Alicia Keys

• 1. Introduction

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  Alicia Keys was fifteen years old when Columbia Records tried to win her signature with a $26,000 white baby grand piano. She took the deal. It began a long struggle over who would decide what her music sounded like. Years later she summed up where it ended: "Once I started producing my own stuff there wasn't any going back."

  Keys is an American singer, songwriter and pianist, and her career turns on that refusal to hand her music to anyone else. How does a teenager from a rough Manhattan neighborhood come to trust her own ear over a major label's? What does it cost to walk away from a contract? And what does an artist build once the decisions are finally hers?

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• 2. Hell's Kitchen Childhood

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  Alicia Augello Cook was born on the 25th of January 1981 in the Hell's Kitchen neighborhood of Manhattan. Her mother, Teresa Augello, worked as a paralegal and a part-time actress. Her father, Craig Cook, was a flight attendant, and he left when she was two years old. Keys grew up an only child in her mother's household at Manhattan Plaza, in a one-bedroom apartment. Her mother often worked three jobs, and Keys said she "learned how to survive" from watching her.

  Her heritage was mixed. Her father is African American. Her mother is of Italian and "Irish or Scottish" descent, and her mother's paternal grandparents came from Sciacca in Sicily and Lamezia Terme in Calabria. She was named after her Puerto Rican godmother, and she has said the mix made her comfortable because she could "relate to different cultures."

  The streets outside the apartment were rougher than the home inside it. As a girl she regularly saw street violence, drugs and prostitution, and she faced sexual propositions. She carried a homemade knife for protection. She also began dressing in gender-neutral clothes and wearing the cornrows that became her trademark. "I saw a variety of people growing up, and lifestyles, lows and highs," she said. "I think it makes you realize right away what you want and what you don't want." Keys later credited the neighborhood with training her for the music business, since she learned early to stay focused and avoid derailing herself.

  On Sunday mornings her mother played jazz records by Thelonious Monk, Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong. Keys counts those mornings as the start of her emotional bond with music.

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• 3. Classical Discipline

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  By the age of six, Keys knew she wanted to play the piano, because she loved its sound and the feel of the keys. Classical lessons began by age seven. She practiced six hours a day, learned by the Suzuki method, and worked through Beethoven, Mozart, Chopin and Satie. She gravitated toward "blue, dark, shadowy" pieces and toward the passionate romanticism of Chopin. When she was ten, a neighborhood friend who was moving away gave her family an old upright piano, so she could finally practice at home.

  The film Philadelphia gave her a first song. By the age of 12 she had written one about her departed grandfather, after watching the scene where Tom Hanks's character listens to opera on a record player. Keys described herself as someone who "never showed emotion very well." Writing that song gave her a way to say what she felt.

  Before her 13th birthday she told her mother she was overwhelmed. Her mother had filled her days with music, dance, theater and gymnastics so she could "find her muse," and the schedule had caused her first burnout. Her mother took time off with her and urged her to stay with the piano. Keys kept studying classical music until she was 18. She credited that training with giving her focus, work ethic and the ability to write her own music, adding, "I never, ever had to wait for anybody to write something for me."

  At 12 she also enrolled in the Professional Performing Arts School, where she majored in choir. Some sources say she took up jazz at 14 after her classical teacher had nothing left to teach her. That teacher herself disputed the claim.

  Harlem finished the education. Keys spent more of her teenage years there, drawn to its cultural and racial diversity, and she listened to soul, hip hop and R&B, including Marvin Gaye and Curtis Mayfield. "Harlem raised me in a lot of ways," she said, and it taught her "how to hold my own." In those years she met a friend named Kerry Brothers Jr., known as Krucial, who would become her long-term collaborator and her boyfriend.

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• 4. Fighting Columbia

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  In 1994, manager Jeff Robinson went to the Police Athletic League center in Harlem to watch a 13-year-old Keys perform with her three-member band. His brother, who had been giving her vocal lessons, had pressed him to go. Robinson had at first shrugged it off, saying he had "heard that story 1,000 times." Then he heard her soulful singing, her mix of contemporary and classical playing, and her own songs. He called her the "total package." She had already written two songs for her debut album, "Butterflyz" and "The Life."

  In 1995, after her group broke up, Robinson introduced her to A&R executive Peter Edge. Together they assembled demos and arranged showcases, and a bidding war followed. Edge wanted to sign her himself but was about to leave Warner Bros. Records for Clive Davis's Arista Records. Columbia won the bidding.

