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What makes it 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.
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Wonderfully whimsical.
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Her multitudinous influences, free from the collagen that an omnipresent production team offered, have dissolved and separated out of their former matrix, the subsequent runny blotches of genre-hashing burbling up to fill Kelis Was Here with rubbish that has no discernible order.
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Sliced in half, Kelis' fourth album would be twice as good. As an EP it would be perfect. But in it's current incarnation, it's one to cherry pick from your favourite download store.
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The result? An album that could just as easily bear the name of any other pop singer working the charts today.
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Entertainment WeeklyThe results are eclectic, erratic, and lacking anything likely to repeat the success of "Milkshake." [25 Aug 2006, p.85]
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Los Angeles TimesFew artists could line up an ode to bondage right next to a love song so sweet that it could be played at a wedding or invoke Joan Jett right after sharing a cosmic trip with Cee-Lo. That's what Kelis does here. [20 Aug 2006]
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MojoA typical case of slack self-editing... Kelis was here too long, frankly. [Nov 2006, p.101]
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The results are not quite Tasty, but they're pretty damn close.
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New Musical Express (NME)Although the collaborations here read like pop's Yellow Pages... it feels not like desperation, but a wildly ambitious Warhol-esque art project. [9 Sep 2006, p.35]
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Kelis... raps, rants and successfully maintains her spacey freakiness while sailing out into even radio-friendlier waters.
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The album occasionally misfires... but there's still sass and creativity here.
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With the oddball charisma toned down and the lens zooming in on Kelis' melisma-adverse vocals, one is left with the sense that all of these songs could be bigger and more distinct, but it's hard to pinpoint how exactly. This drawback is also ultimately the album's draw: Given time to settle in, many of these songs are among Kelis's most charming, ingratiating themselves with surprising ease.
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The songs are individually good, but don't really sound like they should have been grouped together on an album.
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Kelis is one of the mainstream's most exciting artists right now, and she continues to defy expectations with Kelis Was Here.
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Q MagazineKelis is blessed with a unique voice. [Nov 2006, p.143]
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She does so many things right it's hard to point out any one in particular.
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Kelis Was Here sounds like a talented, left-field hip-hop diva in a holding pattern, concerned about her legacy but uncertain as to how to go about cementing it.
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SpinHer... most streamlined effort yet. [Sep 2006, p.104]
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Bloated with ideas and parsimonious with tunes.
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A bloated 77-minute collection that badly mistakes quantity for quality.
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It's typically garish and glorious.
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UncutKelis' versatility... may mean she'll never hit like Beyonce, but she's still many producers' most stylish leading lady. [Nov 2006, p.117]
User score distribution:
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Positive: 32 out of 40
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Mixed: 3 out of 40
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Negative: 5 out of 40
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Oct 23, 2017
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Aug 15, 2013
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LisaNov 26, 2006