Five years. Yep, that’s about the appropriate amount of time to get over a divorce. At least for Harlem lady Kelis.
On the eve of her comeback, the singer talked to the British publication about her new album “Food,” her love of cooking, relationship with the music industry and divorce from Nas. For the interview, Kelis is pictured in a throwback 60s hair and dresses from her video “Jerk Chicken”. The new look favors her new sound’s classic richness.
On the genre she fits into: “I was never an R&B artist. People coined me one but that’s because, especially if you’re in the States, if you’re black and you sing, then you’re R&B.”
On why she faded into black for a couple years: “After ‘Kelis Was Here’ I was done. I was like, ‘I will never put out another record again, I hate this business, I hate all these people.’ I was in this race that I didn’t even realize that I was in. I woke up and ten years had passed. That was never my plan. My desire was never to put out albums, it was to do musical theater!”
On her love of food: “There’s a point where you think, ‘What else will I do if I don’t do music?’ It becomes your identity when it never should have been. But food ignited a fire in me and I came right back to music because it no longer felt like a job. It was a really powerful thing for me.”
On her divorce from Nas: “I’ve been divorced for almost five years; it’s over, I’m over it. But what I would say is that last year I was made more aware of it because my ex-husband decided to talk about stuff that I hadn’t shared with the world. He slipped my wedding dress on to his album cover [2012’s Life Is Good], so now I have to talk about it! I had no idea it was happening, I was like, ‘What the…?’ But it didn’t affect my life. I’m not living that life now. I’m super-content and at peace.”
Checkout the video:
To read the full interview, go here.
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