More songs about FOOD…

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[7.43]
Jonathan Bogart: To glide over such classy and classic funk — horns! organ! hip-hop beats! — without stirring or seeming to move a hair out of place is its own form of mastery. I can’t help thinking of Beyoncé, her almost-exact contemporary, and comparing B’s supreme effortfulness with Kelis’ shrewd silences and restraint.
[8]
Brad Shoup: The players are perched somewhere between Egypt 80 and Daptonia 00. Actually, we’ve got decades on decades: Sun Ra’s futuristic fuckery, Philly strings, MJ-style synth squiggles, Stevie-style lyrical nostalgia. The bassist’s momentum is pitched toward prog, although the horns do everything you’d expect. Kelis is winningly ragged; what little melisma there is exists, presumably, so I won’t worry about her. For all the potentially distracting touches, the song is classically structured. A definite grower.
[8]
Alfred Soto: For once a title that knows whereof it speaks: the viscous bass lines and organ tinkles match the thick tang of Kelis’ vocal. The horns sound canned though — a Dave Sitek weakness.
[6]
Anthony Easton: Less stripped down than the rest of Kelis’s oeuvre, with some fantastic brass (is this the summer of horns?) and a burnished voice that fits seamlessly into a historically-minded (but not nostalgia-drenched) slow funk break down.
[7]
Scott Mildenhall: Kelis never sounds like she has to try, and she’s got a production here to match: unforced, unhurried and unadulteratedly joyful. She’s having a lovely time, and would quite like you to as well, but she’s not going to tell you to — she knows you’ll probably manage that yourself.
[8]
Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: I remember that when Kaleidoscope was released, around the time I received a copy for my eleventh birthday (you’re goddamn right if you’re thinking I was a cool kid), a prominent UK publication claimed that Kelis’s on-record personality marked her as a younger sister to Erykah Badu’s neo-soul matriarch. The comparison was bullhockey and always has been, as they’re two very different artists, but “Jerk Ribs” brought this memory back. It slinks around organic instrumentation, the artist setting cryptic scenes of family and musicianship alongside a romantic plea, the four minutes of music feeling as tightly coiled as they are loose and unhurried. There is plenty that makes this Kelis — her voice remains a bassy mark of authority — but perhaps those Badu comparisons were not as silly as I thought they were. Instead of Madlib or Sa-Ra’s space-groove compositions, however, we have Sitek, an incredibly talented producer who simply can’t deny a good Afrobeat horn section — see his Wale collaborations from 2009 for further proof. This reliance on his beloved horn sections leaves “Jerk Ribs” sounding a little like a first draft, something the upcoming FOOD will offer artistic progress on. For now, this is a solid take.
[6]
Rebecca A. Gowns: What a nice song!
[9]
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