[artist id="509603"]Kelis[/artist] would be the last person in the world to label herself the "mushy type," but it seems pregnancy changed that. Carrying her son Knight (with [article id="1616840"]estranged husband Nas[/article]) served as a great inspiration for her new album, due sometime in spring 2010.

"Pregnancy, it's this insane ... you feel like an animal on so many levels," she said. "It's from the level of protection and health and wanting to take care of yourself, to what's happening to your body and feeling this other creature growing inside of you. I'm in love with this little creature I made. It's amazing. How everything finally makes sense -- it's like, 'I made this. This is the music, this is the real tune.' No one can prepare you ... to be able to write in that moment, it's very validating. I'm so female with mounds of estrogen, [so] everything comes from that perspective. I had to step back to have any other perspective. To be pregnant and writing, it's like, 'This is who I am and this is what I'm doing. And if you don't like it, it's not for you.' "

Kelis recently announced a new record deal with Interscope through the Will.I.Am Music Group.

"Don't hold 'em to it -- I'm leaning towards Flesh Tone," she said of the LP's title. "Going back to it being very animalistic. Flesh and blood, sort of -- it's life. This is what it is. When everything else is stripped away, you've got yourself.

"Originally I wanted to do something electro," she added about the album's feel. "I kind of went through all these different phases of what I wanted it to be. In recording stuff, it kept changing. Finally it got to this really electronic, dance, really melodic vibe. Everything started to come in that space. I started to fall in love with it. It took a life unto itself. It wasn't calculated. ... All the stuff I fell in love with and stuff I was writing fell into that space. It's sort of a new-age disco -- futuristic disco."