Kelis Is Loving Life, and Creating New Music: ‘The Record Is Almost Done’

Ten long years have passed since Kelis last released an album of new material. That drought is nearing its conclusion.

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

“The issue is when I start, if I don’t continue momentum, then it’s like I’m a new person by the time I start up again and then I’m not interested in what I had already done,” she tells Rolling Stone AU/NZ. Feeling new, improved, “I start again. That happened a few times over the past years.”

That won’t happen again. The R&B star admits she kept momentum going and she’s now “in a space where I’m the closest to being done that I’ve been, which is very good.”

How close? “The record is almost done. I would say I’m like a good 75-80% there.”

The followup to 2014’s Food, recorded with Dave Sitek from TV On The Radio, her latest dish was mostly recorded on her farm, a 26-acre spot in Temecula, CA where she lives with her family.

That experience was “just so comfortable and it really made me feel like myself,” she explains. “I didn’t feel like I was having to step out of myself to create, which was really good.”

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

In the days ahead, she’ll tick the first box. Kelis will deliver a keynote presentation at BIGSOUND 2024, the annual music industry conference and showcase extravaganza, presented in Brisbane, Australia.

“It’s a very Kelis record. I don’t know how, but it sounds like me. It’s right in line with who I am, and where I’ve been. I love this record because it feels like the honest progression of who I’ve been this whole time.” She continues, “that’s also sometimes why it takes me so long. I have 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 foodie theme that has woven through her recording career and flourished when the Harlem-born artist completed training as a Le Corden Blue chef.

Those talents took Kelis into the celebrity chef world, with multiple television cooking specials across Netflix, Cooking Channel, and Food Network, and the cookbook My Life on a Plate, inspired by her travels.

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

A mother to three kids, Kelis, 45, feels “really content,” she tells this reporter. “Even in the midst of all the things that have happened. I’m really grateful. I’ve had a really great career and I’ve enjoyed every second of it and I’m in that 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’ve gotta put the thing on and let it play. It’s like kind of that vibe.” If it had to be pigeonholed, imagine “if Wu-Tang and Sade had a baby, that’s kind of where we’re at,” she reveals. “It’s not like how things are right now either, right?”