60 Songs That Explain the '90s - Kelis — “Milkshake”

Episode Date: March 18, 2026

Today, Rob talks about the song that left him speechless upon his first listen—“Milkshake”. He retraces his steps back to the beginning of Kelis’s career when she was screaming at a Glastonbury crowd. He analyzes the trend of not being able to place Black women into neat and separate genres, as rock, rap, punk, pop, and R&B start to blur lines. He is blissfully confused, and that is okay. Later, he is joined by music critic Leslie Gray Streeter to discuss the art of balancing humor and anger in a song and the empowerment of “Milkshake” as Kelis makes fun of the men who lust after her. Host: Rob Harvilla Producers: Justin Sayles and Olivia Crerie Additional Video Editing: Kevin Pooler and Chris Sutton Guest: Leslie Gray Streeter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It is imperative. It is extremely important to me personally that you personally enjoy this clip of Kalees covering Nirvana's smells like teen spirit at the Glastonbury Festival in the year 2000. Everything about this is perfect, including any inadvertent musical imperfections. Yeah, that biffed guitar core. right at the beginning there? Perfect. That's a little something called punk rock. It is June 2000. And your Glastonbury Festival headliners are, let's see here. Travis, David Bowie, Moby, the Chemical Brothers, the Pet Shop Boys, Nine Inch Nails, Fat Boy Slim, and Willie Nelson, etc. A lot of dance music is the new rock and roll energy here, other than Willie Nelson. Forget all those guys, though. Here we have Calise. The Harlem native and wily, unclassifiable, mononymous, ostensibly R&B-oriented young pop star.

Kalees is dressed all in white and a blondy crop top, and she is pumping her fist maniacly, amidst a sea of delighted fans with outstretched arms in the Glastonbury dance tent, as her all-black band launches into the rowdiest and most vivacious Nirvana cover I've ever heard in my life. Dig the jittery double-time drumbeat here. Dig the eerie, glorious vocal harmony that takes a simple two-note guitar riff you've heard a billion times. Burner! And unfolds it into hundreds of ecstatic new dimensions. Wow, that is a super florid description.

But screw it, man. I'm excited. Let's get excited. I dig that the crowd here is huge but not dehumanizingly huge, right? A lot of classic live, Glassenbury footage, you get the giant waving flags, you get the infinite roiling sea of humanity, you get the sense that literally all of England is physically present. Usually there's way too many people, and all those people look disconcertingly CGIEDI generated. Whereas here, with Calais, the crowd is robust, and yet you can pick

out individual delighted, electrified people, bouncing around more or less by themselves. What I sense in this footage is individual lives changing permanently. And the most life-altering factor here is Calise's voice, the low end of Calais's voice, the rasping, carving, colossal depth of it. The way it can make the words, load up on guns, bring your friends, feel like an opening line you haven't heard a billion times before. This smells like teen spirit cover is not the song that first made Calise famous. it is not the song for which Collise will be most famous.

This is not the musical genre to which Collise is generally thought to belong. But where anybody else thinks Calise belongs is none of her business. In 1999, Calaised her debut album called Collidoscope, praised in the NME as, quote, a futuristic, visionary, multi-layered work of R&B, funk, soul, and rap, furnished with an inspirational psychedelic spirituality, rarely seen but desperately needed in these cynical times. End quote. Dude, if you think the times are cynical in 1999, you better brace yourself. This review also says, quote, they're calling her the new Lauren Hill.

She's better than that, though. End quote. Okay, hold on. Everyone calm down. Rest assured in any event that Calise is majestically overboard and self-assured, and she knows plenty of dirty words. A fun way to watch this video is just to focus on Calise's backup singers, the blissful swagger of her backup singers. It's like if you took the anarchist cheerleaders from the original Smells Like Teen Spirit video and let them sing the song. Kalees is approaching the chorus, and the chorus is going to be quite loud and raucous, and perfectly imperfect, and absolutely glorious. And there is a rich historical musical lineage to that uncategorizable gloriousness. Talking to The Guardian in 2014 about the fresh new ostensibly R&B sound she debuted with in the late 90s and early 2000s, Calais says, quote, I was never an R&B artist.

People coined me one, but that's because, especially if you're in the States, if you're black and you sing, then your R&B, end quote, will allow her to retort. Kalease in the year 2000 covering the hugest recent rock and roll song imaginable on the hugest concert stage imaginable. she is not so subtly making a statement about what else a black singer in the year 2000 might wish to be. Colise is not so subtly making a statement about, you know, identity. And so, if we're talking about the rich historical musical lineage of uncategorizable gloriousness that eventually leads us to Calise, we might as well start with London punk rock legends X-ray specs. We might as well start with fabled iconic X-ray specs. lead singer Polly Styrene, bellowing a punk rock song from 1978, literally called Identity.

Polystyrene, widely credited as the first woman of color to lead a Big Whoop, capital P, punk rock band. I dig the pink and yellow bow in Polly Styrine's hair tremendously. I dig polystyrene's braces tremendously. I dig tremendously the ferocious candy-coated dissonance of Pollysterisked. Polly Styrene's whole vibe. A vibe best exemplified by the very famous first 10 seconds of X-Ray Spex's 1977 debut single, which, if you'll recall, is called O Bondage Up Yours. Some people think little girls should be seen and not hers, but I think...

Oh, Bondage Up Yours! exclamation point. Polly Stireen's braces really are tremendous. Her braces, make her look infinitely more overboard and self-assured. For lots of people, for lots of young people, for lots of current young people, Polly Styrene is a revolutionary figure. She is a complicated, but undoubtedly life-changing figure. As explored in the 2022 documentary, Polly Styrene, I Am a cliche, co-directed by Paul Sung and Polly Styrine's daughter, Celeste Bell. Talking to the New York times in 2022 about that movie and about getting into punk rock. Allie Logout, the lead singer of the

great current New Orleans punk band's special interest. Ali says, quote, my original exploration with music in general was a sadness that I didn't see any black bodies occupying that space. I remember very clearly seeing a picture of polystyrene and her braces and being like, what? I felt the otherness that she encapsulated by just being fully herself. Whenever I heard that song, oh bondage up yours, I knew that it was the attitude that I have to present myself in every single day, end quote. You know who else loves Polly Styrene and talks about having her life changed by Polly Styrine? This lady.

Nena Cherry Born in Sweden, raised mostly in London, daughter of the painter Monica Carlson, stepdaughter of the jazz trumpet great Don Cherry. Nena Cherry, she of the unfathomably phenomenal 1988 hit single Buffalo Stance. Some days, that's my favorite sequence of six words and eight syllables in pop history. It's sweetness that I'm thinking of. The video's bright colors, the ferocious playfulness, the anarchist cheerleader exuberance, of Buffalo Stance. This is one of the best pop songs of the 80s, one of the best rap songs of the 80s,

and one of the best punk songs of the 80s as well. You can hear polystyrene in Buffalo Stance, as clearly as you can hear, say, Salton Peppa. Talking to the New York Times in 2022 about polystyrene, Neneh. Nenecheri says, quote, inside of hers is how I found my own voice. I also started listening to her when I was at a space in my life where I knew who I was, but I didn't always know how to be who I was, or how to feel that great about it. Holly was and still is like medicine for me. End quote. I got to hear the full chorus to Buffalo Stands.

