Kelis Was Here - Critical Reception

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". Ann Powers from the 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." Kelefa Sanneh from The New York Times described the album as "typically garish and glorious" and stated that "he sound ranges from space-age hip-hop to space-age guitar pop to, well, space-age hip-hop again." 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." Clover Hope of Billboard called it "wonderfully whimsical" and "thick with dynamic instrumentation", and referred to the songwriting as "surprisingly multilayered". Steve Hands of musicOMH opined that "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." Q gave the album four out of five stars and commented that it is "chock-full of surreal soul diamonds."

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". Chris Salmon of The Guardian, however, criticized the absence of The Neptunes, stating that "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." 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". Pitchfork Media's Tim Finney wrote that "like Wanderland, 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." Andy Kellman of Allmusic believed that "hat makes 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." In a review for The Observer, Peter Robinson commented that the album "occasionally misfires but there's still sass and creativity here." Quentin B. Huff of PopMatters argued that "he songs are individually good, but don't really sound like they should have been grouped together on an album." In his consumer guide for MSN Music, Robert Christgau gave Kelis Was Here a one-star honorable mention, indicating "a worthy effort consumers attuned to its overriding aesthetic or individual vision may well like." He cited "Blindfold Me" and "What's That Right There" as highlights, and quipped, "Good for sex and not much else, which in a fantasy object is plenty."