Kelis loves life and creates new music: “The record is almost finished”

Ten long years have passed since the last time Kelis released an album of new material. This drought is coming to an end.

“I've been recording my new record for a while now,” the “Milkshake” singer explains on a call from Nairobi, Kenya, a place she's admittedly fallen in love with.

“The thing is when I start, if I don't keep the momentum going then it's like I'm a new person until I start again and then I don't care about what I've already done,” he says. album-interview-65868/” target=”_blank”>Rolling Stone AU/NZ. I feel young, improved, “I'm starting again. This has happened a few times in recent years.”

This won't happen again. The R&B star admits she's kept her momentum going and is now “in a space where I'm closer to doing something that I've done, which is really good.”

How close? “The record is almost over. I'd say I'm like a good 75-80% there.”

The continuation of 2014 Foodrecorded with Dave Sitek from TV On The Radio, her latest dish was mostly recorded on her farm, a 26-acre tract in Temecula, CA where she lives with her family.

That experience was “just so comfortable and really made me feel like myself,” she explains. “I didn't feel like I had to go outside of myself to create, which was really good.”

As a creative, “I'm an extremist,” she says with a laugh. “Either I travel as far as humanly possible or I don't want to go anywhere and I want everything to be on the farm.”

In the next few days, he will tick the first box. Kelis will present a keynote presentation at BIGSOUND 2024the annual music industry convention and expo, presented in Brisbane, Australia.

“It's a lot Kelis record. I don't know how, but it sounds to me. It's just in line with who I am and where I've been. I love this record because it feels like an honest evolution of who I've been all this time.” He continues, “that's why sometimes it takes me so long. I need to step away and live my life. Then I come back and I have something to say.”

Kelis had something to say in 2022 with the release of “Midnight Snacks,” continuing a food theme that has run through her recording career and flourished when the Harlem-born artist completed training as a Le Corden Blue chef.

These talents have propelled Kelis into the world of celebrity chefs, with multiple cooking TV specials on Netflix, the Cooking Channel and the Food Network, and the cookbook My life on a plateinspired by her travels.

Kelis has landed seven songs on the Billboard Hot 100, with a career-high No. 3 for 2003's “Milkshake.” Also, five of her albums have landed on the Billboard 200, including a top 10 appearance for 2006 Kelis was hereit won Brit, Q and NME Awards and was nominated for two Grammys.

A mother of three, Kelis, 45, feels “really content,” she tells this reporter. “Even through all that has happened. I am truly grateful. I've had a really great career and I've enjoyed every second of it and I'm kind of in the next phase of my life right now and it's fantastic. I feel really good.”

Don't expect “a bunch of singles” from her next collection. “You have to put the thing in and let it play. It's like that kind of vibe.” If it had to be pigeon-holed, imagine “if Wu-Tang and Sand had a baby, that's kind of where we're at,” she reveals. “It's not the way it is now, is it?”