If only to make clear that the most calise-like line in this song is when Nena Cherry says, So don't you get fresh with me. It's a threat you can't refuse. I'll give you love baby not romance is a fantastic line too and I knew who I was but I didn't always know how to be who I was is a great way to sum up the perils of being a hard to classify black female pop star and or R&B star and or rock star in the late 80s Nenecherry nonetheless found a path to modest stardom

Q Lazarus had a tougher time with it. This is Goodbye Horses, another absurdly great single from 1988 by Diane Lucky, the New York City singer and cab driver, best known as Q Lazarus, 2 Z's

and Lazarus. Perhaps you recognize Goodbye Horses from this song's inclusion in multiple huge Jonathan Demi films. Most famously, The Silence of the Lambs in 1991. This song's playing when you know the bad guys dancing around and whatnot and the dogs about to fall in the well.

Goodbye Horses should have been the first song in a decades-long, varied, defiant, reliably unpredictable career. Goodbye Horses is a rad, noirish, late 80s synth pop jam. But what strikes me most about it is the low end of Q Lazarus's voice, the silky carving colossal depth of it. He told me. seen it rise. She could have sung anything and been anybody. In fact, when the song Goodbye Horses couldn't get her a record deal, Q Lazarus moved from New York City to London and started

a legit hard rock band. Listen to her sing the word baby amidst righteous electric guitars like nobody's ever thought to sing that word before. That song's called Don't Let Go. And if heart or share or Lita Ford had put this song out in the late 80s, you'd have seen the video on MTV three times an hour. This song did not make Q Lazarus famous either, alas. Most people only heard any original non-Goodbye horses Q Lazarus song for the first time in 2025. Upon the release of the very sad but pretty fantastic documentary,

Goodbye Horses, the many lives of Q. Lazarus. And in that movie, Q. Lazarus says explicitly, quote, as far as the rock industry in the United States, in New York, they weren't ready for a black rock and roll singer. End quote. You would think the rock industry would be ready and know better in the late 80s, given that Janet Jackson existed. This, of course, is Janet Jackson doing Black Cat

from her massive 1989 album Rhythm Nation 1814, which sold 12 million copies worldwide and spawned seven top five singles on the Billboard Hot 100. Black Cat is one of them. The rock video iconography is really important here. The fist pumping in the crowd and the blinding lights and the leather and the sweatiness. Yes, but more importantly, you get Janet Jackson doing the thing where she points down at her feet and her righteous doodly guitarist kneels down in front of her. and Janet, you know, lightly gyrates.

Meanwhile, Black Cat is Primo Headbanger's Ball shit. Let the rock industry in the United States tell Janet Jackson that America can't handle a black rock and roll singer. Let them tell Tina Turner that. For your reference, while Kalees is kicking ass at Glastonbury, here's what Tina Turner is up to in the U.S. year 2000. Ah, fascinating. Tina Turner's doing the same thing she's always doing, kicking ass. Tina's

doing proud Mary yet again and kicking ass yet again for an infinite roiling sea of humanity at Wembley Stadium. That's in London and literally all of England can fit into it. Here also you can see the lives of individual Tina Turner backup dancers changing permanently, such as their aerobic exuberance at getting to do Proud Mary with Tina Turner. In 2021, the Ringer published a fantastic piece called Tina Turner in the all-too-radical existence of the Black Woman rock star, written by our friend, the musician and former 60 songs producer Devin Ronaldo. And Devin talks about how Tina Turner still doesn't fully get her due as the queen of rock and

role. Tina spent years trying to convince record labels that she could make it as a rock singer, that she wasn't just an R&B singer or a pop star. Tina Turner spent her whole career personifying rock stardom every bit as much as Elvis Presley or Mick Jagger. To quote the great Bob Crisgow, Mick Jagger should fold up his penis and go home. End quote. Bob was talking about prints, but the point stands. Tina Turner had been confounding notions of genre since the early 60s, and by the mid-90s, cutting-edge pop music has gotten even more splendidly confounding. Quick question for you. What genre is this? Here we have Tricky, the mononymous rapper and producer and trip-hop pioneer, delivering a phenomenal cover of the phenomenal public enemy song, Black

steel in the hour of chaos on trickie's 1995 debut album maxin k and on lead vocals here we've got trickies then partner and crucial collaborator martina toply bird rapping with ferocious anarchist cheerleader exuberance over righteous doodly punk rock guitars also there's a giraffe here in the black steel video wandering around for what i assume are profound thematic philosophical reasons Picture that giraffe giving a damn. What genre is this? Better question. What genre does this song want to be?

One option, when you hear 90s trip-hop singer Martina Topley Bird, channeling classic pummeling 80s Chuck D over screeching 70 sex pistols-type guitars, is to describe this black steel cover as Afro-punk. Which, of course, is a sound that has existed basically forever, though the term Afro-punk does not fully emerge until 2003, when filmmaker James Spooner debuts a documentary called Afro-Punk, interviewing dozens of young black punk rockers who feel somewhat out of place, but are working hard to gradually feel less out of place.

Afro-punk quickly becomes a whole movement, becomes a Brooklyn music festival, then a series of music festivals. And as with most entities with punk in the name, Afro-punk gets a little less classically punk as it goes on. Then again, the whole point of the 2003 movie was to interrogate and redefine what and who qualified as punk. In the documentary, a Brooklyn singer-songwriter named Tamar Khali says that the punkest person she can think of is Nina Simone. Here is a 2005 Tamar Khali song called Boot, in which she expands on the question of who qualifies as punk. The most important line here is probably

Her Eyes Ain't Blue. And Boot, to my mind, is a festival-sized rock song. An Afro-punk festival-sized song, sure, but also potentially, ideally, a Glastonbury-sized, fist-pumping, blinding lights, sweaty leather, infinite roiling Sea of Humanity type song. Here, like this. Here we have the British hard rock band Skunk Anansi.

led by the ferocious mononymous lead singer and songwriter known as Skin. The song is from 1995, and it is called Week, and Skin really bellows the hell out of it. This is Glastonbury 1999, and if you're watching, you maybe get what I mean about Glastonbury being way too many people. Plus, I'm not positive about this, but I suspect there's a giant raging bonfire in the middle of the crowd here. Or maybe it's an English dude wielding a flamethrower. I don't know. delighted that Skunk Anansi can attract and command and electrify a crowd this absurdly huge. But I don't want to be around like 2% that many people at one time, personally.

