Kelis - C/D

((It's probably quite juvenile that my impressions of an album can be tempered more by the kind of people who haaaaate it as much as the people who like it.))

and this, too, but I've never claimed to be above juvenalia

(Especially considering these are all the same snobs who were outraged when that false rumour went round last year that Boys Noize was gonna be producing Kelis.)

Is Kelis still bigger in the UK than the US? Because this is the sort of record that goes down a storm over here.

"Milkshake", "Bossy", and (too a smaller extent) "Caught Out There" are the only hits she's ever had over here.

to

"Caught out There" 54
"Milkshake" 3
"Bossy" (featuring Too Short) 16

^^Kelis' entire Billboard Hot 100 history

Whaaaaaaaaa!

This isn't even scheduled for release in the U.S. til July, which indicates it may go the way of Wanderland :/

i'd forgotten that 'Lil Star' was actually a top 3 hit here

i thought the only guetta production was "acapella" (which i dislike) and that boys noize did have a song on it? (dunno which but i'd guess "scream")

"mallectro" makes sense w/r/t uk high street clothes shops - new look as k8 says, top shop, miss selfridge et al. the production mostly reminds me of late-90s french filter house x straight-up commercial house (not so much guetta as, like, shapeshifters' "lola's theme" or something).

completely disagree that it sounds hacky or that there's a disconnect between kelis and the production though! it's certainly not as hacky as confessions on a dancefloor, which i LIKE but even then was fairly aware that a couple of songs apart that album basically = stellar grooves papering over non-songs.

there's this tremendous sense of euphoria throughout it - kelis all but abandons the idea of writing pop songs and just goes straight for a constant cascade of repeated, anthemic hooks - i rarely sense that she's trying to fit her songs to the beat, but more that she's improvising or writing based on the beat, and she's ready to pare herself down accordingly. but she still stamps her personality on it - her vocal hooks are SO huge ("it's not enough to SING so just SCREAM", "I was SUPER COOL but now I'm SUPER STRONG", "EMANCIPATE YOURSELF" etc), her husky voice works really well with the constantly building music, the motherhood narrative isn't laid on too thickly but is certainly present enough to be effective, particularly with "song for the baby" as the closer. it's sort of like her ray of light imo. and crucially the production avoids the recent commercial-dance pitfalls of being too focused on the treble.

With a couple of exceptions (Scream, Emancipate) it doesn't feel like she's really interacting with the beat properly, or aware of how it suits her vocals

i honestly don't hear this at all - it's true of the horrible "acapella" but elsewhere i could literally believe she's ad-libbing over the beat, going with it at all times!

i also think most of these trax would absolutely EXPLODE on any dancefloor

Yeah the difference with Confessions... is the Stuart Price is so strong even when he's not trying - at first blush there's no groove here as captivating as "Get Together", say, and Kelis is too understated a vocalist to carry it without tunes that match her (which is why she and the neptunes worked so well together, or one reason at least).

think "brave" and "scream" certainly match the booka-rip that is "get together" - the production's certainly not the star of the show here compared to confessions, there's no "whoa stuart price is a genius" moment, but that really enables kelis to shine imo. as for understatement...sure, in the past, but c'mon she's basically bellowing arms-in-the-air chants on every line here.

"it's not enough to SING so just SCREAM", "I was SUPER COOL but now I'm SUPER STRONG", "EMANCIPATE YOURSELF"

Haha these are total Lexnip phrases though but I don't hear them bursting with personality in the manner of a Caught Out There or Milkshake. Partly because the music they're tethered to is so anonymous. Not sure what big gulf in quality you're hearing between Acapella and everything else either.

she's basically bellowing arms-in-the-air chants on every line here

This is the problem, she's not bellowing really, she feels kind of overwhelmed by the production, maybe it's all just too loud </compressionbore>

lex entirely otm except for his bizarre "Acapella" hate, esp. about the motherhood narrative

I'm willing to consider that this just sounds shit on headphones.

Oh! It's 22nd Century. That was actually produced by BN.

xp possibly, but I do 95% of my listening on my stereo

Haha these are total Lexnip phrases though but I don't hear them bursting with personality in the manner of a Caught Out There or Milkshake.

ehhh, not so much personality as...character, i guess. like when the shapeshifters girl sings "I'M A DIFFERENT PERSON!" on "lola's theme". or sonique's "it feels so good", or rui da silva's "touch me" - those are the songs it reminds me of more than any latter-day urbanlectro fusion (i guess the key is that it's not in any way r&b, it's just a straight commercial diva house album, with all the blessings of anonymity that implies, albeit with a discernible and affecting emotional narrative and a famous name attached).

my real standouts so far are 4th of july/home/scream/brave, i think

The only one I don't really like so far is "Home" - I think it's those silly trance chords at the beginning that just rub me the wrong way.

Wish the Segues had production credits on them, tho.

the first track is italo *_*

One track into this and I'm already *whoooaaa*

Weirdly, and I hate songs where artists sing about their kids, but "Song for the Baby" is my favourite after a few listens.

The production on that track is really really great. Really warm, those horns are thrilling, and it's like an early 90s throwback without sounding like pastiche (too much, at least).

Which is why this won't be a huge success like those are. It's too adult (and too gay, but that's a different story).

