In a recent interview with Rap-Up.com, Kelis spoke candidly about the comparisons that fans have been making between her, Lady GaGa and Rihanna. The ‘Acapella’ singer noted that she sees “noticeable” elements of her style in both their music and their fashion sense but she does not have any animosity toward the two. Check out what Kelis, whose ‘Flesh Tone’ album hits stores on May 17th in the UK and July 6th in the US, had to say below:
[Kelis] says she’s flattered by the comparisons and attributes the similarities to her peers’ ages. “They’re really young. What else are they supposed to do?”Kelis explains that this is not the first time an artist has been accused of “swagger jacking.” Borrowing fashion and recycling trends has occurred many times before her. “I’ve been around for a long time and that’s what artists do; we take from each other and we recycle,” she states. “And quite frankly, it may not even be them. It might be stylists that have been around as long as I have and are like, ‘Hey, let’s recycle this on these younger artists.’”
But she shrugs off the controversy. “I’m not offended by it. I don’t really have much feeling about it, honestly. It just keeps me on my toes and allows me to continue moving forward, so it’s cool. I really don’t see it as a bad thing. I guess it means I’m on the right track.”
While she has no beef with her fellow fashionistas, you won’t find her listening to their music on her iPod. “I can’t say that I do. I’m familiar with it, like I know it. I don’t live in a hole. If I’m at a party and they play it, I enjoy it. I get it.” {Source}
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All these artist that jacked Kelis need to give her a check.
She is zo humble and not a b**** like ‘gracejones’ was with the gaga thing. I gained more respect for her.
I LOVE KELIS SO HUMBLE
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That was a very nice thing for her to say. Although she can’t really take much credit herself because Kelis herself was swagger jacking Grace Jones as well as other fashion icons. She just wasn’t as popular. However she was imitating herself. But I’m glad she kept it classy. No need to get rude.
Kelis is not original. Like she said, artists borrow from each other all the time. She has borrowed from other artists so…it is what it is.
I like Kelis and this just made it even better. I’m glad she’s not trying to be a b****! She seems so humble and I love her for that! Kudos Kelis!
I’m proud of her for being such a mature, lady about it.
Kelis is way more original than gaga & Rihanna put together because she actually knows fashion and she put her own twist to it. Gaga & Rihanna both just copy without putting their own twang to it. So don’t try to discredit Kelis’ originality because your faves are too copycating, fraud b******.
“Borrowing fashion and recycling trends has occurred many times before her. “I’ve been around for a long time and that’s what artists do; we take from each other and we recycle,” she states. ”
preach!
This is like the second time she is talking about this! Well she said it right!!! Fashion is always being recycled! I really don’t see the musical influence though! Rihanna and Gaga definitely did not copy her music style!
@Geishagirl- Rihanna and Gaga always put their own twang to their clothing especially Rihanna! You’re just a hater! Kelis went from dressing different and unique to attention-seeking! I like the Kelis from before!!! This Kelis is now trying too hard to be unique! She looks outrageous!!!
@RihalienLOVER
U’re a delusional Rihanna stan. Rihanna doesn’t have a link of creativity nor originality in her and she will NEVER come for Kelis’ style…NEVER and thats fact.
Rihanna came out looking like a wannabe, Beyonce and now shes a posing a** wannabe rocker. Girl boom! Rihanna’s no one’s fashionista. Playing dress up doesn’t make up fashion forward and Kelis IS fashion forward. Kelis’ 2006 look, Rihanna still rocking it now. Everything Rihanna is TRYING to emulate now, Kelis been there and done it better. Now who’s the innovator? Sure not Rihanna lame, gimmick fraud ass. Now HATE on that!
Kelis is just ahead of the game. Deal with it.
Go eat some meat.
Yea this statement she kept it classy, although I dont see the simularities to Rihanna at all.
Rihanna seems more classy & stylish & designers love her. She gets paid to wear their clothes,go to fashion shows, & they send her clothes. Kelis is more of a “hot mess” to me. She looks dirty to me like she needs a bath. Its like shes Using Ri & Gaga to be relevent. Im sure she has a following and has had a few popular songs however, she’s never reached the statis of a pop star like Rihanna or Gaga.
So keep trying shes not all that to me or society, so u can talk that talk but please no one is buying that sh*t. I did love that Circonia Mask she wore for her album cover though. Good Luck. But do u weirdo. If she can compare her style to anyone it would be Solange.
Bye Kelis. Who?????????????????????????????
