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Uber chameleon Kelis does a hot job of allowing the listener to enter her multi-faceted world with the tightly rendered Kelis Was Here. From track to track the Harlem native manages to add multitudinous layers to her already complex persona while nimbly understating her unique vocal skills. 

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Fans of the last Kelis outing, Tasty, may be pleasantly surprised with the scope of this album which takes you from funky soul, to pop-py punk, to alternative hip-hop, to chilled out jazz. While there is almost no cohesiveness as an album, each song magically stands on its own, thereby creating the perfect downloadable album where the listener decides the perfect order to play the tracks. So depending on your mood you can start off with the pristinely precise hip-hop jam "Bossy" (excellent except for the crass Too Short shouting "Biiitch!" in the bridge), the calypso drenched "Have A Nice Day," the techno-splattered dance track "Blindfold Me," the driving simplicity of the funky "Till The Wheels Fall Off" or even the Parliament-Funkadelic raunch of "What's That Right There."

Meanwhile, retro flavor on the will.i.am-produced super-funky "Weekend" is so '80s it makes you wanna work it out at the local rollerskating rink, while the so-annoying-it's good "Like You" takes advantage of the Magic Flute opera melody for a catchy track that is almost guaranteed to bob your head. The absence of the Neptunes is almost a relief here as the flavors of the various producers (such as Cool & Dre on the introspective "Goodbyes," or Raphael Saadiq on the jazzy music industry blast "Circus") lend themselves to Kelis'  numerous flavors. The envelope pushing singer even manages to vocally morph between tracks, from sassy to husky to tortured ("Appreciate Me"), and "Lil Star" featuring Cee-Lo is a refreshing, truly unexpected soul gem.

Download: "Bossy" "Like You" "Till The Wheels Fall Off" "Weekend" "What's That Right There" "Blindfold Me" "Goodbyes" "Lil Star" 

  To purchase CDs, click on the cover art or title link. To legally download, click on the iTunes logo. If you do not have iTunes, you can download it here by clicking the "download iTunes" logo above.