Eighteen-years later, Kelis‘ Wanderland album is finally seeing a global launch and is now available on all streaming channels. Produced entirely by Neptunes duo Pharrell Williams and Chad Hugo, the sophomore album for Kelis includes features via the Clipse’s Pusha-T and Malice.
In a press statement provided to Fader, Kelis stated, “It’s been a long time coming, I had given up… well almost. I was shocked to wake up this morning to see it had been streamed. All the politics of it aside, it feels good and I’m happy that it’s been given its time to live on speakers across the country.”
The album in 2001 was released in multiple countries in CD, cassette and vinyl form by Virgin, but the U.S. market was frozen out of the drop.
In a 2006 interview with MP3.com, Kelis spoke about the stalled U.S. launch and blamed it on her decision to leave the label at the time it was launched. She explained, “Well, I left Virgin right when it was released in Europe, so when it was supposed to release in the States, it just kinda fell by the wayside. I think too, a lot of people really didn’t understand the music, and you know, it just got…they just didn’t get it. And [I mean I loved it] too. But I think the main reason was because I left my label, and I was really just fed up with them, and so my music suffered because of that.”
Check out Wanderland on Spotify below.
