The Hits

Album Review

Four of Kelis' five singles that hit Billboard's Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart are included on The Hits, as well as three guest spots (one of which, Ol' Dirty Bastard's "Got Your Money," charted), leaving plenty of room for tracks that weren't exactly hits. Title semantics aside, the disc amounts to a satisfactory, but not optimal, selection of highlights from Kelis' three U.S.-released albums: 1999's Kaleidoscope, 2003's Tasty, and 2006's Kelis Was Here. (2001's Wanderland, not released in the States, is technically represented through "Young, Fresh N' New," but the song also appeared on Tasty.) Plenty of great material is left off the hourlong sequence, from Tasty's "Rolling Through the Hood" and "Glow" to Kelis Was Here's "Blindfold Me" and "Trilogy," and incorporating "Popular Thug" and/or "Little Suzie" from the Wanderland era would have been a good touch. Even so, casual listeners who have wondered whether or not Kelis has had depth beyond a hot single off each album — "Caught Out There," "Milkshake," "Bossy" — will get the answer here, and that answer is yes.