Never mind that, though. There is precedent. Stretching back decades to 70s punk, to 60s rock, to the blues spanning decades before that. There is a long, proud, defiant, ongoing, confounding, misunderstood, misidentified, intermittently appreciated but never fully respected lineage of what you might call afro-punk, what you might call heavier R&B, what you might simply call rock and roll, if you're, shall we say, nasty. And somewhere in that roiling crowd of musical pioneers, there is Kalees. In 1999,

debuting as a solo artist with a song called Caught Out There, the song that first made her famous. The most important line here, is probably I feel bad for whoever's record collection that is that Calise is destroying in the Caught Out There video though it would appear that he deserves it. That's what you get for getting fresh with her. Yes, caught out there,

the delightfully and terrifyingly angry lead single Off Calise's 1999 debut album, ColliderScope. Wow, this person is bombastic and outrageously versatile and awesome. And furthermore, this person feels and sounds unprecedented, despite decades of famous, important, beloved, semi-well-documented precedent. So maybe now let's finally let her sing the goddamn chorus. It is extremely important to me, personally, that you personally enjoy this video of Kalees covering Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit at the Glastonbury Festival in the year 2000. that you observe the crowd leaping up and down in ecstatic unison.

Please observe that you can tell, just from their respective outstretched hands, that every individual life in that crowd is changing permanently. Please observe the lovely vocal harmony, as Kalees and her backup singers sing the words, I feel stupid. Please observe the carving colossal depth of the low end of Kalee's voice as she sings the words,

A Mosquito. Please observe the way Calise joyfully stares down the camera as she sings the words, My libido, yeah. Please observe that at some point here, the super distorted electric guitar shorts out and disappears. At the very least, the guitar is now mostly inaudible. Perhaps because the guitarist is crowd surfing now, or she's been raptured or something, something cool and very punk happened to the guitarist. And frankly, that's the coolest and punkist part of this whole thing.

And suddenly, that's my favorite sequence of nine words and 17 syllables in pop history. A mulatto, an albino, a mosquito, my libido. Yeah. Smells like Teen Spirit, of course, is not the song that first made Calais famous. It is not the song for which Calise will be most famous. And as for that, as for the song for which Calice is most famous. Well, let's just say that outrageously, delightfully, and you might even say unprecedentedly,

Calise contains multitudes. My name is Rob Harvilla. This is the 37th episode of 60 songs that explain the 90s, Cole in the 2000s. And this week we are discussing milkshake. By Collise,

from her third album, released in 2003 and called Tasty. I have a vague and yet very strong and distinct memory of hearing this song for the first time and just thinking, what? It is one of the historically great and underappreciated feelings in pop music.

When you first hear something that leaves you legitimately flabbergasted. That is the word I have settled on. Flabbergasted. Ad break. Hit the deck. I can't believe I started this episode with the person the episode is about. I don't want to check, but I suspect I literally have not done that in years since the Macarena episode. possibly. Yikes. I hardly recognize myself.

This show has become so reliant on rambling surprise, misdirection that the greatest possible surprise is when there's no misdirection at all and I just talk about what I'm supposed to be talking about. That's a good thing for the show, right? That's a positive development, I assume. And now, here's a song by The Grave Diggers. Here we have young colleagues.

Elise Rogers, singing the hook on fairy tales, a 1997 song by the famed macabre rap supergroup, The Grave Diggers. Fairy tales, one word, tales with a Z. Kalees turned 18 years old in 1997. But she convincingly sings this chorus like she's old and gray and malevolent and stirring a giant boiling cauldron in a cottage in the woods, etc. Kalees is born in New York City on August 21, 1979. and raised in Harlem.

Her father is a jazz musician and Pentecostal minister. Her mother works in fashion. She has three sisters. Talking to New York Magazine in 2006, Kali says, quote, My mom was concerned that us four little black girls have a really well-balanced life. She wanted us to be around people like us, but we also went to private school and traveled all the time.

Now I fit in most places because I've been most places. End quote. Up to an increasingly. including Glastonbury. Growing up, Calice plays violin and saxophone and sings in the girls' choir of Harlem and studies theater, and she starts an R&B trio called Blue, BLU,

that's Black Ladies United. And she attends high school on the Upper West Side at the LaGuardia High School of Music and Arts and Performing Arts. And yeah, somewhere in there, she sings the hook on a Grave Diggers song. And this song, Fairy Tales, it may not be the biggest, the brightest,

the radio-friendlyest hook she will ever sing. But it's the first Kalees hook a lot of people heard. It's the first song featuring Kalees that a lot of people heard. Fortunately for both her and us, this is the second one. Now, did I internally debate whether or not to play you all? Dirty Bastard rapping that part specifically? Yes, there was some debate. It was a short debate, though.

Is it 100% necessary that I play you that part of the 1999 Old Dirty Bastard hit Got Your Money? No, it is not necessary, necessarily, and yet I do feel compelled to say out loud. And not for the first time that my favorite sequence of 20 words and 25 syllables in pop music history is, I don't have no trouble with you fucking me, but I have a little problem with you not fucking me. There was a time in my life when I thought about that line daily. It's more of a biannual thing for me now. I'm busier now than I was in my 30s, but I do still think about it. My second favorite part of Got Your Money is when old dirty bastard yells,

sing it girls, even though there's only one girl singing. It's the nuances, right? And yes, here we have Kalees, singular, singing the hook on Got Your Money, with a beguiling combination of warmth and iciness. There's a jump rope, double-dutch, sing-songy, taunting edge to her voice. Even when she literally sings the words, don't you worry, you can't help but worry a little bit. Calise is going places. And you, the beguiled listener, will struggle to keep up with her as she openly mocks the futility of your efforts to keep up with her. Got Your Money is, of course, produced by the Neptunes,

the Ascendant Virginia Beach superstar production duo of Farrell Williams and Chad Hugo, who starting in the late 90s will proceed to generate many of the best songs on the radio and elsewhere for the next 5, 10, 15, 20 plus years. The best Neptunes production is still Take You Home by Bowers. wow. I checked. More importantly for our purposes, in 1999, the Neptunes produced the debut solo album from Kalees in its entirety. It is called Kaleidoscope. Its most famous and influential song is called Caught Out There, which, if you'll recall, is the song where Kalease goes, ah, it bears repeating. That chorus bears repeating. It bears repeating because the production on Caught Out There is vintage Neptunes,

the rubbery janky funk, the insidious hookiness, the decaying arcade blip meteor shower going beo, boo, boom, in the background. But the scream is all Calais. The rage, the malevolence, the gargantuan charisma is all Calais. You can imagine Calais singing really any of the hugest early 2000s' Neptunes songs. You can imagine Calais, for example, having a huge hit with Hot in here instead of Nelly. offense to Nellie. But you can't imagine Nellie doing caught out there. No offense. You can't imagine anyone other than Kalees summoning this precise level of seductive ferocity. My favorite part of caught out there is her adlibs, the deadpan indignance of Kalees's adlives. The most important

