| I just realized that the physical CD which bears the remixer's name is in a CD wallet currently being sent to me from a hotel in South Carolina, but I wanted to post this chopped version of Kelis' "Bossy" anyway because, first, how often am I gonna be the guy to bring you a track off a barely-labeled disc sitting next to the register at a gas station an hour outisde of Houston?, and second, as an excuse to mention that I enjoyed Kelis Was Here (the official/full-speed version, that is) more than most things I heard on tour. I come to it in relative ignorance, past a few well-known hits: I get that the career (persona) arc so far has been, in broad outline, quirky --> freaky, but I have never heard the lauded first 2 discs and shelved Tasty as padded (all of which I plan to rectify, though I'm pretty sure I just don't like "Millionaire"). In other words: the Neptuneslessness doesn't mean much to me. So what do I like? The studied rawness of several of her vocal approaches, which are varied across the album (and sometimes within a songs); which helps the album hang together in a manner I associate with Prince; the way that "What's That Right There" is almost explicitly an exercise in rewriting "My Humps" with greater economy; that, in a climate where much heavy-breathing R&B just gives me the giggles, "Blindfold Me" (by outside writers but tailored to K. and her popular thug) at least makes me want to fan myself a bit; the opaque mix of "Appreciate Me," which, were we to continue to name production techniques for Waffle House hash-brown styles, would be termed "smothered"; the balance between hott/sassy tracks ("Handful") and spacy/pretentious ones ("Trilogy"). Negatives: "Circus," on the fakeness of the biz, is both a bad song and a bad sign; the songs that are all "I also like rock" (glam-rock, at that) don't convince. But the demo-studio-sounding bonus track, I can't get enough of: jabby Mick Jones gtr riff obliquely intersected by a keyboard line and a number of vocal hooklets, stitched into a song form I've yet to wholly untangle. Actually, hearing the screwed version helps; I think I'll post that too. |
