“There are moments in my life when it was like, ‘I made a really good decision,’ and that was one of them,” she said of her yearlong experience at the renowned cooking school. Then there’s the singer Kelis (of “Milkshake” fame), who brings a somewhat reversed order of operations to the term: In 2008, the Grammy Award-winning performer graduated from the culinary institution Le Cordon Bleu, thus adding the “chef” title to her well-established stardom. It’s fun.When one hears the phrase “celebrity chef,” various food-TV-world personalities like Bobby Flay, Giada De Laurentiis or Tom Colicchio of “Top Chef” might come to mind. I do all kinds of different flavours and things, and I’ve got a sauce line called Feast that I’m launching this summer. Speaking of, I hear you’re a bit of a whiz in the kitchen.
But it’s just one of those things where when you’re doing it you don’t have time for anything else, you know? I’m living my life and doing stuff and when I have something to say, I’ll say it. I’m someone who, once I’ve done something and I’ve succeeded to even half the point that I thought I would, I’m kind of like: ‘What am I doing?’ I don’t think I’ll ever stop making music but I don’t know that I’ll always do it to this capacity. It’s that kind of catch-22 because you have to do it, but it’s hard. It’s very hard to take something that’s supposed to be genuine and heartfelt and make a business out of it. I’m grateful for it, I’m blessed by it daily and I am very, very grateful. Life happens and you grow and then, when you start to make another record, you don’t have to think about being different because you are different. I also think I give myself enough time between each record to sort of be a different person. I do like that I never have any idea what’s coming from you anymore, album to album. The Star recently rang the Harlem native up at home in New York in anticipation of her performance Wednesday night at the Hoxton. From the Neptunes-abetted swagger of calling-card singles like “ Caught Out Here,” Ol’ Dirty Bastard’s “Got Your Money” and the mighty “ Milkshake” to the full-on dive into dance music represented by 2010’s David Guetta-produced Flesh Tone to the classicist classiness of Food, she’s consistently kept us guessing as to her next move. Increasingly, music is becoming a side dish to Kelis’s love of the kitchen, not to mention the demands of single-parenting a wee sprout named Knight, the 4-year-old offspring of her mid-2000s relationship with ex-husband Nas.įrankly, it would be a shame if Kelis gave up music for good, as she’s contemplated in the past, because she’s had an unpredictable and thoroughly intriguing 15-year run. She’s a Cordon Bleu-credentialed saucier with a cookbook and a Cooking Channel special already under her belt and her own line of sauces dubbed Feast on the way later this summer. For, you see, Kelis (née Rogers) has other interests, chief among them. It’s not that she doesn’t enjoy making music, of course it’s the all-consuming nature of the music business that she finds distasteful. Kelis dropped one of the year’s most celebrated R&B albums back in April in the form of her sixth ( and arguably best) LP, Food, yet her commitment to music as a career remains standoffish at best.