and the most threatening words here are, no, oh no, and man. It takes a very angry person to be this funny while being this angry. Years later in 2006, on another excellent hit single called Bossy, Khalis will brag in the chorus about being the first girl to scream on a track. And that's arguably true, or at least it's arguably truer, if you're talking specifically about screaming on a mainstream pop song, on an R&B-oriented song. You know what popped into my head the other day? A rad mid-90s alternative rock hit that just struck me out of nowhere. Tracy Bonham, 1996. The song is called Mother Mother. The most important words here, of course, are, everything's fine. And this song also struck me at the time as both deliberately terrifying and deliberately

very funny. So there's a great book from 2025 by the culture critic and Pulitzer. Prize finalist Sophie Gilbert, a book called Girl on Girl, How Pop Culture Turned a Generation of Women Against Themselves. She means roughly Kalees' generation. This book's about a lot of honestly tremendously dismaying cultural trends, including pop music adopting the aesthetics of pornography. But Sophie Gilbert writes a lot about the unpleasant transition from Riot Girl, the early 90s, Pacific Northwest feminist ultra-punk rock movie. Bikini Kill and so forth, heavily influenced by polystyrene, by the way, the transition from riot girl to girl power, as preached by the Spice Girls, starting with our ginormous 1996 debut

single, Wannabe. Sophie writes, quote, women in music in the 1990s were angry and abrasive and thrillingly powerful. And then, just like that, they were gone, replaced by girls. The backlash that banished them would reverberate across all forms of media so relentlessly and persuasively that people of my generation would hardly think to notice what we'd lost end quote so the 90s start with riot girl with Courtney love with Alanis morissette and as we approach to the end of the 90s you get the backlash via the spice girls via Britney spears the lilith fair gives way to post Mickey mouse club teen pop Girl power exists to sell you things, not to actually empower you. These are broad strokes, culture critically speaking,

but it's both a dismaying and a convincing argument when Sophie Gilbert just lays it out like that. And I really dig the way Calise interrogates and complicates that argument. She is a turn-of-the-century genre-flouting pop star, who is undeniably angry and abrasive and thrillingly powerful. Now it might be a good time to mention that Calise did caught out there, in the year 2000 on HBO's The Chris Rock Show, and she pulled out a pink gun halfway through the song. Oh, wow. Talking to the fader in 2020, Kali says,

quote, I got in trouble because I pulled this gun on the Chris Rock show. It was not a real gun, by the way. It was a pink rhinestone gun. I thought it was adorable." End quote. We can say with confidence that caught out there is the screamiest song on the first Kalees record, on kaleidoscope. But even when she's not screaming, Kalees finds ways to hold your complete attention even while working with arguably the most famous and immediately recognizable production duo

in pop music. This song is called Good Stuff, and the most important words are, and this once again is manifestly a Neptune's operation, the slinkiness of the baseline, the bossiness of the tambourine, but the her interrogates everything, complicates everything, elevates everything. I should note that the uncommonly fruitful musical partnership between the Neptunes and Calais will end eventually quite acrimoniously.

Too many adverbs, calm down, talking to the Guardian in 2020, Cali says that it took her years to realize that she didn't make any money off her first two albums, both of which were produced entirely by the Neptunes. She says, quote, I was told we were going to split the whole thing, 33, 33, 33, 33, which we didn't do, end quote. That's theoretically 33% to Farrell Williams, 33% to Chad Hugo, and 33% to her. She says she was, quote, blatantly lied to and tricked. and she blames, quote, the Neptunes and their management and their lawyers and all that stuff, end quote. Kalee says the Neptune's only response was, well, you signed the contract. Generally, the Neptunes have not commented publicly about this.

Also, as of 2024, the Neptunes are no longer together. Chad Hugo and Ferrell Williams are now estranged as well over what seems to be financial issues for what it's worth. So, yeah, those are more complications to consider. More immediate harmony, but eventual acrimony to hear in Kalees' music from the very beginning. Meanwhile, I have to say that the weirder this kaleidoscope record gets, the more I love it. This song's called Mars, and it's about going there and colonizing it. As for the most important words here, I'm going with Send Your Blackass to Mars. I'm not 100% on what she says in the last line there, and it's really bothering me.

Money, science, space, and art is my best guess. In that article for the fader in 2020, Kali says, quote, I remember sitting in my tiny box of an apartment in New York in Harlem on 149th Street, watching this show about trying to colonize Mars. And I was like, that's crazy. And then we talked about what we wanted to write about, like, yo, I want to write about this show.

They're trying to colonize Mars. What the hell is that about? I was a huge science fiction fan, and I always felt like they tried to write us out of the future. They're trying to send everybody white to Mars. There goes the song. I opened my show up with that song for years. End quote. It's a great choice.

That's a great opener. But my favorite song on the first Kalees record is called Roller Rink. I think it's about roller skating to distract yourself from the implications of the likely existence of U.S. And I for one believe that we need more pop songs and R&B songs and punk songs and art rock songs about UFOs. But even if there were thousands more UFO songs in the world, I don't think any of them would have a single line better than, do you think you'd even know one if you saw one? Seriously, do you think you'd even know one if you saw one? one is a fantastic and honestly quite troubling question. So Calise's first record has almost a choose your own adventure feel. You get screaming. You get rapping, including rapping from pre-fame

push-a-tee of the clips back when he was still calling himself terror. You get a song called Mafia about loving a dude in the mafia. You get a song called suspended about floating in a black abyss. You get quiet storm type yearning and you get much louder and stormier yearning. Plus, you know, pink firearms and UFOs and Mars. Both temperamentally and musically, this is all quite challenging to classify, which is awesome if you're listening to this record, but less awesome if you're a befuddled record company Stoge trying to sell this record, or a befuddled radio programmer trying to figure out where to play songs from this record. In 2020, the fader asks Kalees, quote, did it sting at all when you were told your music wasn't black enough to get played

on R&B stations? End quote. And Kalee says, quote, I never felt like that made any sense. I always felt like you're wrong. How is a white guy going to tell me what's black enough, first of all? Secondly, how is anybody going to tell me what's black enough for that record? You know what I mean? I had no identity issues. So the fact that someone felt like they're trying to put these things on me was appalling. So I think that all of my responses and my rebellion started to come after the fact. It came from that.

It came from being constantly someone trying to tell me what I was and what I wasn't enough of. End quote. She knows who she is. and she knows how to be who she is, even if nobody else can figure out who she is or what to do about it. England, and really all of Europe, figured it out first. Europe usually does. The second Kalees album is called Wonderland.