― upper mississippi sh@key mo (The Reverend), Tuesday, May 25, 2010 11:09 AM (5 hours ago)

yeah this was my thought exactly - easily the gayest thing i've heard this year

don't think it will sell well at all either, but who knows

"Song For the Baby" works because it's not sentimental at all, just joyous and celebratory.

^^otm - the entire album's purpose seems to be conflating the euphoric highs of club culture and how motherhood has transformed her (kinda turning on its head how settling down with kids is when most people drift away from the hedonism of their youth).

it's not really about her kid, is it? it's about her, about how motherhood has made her feel on top of the world and 73 feet tall and all-powerful.

I really don't get it, sometimes, how someone can write an album which is *so* female (and all about WOMANHOOD as opposed to girlhood) and be all celebratory of motherhood and the power of it and all that kind of thing...

...and it still gets dismissed as sounding "gay".

Because it's full of euphoric boshing trancey Eurohouse and filterdisco maybe?

i'm not sure 'gay' is a dismissal?

Yeah that's the other thing.

Bear with me, this is a thought as still unformed. But I'm still not sure where the cut off point between "strong, emancipated female" and "gay iconry" really is. Because they often exist in the same space, they code the same? And this does, to my ear, go back to the 70s disco era and all those disco divas...

But, at the same time. It does worry the radicalfeministshoutybitchhityoursuggestbanbuttonnow in me the way that things which code "Female" yet also "emancipated and strong" code to some people as "gay" because they do not code as the usual "straight male heteronormative view of sexuality and females as weak passive ethereal unicorn girly elf creatures."

But that is a thought that I really do worry about expressing on ILM.

xpost i mean, this is strictyly-4-my-underground-homo-deep-house-thugs ilm here, 'gay' when used about music doesn't necc mean 'frivolous' or w/e.

"too adult (and too gay)" to be a hit record in the US in the way that "sexy bitch" and "i gotta feeling" are - that isn't a dismissal, it's a statement about qualities people perceive in music.

Yes, and I'm trying to get a feel for why those qualities are perceived that way - and why that means it won't be "a hit."

Anyway, I have work to do this morning so I can't really get into this, and don't feel like being suggest banned for my opinions this week, really.

No Kate I think I agree with you on the first bit, but contrasting it with "straight male heteronormative view of sexuality and females as weak passive ethereal unicorn girly elf creatures" is probably a bit too reductive and binary.

That said it might well be dismissed as too gay in parts of the US. In Europe, probably not. That said I'm not sure what "too gay to sell well" means at a time when the biggest pop star on the planet is Lady Gaga.

I think you're right that there is an overlap between 'strong female voice' and 'gay icon diva', and that this could be problematic. I don't think "dismissed" was the right verb to use, and I don't agree with your idea that the conflation of strong-female and gay is rooted in straight male heteronormativity. But, yeah, there is a germ of a thing there.

(basically, what Matt said)

the link between "strong female" and "gay diva icon" is already one that could do with a ton of unpacking, it's not a very straightforward thing...

Not sure they even need to be that strong, exhibit A being Kylie.

OK, maybe dismissed is the wrong word, but it is still ... odd to me.

It *is* something that needs unpacking, and obviously I come at it from a different side. (But these issues were raised by that massive Gaga interview by Caitlin Moran (sp?) this weekend so perhaps this is not the place.)

That said I'm not sure what "too gay to sell well" means at a time when the biggest pop star on the planet is Lady Gaga.

I'm not a big fan of Gaga except in the concept, but it's certainly going to be interesting to see what a post-Gaga pop landscape looks like.

And likewise while it might be fun to live in a world where people like Ms Dynamite or Lil Kim or No Lay are gay icons I don't see that happening any time soon.

Not sure they even need to be that strong, exhibit A being Kylie.

yeah this is something i posted on popular last week, the idea that someone like kylie codes gay, is a gay icon etc, actively offends me (never mind sodding dannii or sophie ellis-bextor) - wtf i feel no connection to these women, even if i like a few of their songs; the idea that there's some sort of intrinsic connection between being gay and liking what they do is so annoying. but then i've got pretty stereotypical gay love for madonna, mariah et al, so it's not as if the connection doesn't exist. it's just a lot more complex than it's usually presented as.

haha lil kim pretty much IS a gay icon though

and nicki minaj is well on her way to becoming one

Okay Trina then.

Also, listening to A Capella again, paying careful attention to the words, it irks me, in that it is almost the opposite of emancipation, in that it is a straight up hymn to the idea that motherhood is the perfect and ultimate realisation of Woman.

And while I don't necessarily have a problem with women expressing their joy at motherhood (though even Madonna had a hard time doing it without descending into schmaltz - Kelis certainly does it better than that) - this idea that it is somehow the paragon and ultimate destiny of Womanhood really REALLY winds me up.

(But this is one of the deep divisions even within Feminism itself, so it's not gonna get solved in a pop song, you know.)

I do like the song more and more the more I hear it, but for me, personally, even though I think the lyrics are good, as an accurate description of an emotion, they're not something I relate to at all in any way, and are so deeply related to a version of Femininity I find deeply troubling.

yeah it's a bit like on ray of light when madonna kept going on about how stupid she used to be (and here "i was super cool but now i'm super strong" is problematic despite being a pretty great line).

Hey, you know, I'm able to recognise that I actually *was* really stupid when I was 25 and I'm much Stronger at 39, but I didn't *NEED* to squeeze out a brat to realise that.