Kelis Was Here

Few artists could line up an ode to bondage right next to a love song so sweet that it could be played at a wedding or invoke Joan Jett right after sharing a cosmic trip with Cee-Lo. That's what Kelis does here. [20 Aug 2006]

What makes it 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.

Wonderfully whimsical.

The result? An album that could just as easily bear the name of any other pop singer working the charts today.

Kelis... raps, rants and successfully maintains her spacey freakiness while sailing out into even radio-friendlier waters.

With the oddball charisma toned down and the lens zooming in on Kelis' melisma-adverse vocals, one is left with the sense that all of these songs could be bigger and more distinct, but it's hard to pinpoint how exactly. This drawback is also ultimately the album's draw: Given time to settle in, many of these songs are among Kelis's most charming, ingratiating themselves with surprising ease.

Kelis is one of the mainstream's most exciting artists right now, and she continues to defy expectations with Kelis Was Here.

The songs are individually good, but don't really sound like they should have been grouped together on an album.

The results are not quite Tasty, but they're pretty damn close.

She does so many things right it's hard to point out any one in particular.

Although the collaborations here read like pop's Yellow Pages... it feels not like desperation, but a wildly ambitious Warhol-esque art project. [9 Sep 2006, p.35]

Kelis is blessed with a unique voice. [Nov 2006, p.143]