It is once again produced entirely by the Neptunes, and it comes out in 2001 in Europe, but is shelved in the United States, and is not officially released here until 2019. Our loss. This song is called Mr. UFO Man. Specifically here, we are entreating a UFO flying alien to pass along an urgent message to Jesus.

I have several follow-up questions, but I cannot ask them in 2001 because I cannot easily hear this song because Wonderland functionally does not exist in America. Outside of the lead single, which is called Young, Fresh and New, and is very explicitly about getting the hell out of Dodge because you're way too cool to just hang around in Dodge.

That's still the Neptunes, all right, orchestrating all that chaos, except now the base is heavier, and the decaying arcade blip, boing, boon, meteor shower is heavier as well. Go listen to Wanderland. Go listen to the second Kaleas record. Sometime. Imagine a version of the early 21st century that was ready for it. One more Wanderland song for now. This song's called Perfect Day. We got some distinct punk rock energy here.

And I especially dig how in this universe, anyway, the words happy and nasty are interchangeable. If you got heavy into NERD, the Neptune's side project rock band that put out a great debut album called In Search of, 2001, perfect day might really do it for you. Calais is arguably the best part of that N-E-R-D record, by the way. But yeah, in real-time, Calice proves elusive. Everyone flips for caught out there in 1999, but her second album gets absolutely unjustly buried, and much of the world is denied the full Calise experience until 2003, when suddenly this is happening. That part bears repeat. The first 10 seconds bear repeating. Put on milkshake on headphones sometime and press them tight against your ears and just focus.

Really internalize the demonic ultra-fuzzed-out bass that is threatening to go completely out of tune the whole time. The slashing guitar adjacent sound there, da-da-da-da-da-da-d-d-d-i- I can't tell if that's violently processed acoustic guitar or what. the minimal drums here, the Darbuka Goblet Drum, primarily a Middle Eastern instrument. And most importantly, the rug that really ties the whole song together, the Mangira clash symbols from the Indian subcontinent. The bell like ding every 10 seconds or so makes the whole song. In 2015, during a long on-stage interview with Jason King of NPR,

Farrell explained that the real impetus for milkshake was a trip to Brazil. the influence of what he called Brazilian booty shaking music. But Farrell says, quote, instead of doing like booty shaking music, I tried to use some more Middle Eastern sounds and completely just twist it, my intentions, as much as I could, so that I would just be like something that even in Brazil,

they would go, okay, we like the rhythm of this, we like the feeling of this, but this is from somewhere else, end quote. And that's somewhere else, I do. Dealey is Mars. We got to switch to the milkshake video for just a second. We got to switch to the milkshake video, if only for the part, where Calise throws the extra cherry in the dude's milkshake in her necklace gleams right when the

Mangira symbol hits. Ding, and the dude leans back, like, ooh. Just a preposterous music video. Cartoon slapstick lust. You know how it old cartoons. when a cartoon wolf is sitting in a nightclub, and a pretty lady appears on stage, and the wolf makes protruding heart eyes,

and his tongue unfolds and becomes stares. That's the vibe. Her milkshake brings all the boys to the yard, and then once they're in the yard, the boy is just, like, absolutely ridiculous. This is the Warrant Cherry Pie video from the Cherry Pie's perspective. If that's two Gen X of a reference for you,

cherry pie, okay, fine. This is my humps by the black-eyed peas, but more prestigious. Never mind. Have some pity for the boys in the yard. Okay? In a 2006 vulture profile of Calise, the great New York City cabaret singer Justin Vivian Bond says, quote, I've seen lots of lip syncing to milkshake in clubs. Milkshake is a big wink about the way you can reclaim your sexuality. It's about making the person who's objectifying you the weaker one. End quote.

Mission accomplished. And then there's the moment in the milkshake video where Calais goes into the kitchen of the diner, right? And she bends over and Calais removes from the oven what I must sheepishly describe to you as a butt, cake, a distinctly butt-shaped cake. I'm very sorry, but that's what she does, and that's what that is. The butt cake is a great moment in musical history, in American history, in baking history.

She gives you love, baby, not romance. And it's a great moment in rock and roll history, too, speaking broadly, speaking expansively, speaking with a triumphant disregard for genre that exemplifies our great. greatest artists. Kalees sings, La la la la, la. The boys are waiting. And the same low, deep, husky voice,

the same colossal carving depth with which she sings the words, load up on guns, bring your friends. Rock stardom is a state of mind. Pop stardom is a state of mind. Punk rock is a state of mind. And Kalees' mind encapsulates

simultaneously all of these states of mind and many more states of mind besides. I'm going to stop now. I'm going to stop now for a few reasons. First reason, I just played you the whole song, basically. Milkshake is basically those three parts repeating a bunch of times. That's not a complaint. I say that in admiration of the maximalism

that milkshake generates via its minimalism, via its repetition. I'm also going to stop now because I don't want to talk about a lot of what happens personally to Kalees from here. Milkshake is a huge hit. It peaks at number three on the Billboard Hot 100. It's easily her biggest hit ever. But this is going to be it for Kalees and the Neptunes.

The Neptunes only produce five songs on Kalee's third album, Tasty, and then that relationship implodes for good. It's years before Kalees talks publicly about the contract she signed and about feeling ripped off by the Neptunes, but these wounds are always present and these wounds don't ever heal. When Beyonce interpolates milkshake on a song called Energy from Beyonce's album Renaissance, Calise loudly objects to milkshake being used without her permission, but Farrell eventually publicly interjects to say that it's his decision because it's his song.

Milkshake is credited to Farrell Williams and Chad Hugo. It's ugly. The music industry sucks sometimes. There's a Hunter S. Thompson quote you're probably familiar with, but if not, it bears repeating. Quote, the music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side, end quote. On the tasty album, Calise also does excellent work with Andre 3000, with Raphael Sadiq, with Rock Wilder, and with Dame Grease. Nas also shows up. Nas wraps on this album.

and Nas and Khalis will later get married and later get divorced, and Khalis says that Nas mentally and physically abused her, and Nas denies these statements, and that's also why I'm stopping now. Milkshake is track three on this tasty album. Here is track four. This song is called Keep It Down Part 2. It is produced and co-written by the super producer Dallas Austin,

and the drums and the electric guitars have a distinctly pawned punk rock type snarl to them. And Calice is double-dutch jump rope chanting about getting hit on after a Beastie Boys concert. It's fantastic. When Pitchfork reviewed this album, Tasty, in 2004, pitchfork called Calice, quote, one of the unluckiest women in pop, end quote, because Calice doesn't get the number one hits that she deserves. She does not get the respect she deserves.

She does not get the credit she deserves. But the playful, the masterful, the unbothered lilt of her voice on this song, as she considers getting with a kid who's hitting on her outside the Beastie Boys show, something in Calise's voice makes clear that Calice will triumph anyway. She will survive. She will transcend. She will keep innovating and keep confounding and keep electrifying. All the great rock stars do. We are so thrilled and relieved to be joined once again. by Leslie Gray Streeter.

