"Kelis Was Here" received generally positive reviews from music critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream publications, the album received an average score of 70, based on 23 reviews. Ann Powers from the "Los Angeles Times" praised its eclectic music and said that it "mines a memory of R&B as the playground of category-dismantling individualists." "NME" magazine wrote that it feels like "a wildly ambitious Warhol-esque art project." Kelefa Sanneh from "The New York Times" described the album as "typically garish and glorious", with sounds that range from "space-age hip-hop ... to space-age guitar pop". "Q" magazine said that the album is "chock-full of surreal soul diamonds." "Pitchfork"s Tim Finney wrote that, like "Wanderland", the album is "formally varied but feels consistent—even monochrome in parts." In a review for "The Observer", Peter Robinson commented that the album "occasionally misfires ... but there's still sass and creativity here." MSN Music's Robert Christgau gave "Kelis Was Here" a one-star honorable mention, indicating "a worthy effort consumers attuned to its overriding aesthetic or individual vision may well like." He cited "Blindfold Me" and "What's That Right There" as highlights, and quipped, "Good for sex and not much else, which in a fantasy object is plenty."