The 333 Best Pop Songs of the 2000s: #265

#265: "Milkshake" (2003) - Kelis

About fifteen years ago, I took a break from college, and during that time away from scholarly activity, I took a job as a sodajerk (and prescripton-delivery boy) at a local pharmacy. Since part of my job entailed making milkshakes, naturally I had to dispense many a milk jug, and I did so the way my mom taught me: take off the top, squeeze the jug flat, replace the top, and then throw it away; that method saved space. Well, after a month or so on the job, one of my co-workers (who'd been at the pharmacy for ten or fifteen years at the time) saw me flattening and trashing a milk jug in the garbage can underneath the counter. She exhaled an audible huff and marched down the aisle from the back of the store. She reached down into the garbage, grabbed the flattened milk jug, and shook it in my face, saying, "This is not where this goes! This goes in the back! In the back!"

I was shocked. Just as she turned, I asked her if the pharmacy recycled, and if the recycled products went in the back. She said, "No! We don't!" She shook the jug in my face again, growled, and stomped off to the back of the store, where she slammed the milk jug into the trash can and shouted (from across the store), "That is where it goes!" She then went out the back door, slamming it as well. I then noticed that all the customers in the store were staring at me. I was embarrassed. They looked at me like they were expecting a response. I didn't know what to say, so I just shrugged my shoulders and went back to the counter at the front of the store, and I thought to myself "Someone should write a song about this," and "I need to finish college so that I can get a job that pays me well enough to be treated this way."

Well, I did go back to college, I do get paid more to be treated that way by fellow employees, and someone did write a song about that situation--the Neptunes. The Neptunes are former high-school band mates Pharrell and Chad Hugo, and their signature sound often features inorganic, sometimes spacey, synthesizer and synthesize drum patterns (though the drums are often first recorded live, as Pharrell was a drummer), all of which give their electro-funk a less-earthy Parliament feel, as if George Clinton had taken to space on the Mothership and made his records from there. Sometimes, their music can sound, uh, canned: compressed and claustrophobic, funk filtered through tin, giving their records a low bitrate-type sound--lo-fi funk--that works wonders on the dance floor, as the funk has no place left to go (as their spacey records have no space)--no ether in which to escape, so it lands in the dancer and reverberates within.

In "Milkshake," the Neptunes enlist R&B singer Kelis (who first appeared on ODB's "Got Your Money" and solo-debuted with the Neptunes in "Caught Out There," both from 1999), and she cooly plays the vamp, bringing a seductive heat to the Neptunes cold, hard, electro-funk, singing a melody that's completely inescapable, and loosening up the song ever so slightly and carefully (isn't that what a tease is supposed to do?). Though the lyrics mention schoolboys (garnering for that weird, fetishist, Britney-Spears-in-Catholic-uniform vibe), Kelis doesn't sing 'em immaturely; she's like the vixen, the one smarter than everyone, in some lost film noir. She's spiked the cream in her milkshakes, concocted with the Neptunes that perfect blend of come-on and not-just-yet. Kelis brings 'em in, and the Neptunes funk keeps them out, and it's that give and take, that flow, that makes this record a hit no matter how many times you've heard it. Kelis keeps making her milkshake, and the Neptunes keep throwing the milk carton in the wrong trashcan. Every time. Something's got to give.