Columnist for the Baltimore Banner, memoirist, novelist, podcaster, and dear friend of ours, her latest book, A Novel is called Family and Other Calamities. Leslie, hello, thank you for being here once again. I am so excited to be back. Like I said, I was telling you

right before we started recording, that I have all these people. I have, like, fans now who are fans of yours. I think they're fans of yours, but yes, we can talk about that later, but the people love you, Leslie, and we're all thrilled to talk to you again. Thank you. Okay, so as far as Calice is concerned, like, did you get into her in the milkshake era or earlier?

I feel like it makes a big difference if you first got into her in this era versus like caught out there, for example. When did you first become aware of police? It was 1999-ish, and I was at my auntar-old, I was exactly where I first heard of her. And my cousin, whose name is Kenobi Streeter, because my family's dope. I'm in the kitchen probably with an iPod or something. I don't remember what Walkman, Discman, something. 99. Okay, there's a few possibilities there.

A few possibilities. And he says, do you know this song? I said, no, what song? And he shoves his earphones at me and it's, I hate you so much right now. It's like, oh, all right. And then he goes, because he's a 19-year-old boy, 18-19-year-old boy, he goes, she's crazy. And I went, that tracks.

That trip. Right. Poor him. I think she's crazy. Sure. What did you think? Did you think she was crazy, Leslie? I thought she was just the right amount of righteously crazy.

You know, I'm from the 90s, so I... You are. I love a lot of angry lady chicks. And I say that facetiously, everyone gets to be angry. everyone else got to be angry, why couldn't we? And I loved it. I loved, and I will also say in these angry lady songs, it is always presented that there is a reason for them being angry.

That's right. Crazy out of the box. They're crazy because they got cheated on or, you know, there was a woman who would not go down on them in a dude in a theater, and they felt some kind of way about that, you know. So there was always a reason. And I think that for men and God, like my cousin, who were not used to having unbridled feminine rage directed at them

or people like them as they were listening without a caveat of, oh, but she's crazy. It was really weird. I thought she was great. I agree with you that I saw it immediately of like 90s alternative rock of Alanis Moritz like you said, of Courtney Love, of garbage. Like she sounds, Calice sounds on caught out there like she's headlining Lollapalooza, like in 1994. Like, did she strike you as as much a rock star

as a pop star in that moment? Absolutely. And here's the thing. And I'm just, you know, I'm just say it. We talk about how I feel about, you know, rock and pop criticism of the day, of that day. And so much of it was sexist and racist and didn't even realize it.

So there were a lot of people who, as recently as 2019 and a story in The Guardian referred to her as an R&B singer. which I don't think is accurate. And I think that because she looked like she looked, people assumed and did not listen. Also, because

you know, it's so easy just to categorize people in the laziest way possible. And that's what they did. I think there's elements of rock and pop. There is some R&B. There's a lot of stuff that sounds like, like milkshake reminds me of

slave for you by Britney Spears. I mean, there's a little Shakira in there. There's a Jingle, jingle, jingle, jingle, jingle, you know, world music, global situation. And she's everything. She obviously has, she's the daughter of jazz musician. She has a lot of different influences. The smokiness of her voice evokes jazz in some ways. I think that the problem with Colise, which honestly is not her problem,

it's everyone else's problem, is that no one knew quite how to put her in a box because she was not to be put in a box. Right. I agree completely. You mentioned to me, and I'm so glad that you did, Hit Em Up Style, the Blue Cantrell song from 2001. So this is a couple of years after Caught Out There, and that's a huge hit, too. And those songs are twinned in my mind now because, like, they're very, very angry, righteously and very, very funny as well. Like, what did it mean for Caught Out There?

And the same thing with you ought to know, honestly, you ought to know is a very funny song in addition to being furious. Well, you know, because you know me and my right. writing, that's my kind of funny. Hit him up style. It's really sad in the bridge. Like there goes the dreams we sold. Here's, you know, it's just like, there's an understanding that she's not just going buckwild,

you know, and hidden up style. She's also nursing a broken heart and her anger. Yeah, she's in mourning of this relationship. But I think that these songs were clever. These songs were funny and the way that they were written. listening to caught out there and her adlips

you know when she's like... I love those. I love it. You know, that kind of thing and you imagine that she's both her friend and there is another friend

that somebody is like in her head the goal, that's right girl. Those songs, all of those songs, felt authentic. They did not feel like they were written

by a Swedish guy trying to write like an American girl. Sorry, Max Martin, but you know what I mean. I do know what you mean. No, you mean, there was an authenticity. There was no Swedish person trying to phonetically learn this. This was real.

I was thinking of like Jane Childs don't want to fall in love, you know? Yeah, there we go. Even Billy Myers kissed the rain. I'm dating myself and all this stuff. But there is a passion that was aggressive to these songs. I mean, literally like Jane Child with the big, like, blonde Mohawk, and she's like in the video, stomping.

You're like, oh, what the heck is this? You know, but it was needed for that. And I think once again, it was too easy for people men, people, critics, people, to put these people in a box because it was uncomfortable how righteous their rage and their emotion was. Yeah. Okay, so the early 90s, you have alternative rock.

You have Riot Girl. You know, and as we move through the 90s, then you get to the Spice Girls, right, in the mid to late 90s. quiet girl becomes girl power. And there's an argument at least that like we lost, you know, the corny loves and the you ought to know is like you don't see that as often from the late 90s on as teen pop kind of takes over as TRL takes over MTV. Did you have a sense at the time moving from the 90s to the early 2000s that we had lost, you know, some of that alt-rock rage

other than Calais, other than Blue Cantrell? Like, did you feel that loss in real time or do you see it now looking back. For sure, after Lilith, right? And I just listened to Sarah McLaughlin on Amy Poller's podcast and about the reason that Lilith existed because they refused to put two women at a time on the same bill. And then when they tried to be Lilith some time ago, they didn't, it didn't sell because we don't need that anymore because somewhere in there, it became, it was all about the money. They figured out what they could sell. So Lilith happened and they go, oh, it's just hippie chicks. I mean, that's not true because I saw Missy Elliott for the first time on that bill. This was not just, as Sarah Blosselin said, white chick folk singers. There was a lot happening,

but then you get to Woodstock 99 and them, you know, telling Jewel to take her top off and trying to attack an onto Lewis. Just like heavy metal was a reaction to disco because it was too black and too gay. I think a lot of the stuff in the late 90s, early 2000s, there's a reaction to women getting too much power, too much airplay, too much power. And so then they had to say,

oh, look, it's girls. Like, and it doesn't wrong with Britney Spears. I love Britney Spears. Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera, who, you know, also a lot of Lolita crap happening. It was really gross. But guys going, let's put this back in the box now, ladies.

