British Magazine New Music Express Review Of Kelis New Album Flesh Tone.
Album Review: Kelis – ‘Flesh Tone’ (Polydor)
With a new-found love of banging choons, she’s living up to her own legend yet again…
- By Gavin Haynes
- May 13, 2010
Ah, Kelis! ‘Milkshake’. Genius. Pop auteur. Credible diva. And other such feeble journalistic platitudes that belie the fact that the last time she released a hit, it was 2003. Her most recent album, 2006’s ‘Kelis Was Here’, tanked, and rightly so. Since then? Radio silence. She’s been doing the real life thing: having a baby, divorcing Nas. In pop terms, four years is an aeon, seven the entire history of the universe. To say that her back was against the wall coming into ‘Flesh Tone’ is to overstate things: the reality was that people no longer cared either way.
So there’s a convenient plucky-underdog narrative ready to be spun when we tell you that ‘Flesh Tone’ has already filled out an application form for pop record of the year. Kelis is about to become big news again.
Its main thesis is this: Kelis loves robots but isn’t that bothered about R&B anymore. ‘22nd Century’ offers the keynote address: “Welcome to the 22nd century/Religion, science fiction, technology”. The hoover-house synths that are shortly to become album hallmarks swoop in; a massive four-to-the-floor kick-drum kicks off, and we’re swept into a hyper-saturated world of frazzled diva futurism, before the whole thing drowns itself in wave after wave of ear-candy digitised bleeps and gurgles. This, it has to be said, is already the track after the one where she goes Italo disco. But before the ones where she goes Ed Banger, or Jason Nevins, or David Guetta.
Brilliantly, while ‘Flesh Tone’ is in thrall to dance music, it seems agnostic as to whether it prefers the credible type or the chart sludge. Instead, it chooses to celebrate the sheer brain-bending sonic possibilities of the thing in all its forms: a tour de rave of minor-key Oakenfold trance riffs (‘Home’), housey samba styles (‘Emancipate’), electroclash bridges (‘Scream’), DFA1979 distorted crash cymbals (‘Brave’), sleek nu-disco (‘Intro’) and everything inbetween. The fact that she worked with both Benni Benassi and Diplo; both Will.i.am and Boys Noize, offers some sense of how wilfully naive Kelis has been in her choices. The fact it’s not a hypercolour abomination offers some sense of how smart she has been in her execution. Seldom since ‘Miss E… So Addictive’ has a star from the R&B world displayed such fannish intimacy with the dance world. Her way with a melody has not deserted her. Her ability to appear unimpeachably cool hasn’t wavered either. But these are as nothing. What’s important here is simply her direction: a genuinely innovative bearing that breaks new ground for pop without sounding any less pop for it. Kelis. Genius. Pop auteur. Credible diva. Welcome back.
BBC Interviews Kelis: She Talks About Her New Album Flesh Tone Released In Europe On May 17th 2010.
Kelis: ‘I used to be a Trekkie’
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By Tim Masters
Entertainment correspondent, BBC News |
Kelis: likes cooking… and possibly Klingons
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In the four years since her last album, singer Kelis has been divorced, had a baby – and qualified as a chef.
Flesh Tone is the Harlem-born star’s fifth studio album, and her first for will.i.am’s Interscope Records. Her David Guetta-produced dancefloor anthem Acapella went into the UK top five last month.
Kelis wrote much of Flesh Tone while pregnant with son Knight, who was born in July 2009. A few months earlier she had filed for divorce from US rapper Nas. They had married in 2003.
Kelis debuted in 1999 with Kaleidoscope, and went onto win a Brit award for best international breakthrough act.
Over the past 10 years, she has worked with a wide variety of artists and producers, including The Neptunes, Andre 3000, Bjork and Enrique Iglesias.
Kelis will be performing at the Glastonbury Festival on 26 June.
Here, the Milkshake star talks about the new album, her cookery qualification and her love of Captain Kirk.
Kelis single Acapella was a top 5 hit in April
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Why the four-year wait for Flesh Tone?
Why not? I don’t feel the need to rush out each record, I’m not one of those artists who put them out every six months. I feel the need to live a bit in the interim and in order to write anything viable you have to give yourself some time and some space.
How does it feel to be back?
It’s like riding a bike – I definitely feel like I’m right where I’m supposed to be.
On one track you repeat the line “We control the dance floor…” Is that the album’s mission statement?
Yeah, I guess so. I want people to dance and have a great time and sweat it out again.
You wrote a lot of the album when you were pregnant. Does pregnancy make you more creative?
Artists work off extremes. Some of the greatest art comes from repression, turbulence in someone’s life or extreme glee and happiness.
Pregnancy is as extreme as you can get. Your body is physically and emotionally stretched to such great lengths that I think it’s inevitable.
So has motherhood changed your priorities?
There’s nothing more important than my kid. As an artist I have more to write about, I have more to think about. But I wouldn’t say that it’s changed my art.
The Acapella video is like a sci-fi film trailer. What’s the concept behind it?
I really just wanted it to be as visually strong as the record. It’s a story – imagine some sort of world’s end… sparse and savage and unreal.
On the song 22nd Century you sing “Religion, science fiction, technology”. Do you like sci-fi?
I’m a science fiction fan in every possible way.
I used to be a huge Trekkie. I would torture my little sister. They would do Star Trek marathons and she literally would cry: “Not another episode of Star Trek, please!”
I loved Dictrict 9, I loved Avatar – anything from The Matrix to Terminator.
Do you fancy acting in a sci-fi film?
That’s a future I cannot foretell.
You’re a qualified chef. What was it like going back to school?
It was full-on Le Cordon Bleu – almost a year, five days a week, seven hours a day.
I think every adult should go back to school for some time and for something that they love. I think school puts things in perspective, to be avidly learning something every day is important – exciting.
Was there a point where you thought I prefer cooking to music?
Yes, I think that all the time. Not to the music itself but to the business of music.
Do you have a signature dish?
I’m good, I can pretty much do anything.
Flesh Tone is released on 17 May on Interscope Records
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