It brings out the sweetly nostalgic tint to super-earworm leadoff single “Jerk Ribs", the deeper-than-deep long-distance yearning in Labi Siffre cover/Tunde Adebimpe duet “Bless the Telephone", and the maternal lessons-learned wisdom in “Hooch” (which slyly invokes an epochal line from her ex Nas: “Like your daddy said, the world is yours/ So let it flow naturally”). At its best, there's a touch of Tina-in0'84 snarl to it, a seen-some-shit weariness that doubles back and draws on itself to reinforce her voice's strength. It's definitely not the tough, coyly defiant, independently minded kick-in-the-ass that her top-flight vocal performances made famous, though there are still flashes of it for emphasis. Food shows Kelis in unusual form-ragged, raspy, somewhere between exhausted from effort and deep in reflection. Sitek, meanwhile, gave Kelis the potential to fit her way into another side of her style and personality that could expand her repertoire-that of the contemporary NYC-native internationalist, the big-in-Europe star rerooted to the Harlem of her youth and reconciling it with the art-school upbringing that made her one of pop's likeliest indie-crossover candidates.Īnd it should've gone so much better. The chameleonic nature of Kelis' voice and her versatility in sonic roles ranging from vintage Neptunes to Raphael Saadiq to David Guetta is her biggest strength, one that's sustained her throughout a career filled with unfair perceptions of her as a producer's plug-in. In that respect, even a move like getting Dave Sitek to produce your album on a label best known for Amon Tobin isn't excessively out-of-nowhere. Every few years it seems like she's had to find a new voice and a new audience to go with it.
We're 15 years out from the cult-hit success of Kaleidoscope and “Caught Out There", more than 10 years since “Milkshake” hit #3 on the Hot 100, and four years since the ahead-of-the-curve electro/house-leaning Flesh Tone left her with a one-and-done Interscope run that remains one of pop's lingering “how did this get overlooked?” mysteries. One of these days there'll be the definitive retrospective written about how Kelis somehow managed both a solid run of great songs and an impenetrable run of rotten luck.
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