Kelis Was Here

Kelis Was Here is the fourth studio album by American recording artist Kelis, released in the United States on August 22, 2006 by LaFace Records and Jive Records. Recording sessions for the album took place at various recording studios, namely Bangladesh Studios, Battery Studios, Blakeslee Recording Company, Blue Basement Recordings, Chalice Recording Studios, Doppler Studios, Glenwood Place Studios, The Hit Factory Criteria, Ocean Way Recording, The Record Plant, Right Track Recording, Sony Music Studios, and Westlake Audio.^[1]

It features production by Bangladesh, Raphael Saadiq, Max Martin, Sean Garrett, and Scott Storch, among others, and also features collaborations with will.i.am, Nas, Cee-Lo, Too Short, and Spragga Benz. The album was nominated for the Best Contemporary R&B Album category at the 2007 Grammy Awards and is notable for being the first Kelis record to feature no production from long-time collaborators The Neptunes.

Release and promotion

The album's lead single, "Bossy", features rapper Too Short and was a successful hit. It was a slow burner in the US but eventually was certified multi platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America in December 2006. It broke into the top twenty of the Billboard Hot 100 to peak at number sixteen. The second single from the album in the US, "Blindfold Me", featuring Nas, peaked at number ninety-one on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs but never made it onto the Hot 100. The second international single was "Lil Star" which features Cee-Lo of the Gnarls Barkley fame and earned Kelis her highest chart entries since 2004's "Millionaire". "Lil Star" climbed to number three on the UK Singles Chart selling over 118,000 copies and was also a hit in Ireland reaching the number-two position.

Due to the use of "I Don't Think So" in a promotional advertising for Big Brother Australia 2008, the song charted on the Australian ARIA Singles Chart on April 21, 2008 at number forty-nine based on digital download sales alone. The following week it rose twenty places to number twenty-nine, ultimately peaking at number twenty-seven.^[2]

Commercial performance

The album debuted at number ten on the US Billboard 200 and at number six on the Billboard Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums with more than 58,000 units sold within its first week of release, making it Kelis' best-charting album to date. Nevertheless, sales declined soon and the album fell quickly off the chart after its sixth week. According to Nielsen SoundScan, Kelis Was Here has sold 160,000 copies in the United States as of June 2008.

The album did not have much better success internationally, although it was ceritifed silver by the British Phonographic Industry on September 29, 2006 for shipping over 60,000 copies within the United Kingdom.

Despite low sales, the album was nominated for Best Contemporary R&B Album at the 2007 Grammy Awards. Although not her first nomination, it was Kelis' first album to be nominated for a Grammy Award (her 2004 nomination was for her song "Milkshake" in the Best Urban/Alternative Performance category).

Critical reception

Kelis Was Here received generally positive reviews from music critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album received an average score of 70, based on 23 reviews, which indicates "generally favorable reviews".^[3] Ann Powers from Los Angeles Times wrote, "Blending the intimate purr of quiet-storm balladry, the New Age magic of Afrofuturism, the beep of the Roland 808 drum machine and the bash of vintage black rock, Kelis Was Here mines a memory of R&B as the playground of category-dismantling individualists."^[7] Kelefa Sanneh from The New York Times described the album as "typically garish and glorious" and stated that "[t]he sound ranges from space-age hip-hop [...] to space-age guitar pop [...] to, well, space-age hip-hop again."^[8] Slant Magazine critic Preston Jones noted that "Kelis Was Here, like her three albums prior, doesn't stay locked into the R&B genre exclusively and this shotgun approach renders the disc an intriguing mishmash of sounds, beats, and vocal affectations; Kelis is just as captivating when she coos as she is when her pipes get dangerously husky." He also claimed that the album is "the sound of a talented, leftfield hip-hop diva in a holding pattern, concerned about her legacy but uncertain as to how to go about cementing it."^[12] Clover Hope of Billboard called it "wonderfully whimsical" and "thick with dynamic instrumentation", and referred to the songwriting as "surprisingly multilayered".^[14] Steve Hands of musicOMH opined that "[t]he mixed bag of Raphael Saadiq, Swizz Beatz, and Linda Perry (to name just three) all centre the robo-like passion-at-one-remove Kelis voice in a pop-glossary of bubblegum beats, Mantronix-synths, low-key gospel, and the odd cartoon axe-riffing. At all points, there is a sense of Prince-like knowingness, of pop-play and meaning being where you find it." He further concluded, "As far as Kelis Was Here is concerned, the results are not quite Tasty, but they're pretty damn close."^[15] Q gave the album four out of five stars and commented that it is "chock-full of surreal soul diamonds."^[11]

Entertainment Weekly's Clark Collis felt that the results of the inclusion of multiple producers on the album are "eclectic, erratic, and lacking anything likely to repeat the success of 'Milkshake.'" He viewed that most tracks are "surprisingly anonymous, occupying rather than owning, for example, the pleasant, Cee-Lo co-penned 'Lil Star'", while citing "Circus" as the album's "hands-down worst track".^[5] Chris Salmon of The Guardian, however, criticized the absence of The Neptunes, stating that "[c]ontributors such as Black Eyed Peas' Will.i.am and Ludacris producer Shondrae reject all subtlety for songs that caricature Kelis as sexy, bolshy and not much else. The results are shallow and unconvincing, driven by the kind of brash holler and breathy schmaltz you would expect from J-Lo or Pussycat Dolls (complete with the rubbish guest raps)." He also went on to describe the album as "a bloated 77-minute collection that badly mistakes quantity for quality."^[6] Mikael Wood of Spin called it her "most streamlined effort yet", commenting that she "consolidates" her previous "allure" and "turns up sex, turns down sass".^[16] Pitchfork Media's Tim Finney wrote that "like Wanderland, [Kelis Was Here] is formally varied but feels consistent—even monochrome in parts. She remains indebted to the Neptunes' production nous even in their absence, regularly adorning herself with the sort of production touches one would expect from the duo. But where the Neptunes gave Kelis consistency by always drawing attention to their own unmistakable sound, this album's consistency is a direct result of its coolly competent eclecticism, with both Kelis and her producers trying to fade, chameleon-like, into the fabric of the songs."^[9] Andy Kellman of Allmusic believed that "[w]hat makes [the album] less successful than 1999's Kaleidoscope and 2003's Tasty is that it's extremely choppy and excessively long, and it doesn't have the range of emotions to match the varied backdrops. There is too much and not enough Kelis; too much material is second rate, and the tougher sides of her character dominate the album."^[4] In a review for The Observer, Peter Robinson commented that the album "occasionally misfires [...] but there's still sass and creativity here."^[13] Quentin B. Huff of PopMatters argued that "[t]he songs are individually good, but don't really sound like they should have been grouped together on an album."^[10]

Track listing

(*) denotes co-producer

Sample credits

• "What's That Right There" contains a sample from "(Not Just) Knee Deep" by Funkadelic.

Personnel

Charts

Release history

References

External links

• Kelis Was Here at Metacritic