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" Can becoming a saucier make you less\u00E2\u20AC\u00A6 well, saucy? Witness Kelis Rogers: the singer who, fed up with record-label wrangles following the release of 2006&amp;#039;s Kelis Was Here, enrolled herself in a Cordon Bleu cooking school and spent four years becoming a certified chef. It&amp;#039;s made her a dabber hand in the kitchen - at this year&amp;#039;s SXSW festival in Austin, Texas, she cooked homemade ribs from her own food van - but you&amp;#039;d be forgiven for wondering if her devotion to becoming Kelis, Domestic Goddess doesn&amp;#039;t leave much room for her to still be Kelis, Popstar. And however tasty her new repertoire of recipes might be, it&amp;#039;d be a damn shame if she lost her knack for rustling up tastes as sublime as the bitter rant of breakthrough single &amp;#039;Caught Out There&amp;#039;, the naughty rattle-and-grind of &amp;#039;Milkshake&amp;#039; and sweet &amp;#039;n&amp;#039; sticky tang of &amp;#039;Trick Me&amp;#039;. But Food - Kelis&amp;#039;s first album for British indie label Ninja Tune - nixes the idea she&amp;#039;s been spreading herself too thin right from the start. Early track &amp;#039;Breakfast&amp;#039;, a blast of funk-soul with warm, crackling horns, is introduced by a child impishly asking &amp;quot;Are you hungry? My mum made food.&amp;quot; There&amp;#039;s nothing Delia Smith-safe about what follows, though: a chorus of purred-and-grrred &amp;quot;ooh-ahh&amp;quot; grunts, and a wink-wink pay-off of Kelis pouting: &amp;quot;Maybe we&amp;#039;ll make it to breakfast.&amp;quot; Likewise, &amp;#039;Floyd&amp;#039;, with its slower, sultrier and more intimate brass, finds her throwing out another innuendo-laden come-on, as she husks: &amp;quot;I got some space, I want that man to fill it.&amp;quot; If music be the food of love, then the music of Food is a scoffer&amp;#039;s indulgent delight.      Some of the plaudits for Food&amp;#039;s sound will go to TV on the Radio man Dave Sitek (and, after his recent work on Yeah Yeah Yeahs&amp;#039; Mosquito - a mixed bag - and Beady Eye&amp;#039;s BE - a colostomy bag - one imagines they&amp;#039;ll be welcome). And certainly, his production does a fine job in bringing a rootsy warmth to the classic soul sounds, a mixture of classy brass, earthy guitars and simmering electronics that&amp;#039;s far richer than the hard, EDM-influenced edges of 2010&amp;#039;s Flesh Tone. Kelis, though, is responsible for giving Food its snap. If this post-Adele world has become cluttered with many-a-chancer who has tried their hand at vintage soul only to come up clutching nothing but cheap, tacky plastic, then her smoky, sultry voice has an authenticity that can&amp;#039;t be faked. Her pipes turn the skittering groove and horn parps of &amp;#039;Jerk Ribs&amp;#039; into an infectious, laid-back banger, and her breathy vocals bring an understated sex-funk to the limb-jerking beats of &amp;#039;Hooch&amp;#039;. It&amp;#039;s that knack for chameleonic shapeshifting that gives Food its flavour. At her best, Kelis has always had a roving eye for other sounds, styles and genres; an insatiable need to flirt elsewhere and flit from the Neptunes-produced sound of her early records to neo-soul, classic pop and smooth RnB. Here, she&amp;#039;s able to make chameleonic transformations from one song to the next, whether she&amp;#039;s the stern funk-god of &amp;#039;Friday Fish Fry&amp;#039; in which she hollers &amp;quot;I need ice cold water&amp;quot; before whipping up a feverish call-and-response storm, the sassy glamazon of the bongo-infused &amp;#039;Cobbler&amp;#039; or the cinematic heroine of &amp;#039;Change&amp;#039;, a sweeping, mariachi-like belter which sounds like it could have been lifted from an old Quentin Tarantino flick. Inevitably, such extensive range means the odd duff note: the gentle acoustic jangle of &amp;#039;Bless the Telephone&amp;#039; lacks oomph, while the break-up woes of &amp;#039;Rumble&amp;#039; are undercut by a melody that has a naff aftertaste of Sainsbury&amp;#039;s-produced soul. But minor hiccups aren&amp;#039;t enough to stop Food from being one of the most inventive, inviting dishes Kelis has ever served. Tuck in - you won&amp;#039;t need any extra sauce.  Tracks to download: &amp;#039;Jerk Ribs&amp;#039;, &amp;#039;Hooch&amp;#039;, &amp;#039;Cobbler&amp;#039; "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.digitalspy.com/music/album-reviews/review/a565110/kelis-food-album-review-the-most-inventive-dish-she-has-served/>