Ms Grace Jones has earned the right to be her. She does not have to be politically correct or say what people think she should. Grace turned it out generations before these gals (all of them) where even born. I get her annoyance. At least Rihanna gave her credit & paid hommage to her style. Not Gaga though. I think it was appropriate for Grace to check that gaga a** and let her know she dont get down like that, & no she was not going to work with her. I respect Grace she keeps it real while others say it she does it. go Grace u r the baddest. FIERCE. shes true to herself > *side bar* Grace speaks at least 5-6 different languages fluently. pop girls step ur game up
Why are they even still asking Kelis about these 2 wack chicks? Gaga? The one who Grace Jones dragged to hell for copying, and Rihanna, ,the biggest swagger jacker thus far.
Kelis is much more of a trendsetter, those 2 chicks are just bandwagon hoppers, generic, put together by stylist artists.
Kelis kill them in music and in fashion. I just call it like I see it.
ROCK THE FK ON KELIS…a super FKN LADY….the Rihanna stans to retarted to admit that RIHONNA jocked KELIS AND FEFE DOBSON…IF IT WASNT FOR KELIS AND FEFE INSPIRATION RIHANNA WOULD STILL BE ON THAT MUSIC OF THE SUN TYPE OF IMAGE….LMAO. Kelis glad to know you back at it again mama…but be careful somebody might try and steal your swagg again once you decided to fall back again!
<3 Her
She's not trying to exploit the fact that she did some of those things other gals are picking up on now at a time when it wasn't popular.
People keep asking her to talk about it hoping she'll throw some jabs, but she won't. Nice, classy statement.
Rihanna ain’t never coming for the BOSS B**** Kelis.
Rihanna cant even dress herself, she just a puppet to Kelis. LMAOO
Please ppl, face the facts, Rihanna is a swagger jacker! Kelis was the only Black female artist with her style and edginess during the time when Black artists were just hip-hoppers, or regular R&B chicks! Kelis is the true style icon in my opinion, because yes, like most New Yorkers, she is daring in her fashion, but she is the one who was in the music industry hello! My stance is, you can tell that her style is true to who she is as a person, whereas, Rihanna just took notes from Kelis’ photos and hooked up with a stylist! Kelis is a true bad-ass chick in real life, not just in song and imagery! I think most ppl on here are mad young and don’t understand anything. Kelis is huge in Europe, because all these wack ass Black American artists could not understand or catch on to her and she was labeled as the non-traditional R&B artist! Wake up folks, give props where it’s due! Fall back stupid Rihanna stans! Yo fave is garbage!
Im Happy She Kept it Clean and Humble
But Im Sorry Rihanna is on another fashion level to Kelis.!”
The only time they kinda looked the same was when she done Bossy!” and she had the short hairstyle either from that they are really diffrent.!”
And rihanna aint like lady gaga who wears stuff just to look diffrent rihanna wears guccie, alex wang normal clothing and she just adds her own lil twist people need to stop with this Ooo her stylist helps her
because NOBODY CAN SAY THEY STILL DRESS THE SAME SINCE THEY WHERE 16 RIHANNA CAME OUT AT A YOUNG AGE SHE HAS GROWN AND HER STYLE HAS TRANSFORMED.! yes she does get a lil help from her sylist on finding the lates designers and what is cool or not but why do people think she has no decision on what she wears =/
like are yall serious. in kelis prime she was the baddest. if kelis continued to do what she was doing rihanna would not be as much of an hottopic. i would take away from anybody’s style or music genius but rihanna seem somewhat of a now verison of what kelis was. no kelis wasn’t the first to start these trends but she rebirthed them and updated them for those to muse. i say kelis and rihanna will play in the league for years to come cause of three of the woman (lady gag, rihanna, & kelis) pull moves and make music that we will forever listen to and imitate.
I love KElis! SHe is the true bad girl of the industry, not wack ass Rihanna who just got a new stylist! Kelis was the edgy and funky chick from the beginning and got little recognition for it in the U.S. Yet, RIhanna comes along, steals her style and she gets all the mainstream love in the world! Pure b*******! I have been saying for the longest that Rihanna stole her style from Kelis, the evidence is in all of her pics! I wish her and NAs were together tho, they make the sexiest couple!
