Kelis

Kelis Rogers, born in Manhattan in 1979, came up through New York's music world: she played saxophone at the LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts, sang with the Girls Choir of Harlem, and did time as a backing singer for Gravediggaz before Pharrell Williams and Chad Hugo, the Neptunes, steered her to Virgin Records in 1998. A year later she was the voice riding Ol' Dirty Bastard's "Got Your Money".

Her own debut, Kaleidoscope, in 1999, drew on vintage jazz and disco and won raves, but it stiffed at home and found its audience overseas, led by the furious "Caught Out There". When Wanderland, in 2001, sold poorly too, she and Virgin went separate ways.

Then came Tasty in 2003, on the Neptunes' Star Trak label, and the breakthrough. "Milkshake" is a slinky, minimal, gloriously strange strut of a single that went to number three on the Billboard Hot 100 and number two in the UK, with "Trick Me" matching it there. She has kept moving since: "Bossy" and Kelis Was Here in 2006, a turn through Le Cordon Bleu, the electronic Flesh Tone in 2010 and the neo-soul, food-themed Food in 2014, with ten UK top-ten singles along the way.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.