Kelis - Kelis Was Here (clips)
You can now listen to 30 second clips from Kelis’s new album Kelis Was Here. The songs sound hot. Kelis’s second single Blindfold Me ft Nas is a winner! Kelis Was Here is in stores August 22nd.
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I thought you would want to read this…
Which Kelis was here?
The singer’s new work exposes all her sides
‘I know I’m not for everybody,’ says Kelis.
Kelis isn’t pleased.
The one-named, Harlem-born singer (who pronounces her name kuh-leese), doesn’t think she’s getting any respect from her record company.
“My label is constantly trying to take control of me,” she says. “I’m not a new artist. I’ve been working hard to create my persona and have longevity and they went against my wishes.”
Specifically, the singer is stewing over the fact that her label, Jive, included the song “F— Them Bitches” on her CD “Kelis Was Here,” out Aug. 27.
“I just did [the song] to get it out of my system,” the singer explains. “I did not want it on the album. It’s just not a statement I want to make right now.”
Longtime fans might find that surprising. After all, we’re talking about a singer who made her reputation by singing about things like having sex in public, and enjoying a kind of milkshake that has nothing to do with a malt shop.
At the same time, Kelis considers herself a born-again Christian, and insists that she knows how to keep a handle on her supersexy image. “I know a lot of people think that I don’t draw a line,” she says. “But I’ve never done nude photo shoots and I don’t feel I’m vulgar with my sexuality.”
Likewise, Kelis believes that many listeners have misinterpreted the nuances of her new hit, “Bossy,” which finds her happily proclaiming, “I’m boss-ay/I’m the bitch y’all love to hate.”
“A lot of people think being bossy means bossing somebody around,” the singer says. “But it’s about being in control in your life. I’m fighting to be my own woman.”
That much has been clear from the start. The 26-year-old singer, born Kelis Rogers, began her career as a teenager, singing hooks on songs by Ol’ Dirty Bastard and Wu-Tang Clan’s RZA. On her first solo album, 1999’s “Kaleidoscope,” she presented herself as a multicolored, intergalactic sex goddess: Barbarella meets Foxy Brown. Produced by the Neptunes, the album found Kelis blithely smudging the lines between rock, hip hop and soul.
“I can’t be just one thing,” Kelis says. “I can’t just do rock or hip hop. It’s all a part of who I am.”
The chorus to her first single, “Caught Out There,” found her screaming the line “I hate you so much right now,” so loudly, it made Alanis Morissette’s “You Oughta Know” seem sheepish.
The song certainly got her noticed, but her album only sold a few hundred thousand copies.
Her 2001 followup, “Wanderland,” wasn’t even released in the United States. Kelis’ American label at the time, Virgin, was going through a chaotic overhaul back then, so she fought, and won, the right to get out of her contract.
Today, Kelis considers “Wanderland” the favorite of her albums. The disk continued to establish Kelis as a star in Europe, where her first album also went over well. Part of the problem here, the singer believes, is the prejudice America often shows toward black artists who rock.
“The United States, as a whole, is really racist,” she says. “When you leave the U.S., the music format is different. To me, rock ‘n’ roll is black music. It started with us and, eventually, it will end with us.”
Kelis finally seemed ready for a major breakthrough with her last CD, 2003’s “Tasty.” The disk perfected her sassy persona, and featured a wealth of original hooks and tunes. Its single “Milkshake” climbed to No. 3 on Billboard’s Hot 100 list. But the album sold only a little more than 500,000 copies. Again, record company implosions came into play. Her label, Arista Records, died right when the album came out.
Kelis’ media-profile expanded regardless, thanks to her racy magazine photo shoots and her marriage to rap icon Nas. Despite the pressures of their two-career marriage, Kelis claims that the couple’s struggles over issues of time and ego aren’t any more dramatic than they are for any driven pair. She also takes pains to point out that the song she performed with Nas - that one about having sex “In Public” - was just a fun concept not an admission.
For her new album, Kelis mixes such provocative songs with more emotional ones. “I’m at a different point in my life,” she explains. “I’m older. It’s an inevitable change.”
Even more dramatically, Kelis is no longer produced by the Neptunes. While she blandly describes their split as having to do with them “growing apart,” later she admits she wanted to prove she wasn’t the Neptunes’ puppet.
Instead, this time Kelis worked with producers ranging from urban icons will.1.am, Scott Storch and Raphael Saadiq to pop craftsmen Max Martin and Linda Perry. The result is a true sprawl of a CD - with 18 tracks (whittled down from the 40 she cut).
While the title “Kelis Was Here” extends the singer’s trademark in-your-face persona, she claims the name has a serious side. “It’s about leaving a mark; it’s about letting people know someone was here before you.”
Of course, being a leader can have its consequences in the marketplace, a point that’s hardly lost on Kelis.
“I know by now,” she says, “that I’m not for everybody.”