NPR offers an exclusive listen to Kelis' new album, Food.

Food is life. It's the connective tissue between families, communities and cultures. At base, it's sustenance, and at its most complex, like when it appears in song, it can evoke nostalgia, carnal desires and comfort. For Kelis Rogers, R&B's resident provocateur, Food — her first album since 2010's dance-heavy Flesh Tone — is the embodiment of what she has always contended as an artist: that she can't be molded to fit inside one genre — one flavor, one dish, one cuisine.