Kelis Was Here

Release and promotion

The album's lead single, "Bossy", features rapper Too Short. The song peaked at number 16 on the Billboard Hot 100 and was certified double platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) on December 11, 2006. The second single from the album, "Blindfold Me", featuring Nas, was released solely in the United States. It failed to enter the Billboard Hot 100, while peaking at number 91 on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart. "Lil Star", which features Cee-Lo of the duo Gnarls Barkley, was released internationally as the album's third and final single. The track reached number three on the UK Singles Chart, earning Kelis her fifth UK top-five hit as a lead artist.

Due to the use of "I Don't Think So" in a promotional advertising for Big Brother Australia 2008, the song entered the Australian ARIA Singles Chart at number 49 on April 21, 2008. The following week it rose to number 29, ultimately peaking at number 27.

Critical reception

Kelis Was Here received generally positive reviews from music critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a weighted mean rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album received an average score of 70, based on 23 reviews. Ann Powers from the Los Angeles Times praised its eclectic music and said that it "mines a memory of R&B as the playground of category-dismantling individualists." NME magazine wrote that it feels like "a wildly ambitious Warhol-esque art project." Kelefa Sanneh from The New York Times described the album as "typically garish and glorious", with sounds that range from "space-age hip-hop ... to space-age guitar pop". Q magazine said that the album is "chock-full of surreal soul diamonds." Pitchfork Media's Tim Finney wrote that, like Wanderland, the album is "formally varied but feels consistent—even monochrome in parts." In a review for The Observer, Peter Robinson commented that the album "occasionally misfires ... but there's still sass and creativity here." MSN Music's Robert Christgau gave Kelis Was Here a one-star honorable mention, indicating "a worthy effort consumers attuned to its overriding aesthetic or individual vision may well like." He cited "Blindfold Me" and "What's That Right There" as highlights, and quipped, "Good for sex and not much else, which in a fantasy object is plenty."

In a mixed review, Slant Magazine critic Preston Jones said that, although it is "an intriguing mishmash of sounds, beats, and vocal affectations", the album is "far too long" and lacks a song on-par with "Milkshake". Chris Salmon of The Guardian wrote that without the Neptunes, "contributors such as Black Eyed Peas' Will.i.am and [...] Shondrae reject all subtlety for songs that caricature Kelis as sexy, bolshy and not much else. The results are shallow and unconvincing, driven by the kind of brash holler and breathy schmaltz you would expect from J-Lo or Pussycat Dolls (complete with the rubbish guest raps)." Mikael Wood of Spin said that Kelis "consolidates" her previous "allure" and "turns up sex, turns down sass". Andy Kellman of AllMusic felt that it lacks first-rate material and "the range of emotions to match the varied backdrops." Quentin B. Huff of PopMatters argued that "[t]he songs are individually good, but don't really sound like they should have been grouped together on an album."

The album was nominated for Best Contemporary R&B Album at the 2007 Grammy Awards, but lost out to Beyoncé's B'Day.

Commercial performance

Kelis Was Here debuted at number 10 on the Billboard 200 with 58,000 copies sold in its first week, becoming Kelis' highest-peaking album on the chart to date. According to Nielsen SoundScan, the album had sold 160,000 copies in the United States as of May 2010.

The album debuted at number 41 on the UK Albums Chart, selling 6,709 copies in its first week. It was certified silver by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) on September 29, 2006, and by May 2010, it had sold 32,083 copies in the United Kingdom.

Track listing

Personnel

Credits adapted from the liner notes of Kelis Was Here.