There’s raw deals, and then there’s what happened to Wanderland. What should’ve been a sophomore solidification of everything that made Kelis and the Neptunes click so forward-mindedly was just a little too weird for Virgin, so the singer ditched the label, which subsequently left what should’ve been a trans-continental smash stranded in Europe. But don’t say this album didn’t warn you: when its lead single (“Young, Fresh N’ New”) takes her just-turned-21 escapist liberation and goes “what if that cascade of exploding synths from the intro to Rush’s ‘Tom Sawyer’ was a whole-ass funk jam,” it becomes apparent that the Neptunes wanted to take their showcases for Kelis’s butter-to-napalm vocal range even further than Kaleidoscope did. It’s definitely a vibe-over-genre sort of eclecticism, where a descriptor like “futurist R&B” only scratches the surface of its pleasures — the synthetic carousel-slash-church organ scattering glitter everywhere in “Popular Thug” (featuring Clipse’s Pusha T in charming-sociopath mode), the prickly twitch-disco of “Digital World,” and No Doubt sidestepping ska-punk to give in to their arena-rock destiny for “Perfect Day.” If that all sounds like a sprawling mess, at least the star at the center of it all sings like it’s the self-proving star turn she deserved.