Let's package with spice girls. Let's put this back in the box. Let's make it a product again. Let's make it a thing that we control. And that was very disappointing. Right. Which brings us to milkshake, I guess, which is 2003, which is Kaleas' biggest hit by far.

And to me, like, Milkshake is about, you know, a song where you're laughing at the dudes who are objectifying you, right? Like you're turning their lust for you against them. Like empowering is a really dorky over. used, like totally co-opted word, but like, did it have that quality for you when you first heard it? Absolutely. I've read in preparation, because I was doing my homework for this podcast a lot.

I remember some of it, but I wasn't misconstruing her statements, that she felt it wasn't just about sexuality. It was about all of who you are. It's about being the dopest chick in the world and saying, I, this is my yard that I have created. And I have lured you here and I will decide whether or not you set foot in my yard because I have crafted this thing about me that is so powerful and so sexy and so smart and funny and dope in myself that I teach you how to do it, but I'd have to charge because I'm just a master at this of a master at my thing. And I think that it was not necessarily, once again, because it's so easy to assume the cheapest, easiest thing about a song so you can categorize it and move on. And so I think that because, yeah,

it's goofy, the milkshake thing, I think it was easy as a novelty or easy does this miss? It's just some silly thing that meant nothing. And it meant everything. Right. Because I do, it's a, again, it's a very funny song milkshake is. And I do think of it in the same breath as like my humps by the black eyed peas or maybe even more so like Fergie, like London Bridge and all that when she went solo. Like, these are very, very silly,

broad, like body songs, I guess is how I would describe them. But, like, they're very smart and they're very pointed at the same time.

Like, does the silliness detract from the pointedness or is the silliness part of what's so powerful about these songs now? I think you're powerful enough to be silly. And others,

I think this is a much better song than my homes or London Bridge. And also, I would agree. Yeah. To me, as powerful as singer of Stacey Ferguson, is there was still a male gaze to her.

Yeah. That I do not feel in Calise. Even though obviously she's singing about the male gaze. She's singing about it, but she's pulling it. And a lot of that her solo stuff, I mean, The Duchess is a great album, but there's a lot of stuff. And then, unfortunately, that brings me to Harajuku Girls, which is just ick. But it's that same. Yeah, Gwen had a journey there.

Cultural as a girl power thing. Furgy, I don't think, did that. But there's an edge to Kalees' work, even the silly stuff, that I think is different than what Fergie was doing. I would agree with you. That does sort of bring up the Neptunes of it all, right? You know, like the first two albums Kalees does are entirely Neptunes. Milkshake is a Neptune song.

But, like, this is the end of the line because Kaleas, you know, as she'll talk about later in interviews, like, she got ripped off. You know, she was promised one third of the money from these records, these songs, and she didn't get it. And like, she's estranged, I think, permanently from the Neptune's. Like, does it's, she's not even fully empowered, like, financially on this song about how empowered she is, right? Does it make you hear? It is. Does it make you hear milkshake differently to know, like, sort of the ugliness of the behind-the-scenes thing?

Or does the song, when you hear it still sort of stand alone? and apart, you know, from the backstory that's developed around it. I'm going to tell you, it makes me look at Farrell and his pop Yoda, Lego movie, you know, a lot different. It's the minions, but yeah, okay, okay, probably did. He did all that. There's a movie about Farrell that's. Oh, that's right.

It's their biopic and it's Lego. I didn't see that. Did you see that? Did you see that movie? There's a big buy-in on him. And I love all his minion stuff. I have a 12-year-old child. So obviously I'm first.

All that stuff. But it makes you look at that in his sort of Zen master thing a lot different. We're literally, according to police, their response to her accusations were, well, you signed it. Right. And she had a very funny story about being at an event she knew he was going to be performing at. And she's sitting in the audience. And he can see her. and she sees him, they see each other.

And he was being watched, because everyone knows they have beef, and he nods. And she said that it's meant to be that nod of, okay, we're cool. But she said she went to them, you stole my publishing. I'm like, yes, and she doesn't do that. But I wish she had, because that would have been fun. Right. It would have been. The other thing you mentioned to me, I'm so glad you did, was the girls next door,

the Playboy The Okay, well it was a reality series about Hugh Hefner's girlfriends, plural, three of them, I think, living in the Playboy Mansion and like getting into wacky adventure.

This is 2005 to 2010, and it's just an example of like what was in the air in the mid-2000s at Kalees' peak, like just what ostensibly sexy pop culture was like. Did you enjoy this show at the time? Leslie, and do you enjoy it now?

Absolutely never, ever, ever. And here is what, and I'll tell you what. God bless you. God bless you. Okay. It's so gross. We talked about how there was too much. Ladies were getting too big for their bridges and divining their own power, sexuality and stuff. So what the 2000s did was recreate it with this catch 22 that says,

we're going to put the grossest shit ever on TV. We're going to do Girls Gone Wild and the SWATs. law, no millionaire, and all the stuff, because you said you wanted to be empowered, right? Here you are. You have a chance to say that you're empowered, but you can't say you don't like it, because if you don't like it, then you're a prudent, you weren't telling the truth about wanting to empower yourself. So there were many who would say the line is you have to convince yourself

that these hot, blonde, young girls could have anyone in the world, and they went, Hugh Hafner's old ass. Yeah, that's what it wants you to do. So all this of girls going wild, all of the very, like, gross, exploitative, like, you know, that's the reign of Perez Hilton and putting the jizz on Britney's mouth. Yeah. Yes. That stuff, which was just so disgusting.

But as a woman, you had to put on your Von Dutch hat and your Playboy hat and go to a strip club and act like. And so people like that. And that's fine. If that's your gig, that's your gig. But it was very much shoved on people. that this is what you have to do to be empowered because you said you were like a man, you say you could go in the boardroom, you say could do all this. I know people who went to, who scheduled their board meetings or their staff meetings

at strip clubs knowing at lunch, knowing that their female counterparts were going to have to go and sit there. So this is what Calais is facing. And I think that there is not only a misunderstanding of or willful misunderstanding of female sexuality, but it's punitive. It was punitive. It was like, we've now got you. We got you where we want you.

And I think that he was misunderstood because she was launching into a culture that was set to misunderstand her. And so her getting through was even more of a triumph to me. because I think people got her weirdness. I think there was a weird girl thing about her. Certainly, like me, a weird black girl, you know, that, you know, defied stereotypes or genres or whatever very, I'm wearing a shirt that says unapologetically dope. You are?

I am very much myself. I forgot, people can see me. Hi, people. I forget, too. It's fine. I'll remind you if you need reminding. there we go. Colise and Macy Gray who

That's important. She's important. I got in a Palm Beach party. I want people like, is that Macy Gray? Much shorter than Macy Gray. But I was a black woman with big hair and there's gray in my name

so people just kind of assumed that I would be her. There was an odd duckness to those women because they were so unapologetically themselves. And some people were not ready for that, but I think a lot of people were, which is why we're still talking about these people. Absolutely.