I can’t wait for Kelis new album “Flesh Tone”. I can always count on her to bring something eclectic and fresh on the stale music scene. Kelis has been edgy for years now everybody and their mama wants to be edgy and do the urban alternative style she has done all this time. For those in denial, stay in it if you want, but this woman has set trends and has stayed true to herself from the very beginning. Of course Rihanna jacked her style, it’s so obvious. She’s not the only one who “borrowed” from Kelis either. Beyonce’s Ring the Alarm was a Caught Out There part 2, Lola Luv is talking about a “Boss B****” movement when Kelis did that 4 years ago on “Bossy” and Too Short was rapping “boss b****” on the song. I don’t know why people are trying to act so clueless in here. You don’t have to invent a style to make it popular, duh! Michael Jackson didn’t invent the moonwalk, a guy from the group Shalamar actually taught the dance move to Michael. However, Michael made the dance iconic and we all attach his name to the dance instead. This Kelis/Rihanna thing is the same scenario. It’s so ironic Rihanna fans will swear up and down people like, Eva Simmons, Dawn and Kelena from Dirty Money, as well as Michelle Williams are trying to look and sound like Rihanna, but in this post things are oh so different. LOL. Give me a break and be consistent. Again, a trend doesn’t always have to trace back to the originator, it can be started by anyone, fashion designers are a very good example of that. Also, Rihanna fans need to kill that noise about album sales because that is so petty, you aren’t her real fans if use her album stats to belittle other artists, that’s being a superficial fan and those type of fans are bandwagoners which are critical to any artist in this digital age because they can turn people off to that artist therefore affect their sales. Besides Rihanna ain’t doing so hot on the charts anyway and so instead of trying to make Kelis look inferior when it comes to sales how about you support Rihanna big water head ass . Personally, I’d rather own a hot album that sold a thousand copies any day over a garbage album that sold a million, sales have never affected my decision on who I like musically.
Grace Jones was the first, period.
It’s funny how Rihanna stupid fan above is so quick to say “Grace Jones was the first” when they were saying she was irrelevant a while back. Kelis and Grace has 2 TOTALLY different styles so don’t say Grace is the 1st dummy if you don’t know anything about Grace or Kelis style.
@ Boom Boom Pow,
Listen to Last Boy On Earth because Kelis was inspired by Grace Jones’s fashion. Kelis may not have been as bold as Grace (Let’s be honest nobody is) but she was inspired. She has even stated it in interviews. Nobody will touch the legendary Ms. Grace Jones. Like someone else said before me, Grace Jones was an International Fashion Icon who spoke 5 to 6 languages fluently. All these latest Pop h*** need to step they game up! She was and is still worlds ahead of them.
Kudos to Kelis for staying humble. I know she probably gets tired of ppl asking her about her influence on Gaga and Rihanna.
Even I as a Rihanna fan can admit that Rihanna was biting Kelis back in her “Bossy” days, even though I think Rihanna bit Fefe Dobson more than anything. I see some of Kelis’ style with Gaga too.
yeah yeah yeah…but we not really checkin for u…and this is her 2nd time talkin about it…and didnt she go off the first time?
ALL THESE B****** COPY ONE ANOTHER GET OVER IT REALIZE IT
Actually Claudine, Gaga is the one who has OPENLY stated that Grace Jones was a style icon for her, she is the one that reached out to Grace Jones for a duet ( even though Grace denied her). The first time I heard Rihanna mention Grace was to say the others told her she reminded her of them, that’s not really giving Grace credit for her style, that’s saying someone else thought she shared some similarities.
Again Kelis has always gone against the grain of what was popular for most urban artists. Us in the states used to say she was so different because she spent a lot of tme in Europe ( we were just guessing). She was different when people weren’t interested in being different- her pink hair when she first came out and since. Yes everyone does borrow from another but alot of the others seemed to have gotten a memo that “edgy is in…everyone must wear leotards…talk about how original and edgy you are”. If you have to talk about it, then you obviously are not about it.!
Almost everyone in the music industry ( hollywood too) really are a bunch of followers that may not even realize they are followers ( Hello Autotune). There are those that set trends, those that borrow and bring trends to the fore front and then those that just jump on board because they see that it’s done by all the artistic and “fabulous” people. Most of the people that set trends we NEVER hear about because they are truly underground, everybody else is just following.
There is nothing like copying. Artist is ART and ART is Creativity. All of them are going around Creativity. They might put touches that’s because they got inspired by the artists. But I don’t want to say this but i will/ who’s lady GaGa? she’s a one year old singer who’s she to compare her to many famouse and well-known artist. the problem is not GaGa the problem is the people who sees every artists in GaGa. Ppl check the history of videos and you will find that many singers got a wierd style and full of fashion its just insanity when seeing any artists wiering a great weird outfit and wht some say “copying lady gaga” LOL Lady Gaga herself will laugh at those maniac fans LOL fans are not artists their just buyers some idtiots and many knows about art and music. so calm down ppl about GaGa. What would be SO freaking funny if Madonna released a new album and ppl compares her video to Gaga LOOOOOOL bye guys
I never seen a picture of Kelis and thought to myself…THATS FLY. LOL. The end!
