How Has It Been This Long Since a New Kelis Album?
How has it been this long?! Music trailblazer Kelis says her seventh studio album is practically complete, putting us closer than ever to her first full-length project since 2014’s Food.
And yes, twelve years without a proper Kelis album feels slightly impossible when you remember just how much ground she has covered since Kaleidoscope landed in 1999. R&B, hip-hop, electronic, funk, soul, dance music — Kelis has never particularly cared which box anyone wanted her in, which is exactly why a new record from her still feels like an event.
But this one carries an entirely different kind of curiosity.
Since Food, Kelis has lived a whole lot of life. She lost her husband, photographer Mike Mora, to stomach cancer in 2022. She continued raising her three children, pushed even deeper into farming and food, and eventually relocated to Kenya, where she bought hundreds of acres near Lake Naivasha and began building another chapter of her life on the land.
So lyrically? We are extremely curious about what she has to say now.
Kelis has always sounded best when the music feels inseparable from wherever she is personally. Heartbreak, lust, independence, anger, appetite, reinvention — she has never needed to spell everything out for you to know there is a real person behind thee record.
Her last album, Food, gave us “Jerk Ribs,” “Rumble” and “Friday Fish Fry,” wrapping soul, funk and horn-heavy warmth around a record that already felt like another left turn in a career made almost entirely of left turns.
Before that came records and singles that permanently scrambled genre lines: “Caught Out There,” “Milkshake,” “Trick Me,” “Millionaire,” “Bossy,” “Acapella” and plenty more. Kelis has never really repeated herself, which makes twelve years of accumulated life experience especially tantalizing.
She has previously described the new material as an honest progression of who she has been, even joking that the sound lives somewhere around Wu-Tang Clan and Sade having a baby. More importantly, she has said she needed to step away, live her life and come back when she actually had something to say.
Well. She has certainly lived.
There is still no official album title, release date or tracklist, but Kelis says the project is nearly there. After this much time, we can handle a little more mystery. Barely.
We are always scoping for a new Kelis album. Are you ready?
Kelis Teases Her Long-Awaited Seventh Studio Album
The new record will follow 2014’s Food, ending the longest album gap of Kelis’ career.
Sources: Kelis; Rolling Stone AU/NZ; Pitchfork.