And I think Calise was always aware of how she was perceived as well. Like her next, one of her biggest hits after milkshake is bossy, of course, which is, of course, another historically, you know, overloaded word. You know, is she still ahead of her time at that point in sort of understanding the way that she's perceived and sort of flinging it right back at us? This slur of bossy, you know, that she reclaims for herself. It's interesting. I don't know if you brought up or something I read, talked about how Cheryl Sandberg of Linen fame at that time had she wanted to ban the word bossy because she was trying to

distinction between the world the way that the word boss is used to men who like I'm in charge I'm unequivocally the top person I've earned the spot to bossy which is sounds nitpicky and and punitive and me me me me me me me me me me and so she wanted to eliminate that word but I think it's a fine word because I think it defines a feminine power and it doesn't have to be nitpicky if you don't want it to be. It doesn't have to be, you know, I like a word. It doesn't have to be cutting or, you know,

me, me, me, me, me, that's not even a word. No, that's good. I know exactly what you made when you do that. Unless you want it to. So I am reluctant. to remove entire words without explanation. And I loved Kalees' I love that song. And I loved her, as you said, reclaiming of it.

Because the word is inherently feminine or used mostly to describe women. And it's saying, but I can still be boss and be bossy. I could be Diana Ross, the boss, you know, and still be Kaleigh. with her big crazy hair. I think that's great. Yeah. And I agree with you completely. And it's very important. Like, Cleese is weird. You know, even on her singles, but if you listen to a full

Calice album, like, there's a lot of space. There's a lot of like interstellar, let's go to Mars, are aliens real? Like, there's a science fictional aspect to her. Like, and you never quite know where she's going or what she's going to talk about next. Like, do you, do you view, as I do, like, Her unpredictability and the eclecticism of her albums, they make her hard to categorize, but that's her superpower, you know, that she can do anything or talk about anything at any moment. And I love that.

I think that sometimes people go, I'm going to do this to go, are you? And I think some people would be argue is, what will it be accepted? Will people get it? Because you can say, and I say, there's a parent often, are you? Really?

You know, but from Colise's perspective, you know, I think she was, and is truly herself and had enough confidence. And once again, she was 19 when she started out. You know, just like a lot of us. Just young person. Just all of the bravado that watch me now, let me cook, as they say.

And so I sound very old saying that. I'm sorry, my child, I'm sorry, my child. Sorry, it's fine. It's fine. But she did not ask permission. And I think that, like, particularly going into, and through and past the Neptune's era,

it's like I got burned for working in collaboration with people or having people tell me what they thought. So I'm not going to do that anymore. And it's okay for her to be kind of out there. Like people, once again, Macy Gray, were like, she's high all the time. Yeah, who isn't? Who wasn't?

I'm not. Yeah, right. Me neither. But I know what you mean, yes. Once again, women in a box. Women in a box, people of color in a box. And Collise refused to go near the box. She is her own cylinder of space.

She's not even, there's not even a door on it. She floats. She comes back. She's her own situation. Right. And so when I look at her, you know, streaming numbers don't mean everything, obviously. But like, Milkshake is her biggest song now, both chart-wise and streams or whatever. Given how eclectic, how wild her career has been, these albums that she's making.

since the different people she's worked with, post-Neptunes. Like, does milkshakes still the one song that best represents her? Is that still a suitable entry point to Calise? If that's the only song you know, are you getting the full experience of her? I kind of, and I hate, you know, as a snobby person, I hate to say that the biggest hit is the thing that encapsulates an artist. But I think in many ways it does because she's at the height of her powers. You know, when you're younger, then you go, that person,

since popular now, they sold out. The person is usually not mad about that because they like money. People enjoy money. You never hear Bono going, well, no, I have too much money. Here is my album. On your IP. Yeah. There you are on your Apple Music.

But I think that there's a, when we're younger, we think purity isn't about money and it's not. but it's also not about money. It's not not about success. And I heard a thing she said the other day that she said several years ago where she said that she tries not to revisit her songs but that she loves milkshake. She doesn't like to dwell on it,

but she is very happy for milkshake. She is very happy that it was poppy and bouncy and bouncy and it got in your head. and it's a thing that stayed with you and made people happy. And it was very gracious because, you know, the, you know, the Mr. Jones of it all, there are people who go, eh, my biggest hit. Right, right. Not her.

And I get that. But, yeah, she doesn't seem to have a lot of regret. Now, so much has happened, you know, she was with Nas and they broke up and she alleged, you know, abuse, and then she got married, and then her husband died. Mike Mora, who's a photographer. And now she and her kids, the last day, looked, are in Kenya on a farm. I knew about the farm.

Yeah, that's the farming is a big part. In the cookbook, you know, like there's an entire culinary sideline to her that's really fascinating as well. Once again, when you were an artist and you just say, because you know there's a manager somewhere going, is this the right time to put out of a cookbook? Or then an album about,

all food. Should we be doing this? She's like, ah, let it rip, you know? Right. And I really,

it's like, David Bowie would go, I'm gonna be crazy today. And they'd go, you know what? We don't get it. To go from Major Tom to a black soul album in Philadelphia

with Luther Vandross, what are we doing? It seems like, this is what I'm doing. And I think, obviously, Calais is not on that fame scale as Bowie,

but I think she is singerly, and people, are going to go, I can't believe you're saying this. She is her own artist, just like Bowie was his own artist. She is the captain of her infictus, and she's just a funky chick, and she does her own thing. And I think it kind of falls where it does, you know. Yeah. And I love that for her.

Yeah. Last question for you, Leslie. Did Calais really date Bill Murray? Did I hallucinate this? And I wanted it to be true. It was not. So apparently they were photographed. Yeah, they were photographed at an event together.

And people were like, ooh, are they dating? And they weren't. Bill Mary said, look, that would be several steps down for her if she were dating me. I don't think she ever commented on it because, you know, woman of mystery. But no, they did not date. They just took a really cool picture together. They both looked great. I mean, it was like, I don't know these people.

their personal life doesn't matter to me at all, but it's fun. It's like, that would have been fun. It wasn't. It would have been probably better off that it didn't happen, but it is fun to think about in the aspect. As always, Leslie, absolutely wonderful to talk to you. Thank you so much for being here and come back soon, please. I will. Let me know.

I'll be here. Thanks very much to our guest this week, Leslie Gray Streeter. Thanks, as always to our producers, Justin Sales, Olivia Creary, and Chris Sutton. production by Kevin Pooler, animations and graphics by Chris Calleton, an additional art by Matt James. Special thanks as always to Cole Kushna and thanks

to you for listening. And now let's all go listen to Milkshake by Kalee. We'll see you next week.