Anyone who came of age in the 2000s knows about Kelis, the singer responsible for
letting our imaginations run wild with her hit song, "Milkshake." She was once an R&B icon,
until she disappeared. Keep watching to discover whatever happened to Kelis.
We've all heard stories of celebs running side businesses away from their regular
A-list endeavors. Kelis went so far as to make the mundane a part of her everyday life.
She moved into a 24-acre farm in wine country that's about two and
a half hours outside of Los Angeles, along with her husband, Mike Mora,
and her two sons, Shepherd and Knight. In 2020, she gave The Guardian a tour, as she revealed,
"Over in that front corral is where the vegetable garden is, and then I've got my seedlings here.
I'm waiting for my greenhouse to be built. We have chickens coming and also baby goats."
She also noted that she was mulling over a, quote, "cow situation." This is a far
cry from her "Bossy" days, as she's swapped the microphone for a plow. As she explained,
"It’s pretty much my husband and me looking
after the farm. You get up in the morning and do what you gotta do,
and then you look around and you’re like: Why does it still look like this? Oh my God!"
"There was just so much work to be done. So it's a process! Every day,
we're like, Oh my gosh, like, you know, like, that cow is stank."
With no passing cars going by and the nearest shop half an hour away,
Kelis is living in total isolation — and she loves it.
One reason that Kelis hasn't released an album since 2014 may have something to do with the fact
that she isn't a fan of the city where the stars go to shine. As she told The Guardian in 2020,
"I hate L.A. I was only ever there for work. Because it's not like New York or London,
there's nowhere to go after 10 at night, so suddenly you're getting up
early in the mornings and you're juicing and you're hiking."
When Kelis was a part of the pop music scene,
record companies didn't exactly know what to do with her. She refused to be confined
to the R&B and hip-hop boxes that young black artists are typically placed in.
While her independence can be seen as an accomplishment, it also made it more difficult for
her to get ahead. She expressed that sentiment in an Instagram post in June 2020 that said,
"If the music industry wants to support Black lives, labels and platforms can start with
amending contracts, distributing royalties, diversifying boardrooms, and retroactively
paying back all the Black artists, and their families, they have built their empires on."
We all know that Kelis' milkshake brings all the boys to the yard,
but it turns out that her culinary talents extend beyond sugary desserts. She even
took a break from recording music to train as a saucier at the prestigious culinary institution,
Le Cordon Bleu. In 2015, she told Time Magazine,
"I have seven albums under my belt and I've never felt so accomplished. It's funny, though,
because even having gone to school and having done everything that every other trained chef has done,
people still want to question or discredit [me] or make it like, 'Oh, cute!'"
Also in 2015, Kelis released a cookbook entitled My Life on a Plate, which,
according to the synopsis, tells her "personal story through the food she creates." When she
was a kid growing up in New York, she watched her chef mother run a catering business in her home.
That laid the groundwork that inspired her to pursue her own culinary ambitions so many
years later. In addition to her cookbook, she's also appeared as a guest judge on Bravo's Top
Chef Masters, and she's had her own shows on the Food Network and Cooking Channel.
Just because Kelis has stepped away from the microphone doesn't mean that she's given up on
her personal brand. In fact, she's actually managed to combine her two other passions,
fashion and the culinary arts, into an entire lifestyle brand. Her professional journey as a
foodie began after she graduated from Le Cordon Bleu in 2008. As she wrote on her website,
"I didn't go in thinking about specializing in anything although I graduated without a doubt
knowing that I am a saucier. I believe everything is better smothered, dipped, and poured."
Sure enough, Kelis jumped headfirst into launching her own full line of sauces,
which are branded with the name Bounty & Full. Her training has clearly paid off,
with her name as a saucier only growing. Her brand has grown to include a line of olive oil,
ready-to-eat chicken, jam, a YouTube channel, cooking tips,
and handmade Columbian handbags. And here we were, thinking she could only make milkshakes.
With her culinary training and sauce line under her belt, Kelis' next obvious step was to show
off her cooking chops on TV. And that's exactly what she did in 2014 when the Cooking Channel
picked up a limited series with her called Saucy and Sweet. It featured some elements
of reality TV and thus steered clear of a more traditional version of cooking shows.
Since then, Kelis has remained in the TV game. In 2020, Netflix released the marijuana-focused
competition show Cooked with Cannabis, which featured the singer co-hosting alongside
chef Leather Storrs. While promoting the show, Kelis proudly told Entertainment Weekly,
"We are able to put something that has been demonized, and that is still not completely legal,
and we're bringing it to the forefront to show that it is not about loser stoners."
"Bring on the weed."
While the singer has made it a point to say that she personally isn't a marijuana chef,
she does believe there's one vessel that works best for the plant. As she told Thrillist,
"I think sauces work really well [...] I've had
some amazing infused olive oils and butters that complemented everything really well."
