don’t know anything about it. People are always trying to do stuff – make money, cut a deal, and tell me they got this opportunity.'”

His attorney added: “There are always people trying to capitalize on the fact that they know R. Kelly.”

R. Kelly is either legitimately dumb or is just playing dumb. Because how did he not know who was scheming behind his back? After all we know about R. Kelly, there’s no way there’s more than two, maybe three people who would ever publicly admit to another human being that they know R. Kelly.