The song’s “chorus” is little more than Kelis screaming her lungs out into a distortion pedal, but the catchiness lies in the break down/build up coming into the chorus (“What is this I see.”) and The Neptune’s funky, acoustic laden, Super-Nintendo beat. The lead off single, Caught Out There, is an angry rant against a lying man, with Kelis commenting on herself as she recalls a relationship that went horribly wrong (climaxing with the shooting of her boyfriend). The album’s three singles made an impressing mark on late the late nineties British charts scoring the Harlem songstress a gold record (100,000 copies) for the island nation. The song’s surprisingly fitting saxophone solo reminds me why they are so in demand these days. Pharrel lays down some cinematic Glockenspiel, warm strings and lends his voice to a whisper track in the background. Pharrell proves his worth again and again on mid-record ballad Suspended, an eerie exhibition for Kelis’ slightly out there R&B vocals. Like always, the boys behind the chart creates a sound, full of smooth keyboards and sexy break beats, but this time their innovation on the mainstream seems to have the step of a slightly more vintage creature, with everything from Jazz instrumentation to 60’s pop sounds bouncing around inside each ear-tickling melody. What a cute couple they make.Īnd while Pharrell and gang’s catchy, pop infused beats don’t exactly scream Boom Bap like early Nas, there is still a considerable amount of grit in them, especially for a Neptunes record. ![]() The album draws an almost obvious comparison to Kelis’ now husband Nas, taking his taste for telling the deep, dark life of a lower class black male and telling it from the point of, well, the wife of a lower class black male. Kaleidoscope was the album that made Kelis huge in the rest of the world, an album full of love, hate, fear and intensity. But it turns out that Kelis had a fantastic, successful Neptunes produced Neo-Soul meets Club Rap record out four years before she started getting a lot of radio play in the states. That’s what Americans tend to do anyways. Kelis was a gravel voiced goddess that the world just seemed to be ready for.īut when I say the world I just mean the United States. Milkshake was a song that came fast and stayed long, an instantly recognizable tune, and one of the most original recorded about a woman’s “assets”. A song full of sexy lyrics, catchy melodies and the kind of beat that makes a middle school boy get all excited in his pants. Outside of some dated tech references, “Digital World” is timelier than ever, proving that people have been struggling with sex and technology for decades.Kelis broke onto the scene with a hit song, like many R&B singers do these days. ![]() Even when it’s less outwardly self-assured than the work of Kelis’ counterparts, Wanderland remains self-aware – and sexy with it. ![]() Even if the beats immediately identify it as being of the era (no bad thing), Wanderland is a welcome – if not unexpected – departure from the braggadocio of N*E*R*D and Clipse… even if the Rosco P Coldchain feature on “Digital World” makes you think Ab-Liva is going to pop around the corner any second.Ībout halfway through Wanderland, “Shooting Stars” starts to sound like something out of a late-90s shoegaze album, or Frank Ocean a decade ahead of schedule. Ultimately, this is a Kelis album first and foremost, not a Neptunes project. Pharrell himself lends vocals to a handful of tracks, but, like Clipse’s appearances, these spots help tether Wanderland to our familiarity with The Neptunes’ sound rather than overshadowing the album’s departure from it.
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