Pharrell Williams seems like the sort of musician that the whole world loves. He's released
feel-good hits and collaborated with countless artists. But one person who may not exactly be
a fan of Pharrell's is Kelis. In 2020, she talked with The Guardian about her debut album from 1999,
Kaleidoscope, which she's still incredibly proud of. Specifically, she's proud of:
"the femaleness of the album, of the freaking outspokenness of it,
the blackness of it, the alternativeness of it."
Unfortunately though, the album also
brings back bitter memories of her former friends Pharrell Williams and Chad Hugo,
aka the production duo known as The Neptunes. She met the pair through a mutual friend at a
performing arts school and then jumped headfirst into working with them. As she told The Guardian,
"I thought it was a beautiful and pure, creative safe space, but it ended up not being that at
all [...] I was told we were going to split the whole thing 33/33/33, which we didn't do."
Instead, she claims that she was lied to and tricked by the Neptunes and that she didn't
see a penny from the sales of her first two albums, which were both produced by the duo.
Kelis and Nas were once an A-list couple in the hip-hop community. They got married in 2005,
but she filed for divorce in 2009, and their split was finalized in 2010. In April 2018,
she revealed to Hollywood Unlocked that their marriage was anything but perfect. As she put it,
"There was a lot of just mental and physical abuse. [...] I probably would have stayed longer
had I not been pregnant, because I really did love him and because we were married."
Naturally, all eyes were turned on Nas after Kelis spoke out. In June 2018,
he responded to the accusations in a since-deleted Instagram post, as he stated,
"You insulted any and everyone whoever was around me. Not a single person in my life
loved or could even stand you. Luckily for you our assistants all signed NDA’s or you would have
a list of men and women who would happily talk about how verbally abusive and evil you are."
Nas also explicitly denied the abuse accusation by saying that he doesn't beat women.
Back at the turn of the century, Kelis was hot on the tails of her successful debut album.
She didn't wait long to jump back into the studio for her second release, Wanderland,
which was all set to arrive in 2001. Leading up to the release, she told MTV News,
"I think it's a very clear step up from my last album. I'm totally thrilled with it.
It's a really personal record. It's the kind of record that, like, the entire world could
hate it and I'd still be in my house, going 'Woo-hoo!' I'm so content with it because it's
so me. If people don't receive it, they don't receive me. I'm praying that they do, though."
It's a total shame then that Kelis never got a chance to properly see the public's reactions to
Wanderland. Thanks to a series of mergers and other behind-the-scenes strife, the album got
lost in the shuffle. When it was released in Europe, Kelis parted ways with her label, and
Wanderland was never released Stateside. It looked like a tragedy in the making as a great artistic
work was set to be lost to history forever. But then, in 2019, thanks to the popularity of
streaming platforms, Wanderland was finally made available globally. Kelis said in a statement,
"It’s been a long time coming, I had given up... well almost. I was shocked
to wake up this morning to see it had been streamed. All the politics of it aside,
it feels good and I’m happy that it’s been given its time to live on speakers across the country."
In early 2020. Kelis made a high-profile televised comeback, which both surprised
and delighted her long-time fans. That January, she appeared on stage dressed as a giant daisy
in a black sequined suit on the first season of the British version of The Masked Singer.
The show features a colorful assortment of celebrities dressed up in costumes and concealing
their identities while judges guess who's hidden behind the masks. Rita Ora was the only judge to
correctly guess that it was Kelis under the Daisy, and once her veil came off, the crowd went wild.
"Can I just say, one of the most important artists of when I was growing up, ever. You really were."
During her time on The Masked Singer, Kelis performed songs by The Weeknd, Bonnie Raitt,
and Nat King Cole. While the show looked like it was truly a blast to shoot, Kelis later revealed
during an appearance on the British chat show Lorraine that it wasn't all fun and games.
"It was really hard. It is hard. It's awkward, and it's hot!"
In 2019, to celebrate 20 years since the release of her debut album Kaleidoscope,
Kelis announced that she would be going on tour in the United Kingdom and Europe.
In a statement, her label said that the album feels:
"As fresh and relevant today as it did on release and not only influenced,
but defined music, culture, and style for generations to follow."
Sure enough, Kelis' fans never left her. She commands over 500,000 followers on Instagram,
and fellow A-listers are happy to gush about her. Kelly Rowland, for one, told Fader,
"What I admire the most about Kelis is how real and honest
she is. What she offers as an artist and a person is authentic and genuine,
you don't have to guess. Kelis is adventurous, never afraid to try anything."
Unfortunately for Kelis, though, her tour never got a chance to finish,
due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In April 2020, she told Entertainment Weekly,
"It's really bad out there. Our whole business is based around people. This is festival season. All
my shows got canceled. People forget it's not just the artists. Like, yeah I was affected,
but I had an entire band out with me and I had crew. It all has a domino effect."
While times are tough now, we're confident that as soon as she's able to,
Kelis will be hitting the stage yet again with some more tasty tunes.
Check out one of our newest videos right here! Plus,
even more Nicki Swift videos about your favorite musicians are coming soon.
Subscribe to our YouTube channel and hit the bell so you don't miss a single one.