On the 20th anniversary of her debut album “Kaleidoscope,” Kelis shared some reflections on her career and the tea naturally started to spill.
In a new interview with Guardian, Kelis somewhat dragged the industry that she traded in for a peaceful farm life as well as her former close friends, Pharrell Williams and Chad Hugo of The Neptunes, whom she claims “blatantly lied and tricked” her out of her money for years.
Kelis alleges that she never made money off of her first two albums due to a bad contract she signed. When she addressed Pharrell and Chad about it, they allegedly responded with, “Well, you signed it.” “I’m like: ‘Yeah, I signed what I was told, and I was too young and too stupid to double-check it,’” Kelis said.
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In the interview, she also rehashed the abuse claims she made against her ex-husband Nas, which he has repeatedly denied, saying that it took seeing the photos of Rihanna after she was assaulted by Chris Brown back in 2009 to finally leave.
“It just woke me up,” Kelis said, adding that getting pregnant was the other reason she decided to end things with Nas. “I thought, you know, I can endure a lot, but I’m not prepared to bring someone else into this. So I’m done.”
Kelis claims that the abuse in her relationship became worse with fame. Since she first spoke publicly about this, Nas has issued repeated denials that he hit her and alleges that she stopped him from seeing their son.
“Any rational person would look at this situation and say [to Nas]: ‘Well, if you want to see [your child], you have to actually show up!’ My kid is a really happy child, because I don’t tell him when [his father] says he’s going to come and doesn’t show up,” Kelis said.
Currently, Kelis is married with a second child and has plans to open up her own farm-to-table restaurant while she works on new music.
Pharrell and Chad Hugo reportedly did not respond to requests for comment on Kelis’ claims