-Interview Question is trying to inflate ego, and start beef so there will be something to write about
-Style is universal, while they are all so similar, there is NO ONE who plays a Kelis video and mistakes it for Rihanna or the Gaga.
-The majority of pop culture in this country revolves around the concepts of self-created ingenuity and respect for individuality—the American working heart.
-Although it is hard, let alone rude, to categorize all three of these in pop together, the fact that interviewers continually compare them is because the average person/fan/style-r***** recognizes patterns in visual stimulation and categorizes it so that it can make sense.
-To say that they all copy one another is true, but discounts the fact that the incredible drive that each one of these women has exhibited to be heard.
-The lyrical content of lady gaga, as well as her valuable background in learning via imitating for most of her life, gives her the looks. What is different about her, edgy, artistic, deep, is her story. Latest album was called The Fame Monster for a reason. Though there are countless hidden meanings and blunt statements about this through out the songs on the album, the mere title says it all. The fame monster, as in a person who turns into a monster because of the need for fame, money, love, recognition ect ect
-No one told Gaga to go this route and with some of those outfits, a lot of people were ready to judge her, yet she remains. I honestly think if that girl wasn’t famous, she’d still be stripping and lighting hairspray on fire just because, just to be different, just for fun. It is about celebrating the depravity, the human condition, which is horrible, scary, evil, and yet so beautiful, so precious, worth selling everything you have to see it realized.
-Gaga is edgy and about the hype, yet incredibly deep, open, and honest about it. Rihanna shares the same quality in that she is yet young still in the industry and has to have time to fully come into her own.
-The fact that Rihanna was discovered by Jay Z and B’s people when she was so young raises the issue of whether Rih even has a story or something to say with her music or if she is a product, bought and sold to the public as a covert business move on B’s side to ease out of the pop game without being thrown off her pedestal by a competitor. As in, we make you famous, you follow the ground rules we lay out as to when the right time to rise to full stardom happens.
-In the C. Brown event, all someone would have to do is watch her interviews after the fact to see the determination and substance behind her words. She’s pissed. Though there are other interviews of her that happened early on where she exhibited the same “in your face” attitude, her birth into uniqueness really shines now that she has an understandable reason for the edge. The edge was there, it’s just free now. And she just happens to look good to designers, and she just happens to make it work for herself.
-In the case of Kelis, her origins and her affiliations alone are enough to support her—but just in case we didn’t believe in her—she gave us a pink and blonde affro in the “i hate you so much right now” video. During this time of her break out into r&b, each one of her videos were different, not always meant to shock or turn heads.
-This is the quality that the Europeans were talking about—the presentation of art, whimsically designed with different themes—seeming to be without pattern—and yet tied together by the word and the beat is something new in and of itself.
-Though it is sad to say, this was lost on the American people during the 90’s. Kelis was loved and appreciated by other creative people who thought outside the box and therefore, through this kind of acceptance, she really and truly distinguished herself among her peers and the ones she imitated.
-All these chicks were born in the same decade, and it’s silly for fans to # 1: even talk about age, #2: even compare a lion (Ririh) with a tiger(The gog) and a chimera (Kel-lisss)… & #3:
The icons we pile up on a pedestal fall just as fast or faster than what it took to build the pillar they stand on—based souly on their swagger—they could be dumb as a brick but they’d still dominate the charts bc they feed the culture what it wants—Swagger, individualized so much that the concept of recycling style as a sharing-interconnective bond that goes beyond personas—remains heavily unsaid.
SO, even though I was just listening to Kelis today and wanted to look up her origins again and happened on this site—and even though I usually never comment on any debates on forums regarding fashion/style/opinion—this particular thread reminds me a lot of what I hear people mentioning all the time in passing when discussing music—AND it angers me.
I wish that people understood symbolism, archetypes, story telling, personas, and just plane basic psychology better—And I wish that artists did a better job at opening the people’s mind to this…. I think all three of these chicks do this in that they push the envelope. They want you to like their creations, they want you to come into their world and rejoice over their art with them—but they’re not gonna cry about it if you can’t. But uh, I will—they’re all goddesses and deserve to be recognized for what they do.
Even if you don’t agree or see it this way, I beg the question–if you were famous or given a chance to be—and you didn’t have talent—given the chance—-everyone would rock out with their c*** out. Anyone would walk around like a redneck and sport a fedora like its okay. Everyone would walk around at the grammy’s with a green cabbage on their head—everyone would shave half their head, sue they baby’s daddy for 90 G’s a month—the fact is everyone is a fan of the fame lifestyle and everyone’s the mob—and angy blob fickle as a pickle—either souer or sweet—-and we’re all in it together—so why is this even on the richter!?
End rant.