So. R&B is the coolest, most creative and financially lucrative music in the world right now, and you are one of the scene's rising stars. You have a terrific voice, a notable image and the muscle of one of the hottest writing/producing teams around - The Neptunes - behind you. True, your debut album didn't quite do the business in America, but there's time for that; you're still in your very early 20s, after all. What next? Stick with the programme, or radically change direction?
Never let it be said Kelis takes the easy option. For two hours tonight, the New York singer takes an extraordinarily strange and almost certainly ill-advised wander off the career path. Her chosen mode of expression? Rock. Grungy, flaccid, fretwanking stadium rock. It's hard not to admire the audacity of Kelis' performance and, sure, R&B could use more unpredictable thinking in the way it presents itself live.
But blimey, a lot of this is rough stuff. The mission of Kelis' band (all female, save the shocking drummer, whose failed attempts to spin and catch his sticks prove one of the evening's highlights) appears to be to smother all the bounce and verve of her often brilliant songs. It begins ropily, with a murky version of 'Mars'. By the time they've massacred 'Good Stuff' and 'Caught Out There', we're wondering if it's a conceptual experiment in genre realignment.
In Kelis' favour, the lack of slickness is kind of refreshing, and her enthusiasm is infectious. She's an eccentric figure, with the Krazy Kolor afro replaced by brown hair piled into a giant wonky mohawk. And, after watching her strut around like a grumpy chicken while the two guitarists trade "licks", it all suddenly becomes clear. The mohawk, the constipated dance, the frightening rock - Kelis is Tina Turner reborn, without the problem throat and bastard husband. Great.
Whether all this madness will surface on her forthcoming second album, 'Wanderland', is anyone's guess. Some of the new songs she plays may well be excellent, but in their squalling live incarnations it's pretty hard to judge (first single 'Young, Fresh And New' is horribly redolent of the Red Hot Chili Peppers here). Evidently, touring with U2 has engendered a clogging spirit in Kelis and her musicians, a compulsion to rock that's innovative in context, but not terribly successful in practice.
There's a certain barmy abandon to the show that ensures it's always entertaining, after a fashion: surreal covers of The Doors ('Light My Fire'), The Eurythmics ('Sweet Dreams') and Nirvana (a cataclysmically funny 'Smells Like Teen Spirit'). But is this really what we want? It's been said, many times before, that rock'n'roll can steal away the best years of your life. In this case, there's a danger it just might be true.
