Flesh Tone

Kelis is the unluckiest R&B singer of the modern era. She's enjoyed big hits that have crossed over from urban radio to the novelty-hungry pop audience. The problem is just that, though: Songs like "Milkshake" and "Caught Out There" were taken as novelty songs in the U.S. With Kelis classed as a weirdo outsider-- or worse, nothing more than a mouthpiece for the Neptunes-- both 1999's Kaleidoscope and 2003's Tasty sank from memory once America had squeezed her striking singles dry. Kelis hit the scene in that brief window opened by Missy Elliot, when it looked like R&B radio might have room for more than one oddball with an experimentalist's bent. Despite the fact that her producer pals had the zeitgeist in a stranglehold for a few years, this proved not to be case, to say the least.