  Keys graduated from high school early as valedictorian at 16 and began attending Columbia University on a scholarship. The pace wore her down, with studio sessions running into the morning and a growing distance from her mother. She wrote some of the most "depressing" poems of her life in that stretch. After a month she dropped out to work on music full-time.

  The record label had its own plan for her. Columbia assembled songwriters, producers and stylists, and it wanted her to sing while other people made the music. She arrived at sessions with songs already composed, and the label waved them off. "There was the sexism, but it was more the ageism," she recalled. "You're too young, how could you possibly know what you want to do?" Producers also propositioned her. Executives wanted her hair "blown out and flowing," asked her to lose weight and dressed her in short dresses. "They wanted me to be the same as everyone else," she felt. The only released recording she made with Columbia was a co-written song for the 1997 Men in Black soundtrack, "Dah Dee Dah (Sexy Thing)."

  Keys decided she would have to do the work herself. She sat in with producers and engineers to watch how they layered other artists' music. Krucial suggested she buy her own equipment. She moved with him into a sixth-floor walk-up in Harlem and fit a studio into their bedroom. They later moved to Queens and turned a basement into KrucialKeys Studios. There she composed "Troubles," which began as "a conversation with God." Her confidence, she said, went "way up."

  A change of management at Columbia brought new executives who rejected the finished work as sounding like "one long demo." They wanted her to sing over loops and promised a "top" team for a more radio-friendly sound. Keys refused. Leaving was "a hell of a fight," she said, and the label threatened to keep everything she had made. Edge called her request for release "a bold move for a new artist." In 1998 he introduced her to Davis, who was by then Arista's president.

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• 5. Breakthrough Year

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  In late 1998, Keys signed to Arista after Robinson and Davis negotiated her out of the Columbia contract. She left with the music she had created. Davis gave her the creative control she wanted and let her find her own sound. Around that time she nearly chose the stage name Wilde, until her manager suggested Keys after a dream he had.

  In 2000, Davis was ousted from Arista, and her album went on hold. Later that year he formed J Records and signed her immediately. She said he "didn't try to divert me to something else."

  Davis worried that pop stations might find her too urban and that urban stations might find her too traditional. He considered her a compelling live performer, so he sent her to play small shows across America and industry showcases for months. Television followed, including The Tonight Show. He also wrote a letter to Oprah asking her to feature Keys, Jill Scott and India.Arie. Oprah booked Keys the day she heard her debut single, "Fallin," and Keys performed it on the show the week before the album came out. Davis summed up the plan: "She is her own ambassador."

  "Fallin" was released as a single in April and spent six consecutive weeks at number one on the Billboard Hot 100. Songs in A Minor followed on the 5th of June 2001. It included material Columbia had rejected, and it set classical piano inside an R&B, soul and jazz sound. It debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 with 236,000 copies sold in its first week. In the second week, record stores requested another 450,000. The album sold over 6.2 million copies in the United States and 12 million worldwide.

  At the 2002 Grammy Awards, Keys won five awards, including Song of the Year and Best New Artist. She tied Lauryn Hill's record for the most Grammy wins by a woman solo artist in one year. Her follow-up album arrived in December 2003.

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• 6. The Chart Run

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  The Diary of Alicia Keys sold more than 618,000 copies in its first week and debuted at number one. That was the largest first week for a female artist in 2003. The album went on to sell eight million copies worldwide. "You Don't Know My Name" stayed at number one on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart for eight consecutive weeks. "If I Ain't Got You" became the first single by a female artist to stay on that chart for more than a year. Her duet with Usher, "My Boo," topped the Billboard Hot 100 for six weeks.

  At the 2005 Grammy Awards she won four awards. She also joined Jamie Foxx and Quincy Jones that night for a rendition of "Georgia on My Mind."

  In July 2005, Keys taped her MTV Unplugged session at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. The album came out in October and debuted at number one with 196,000 copies sold. It was the strongest debut for an Unplugged album since Nirvana's in 1994. It was also the first Unplugged by a female artist to open at number one.

  As I Am arrived in November 2007 and sold 742,000 copies in its first week, her biggest opening. It was her fourth consecutive number-one album, which tied her with Britney Spears for the most consecutive number-one debuts by a female artist. "No One" held the top of the Hot 100 for five consecutive weeks. Together with "Like You'll Never See Me Again," it kept her at number one on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart for 17 consecutive weeks, longer than any other artist.

  In 2009, Jay-Z's "Empire State of Mind," featuring Keys, became her fourth number-one song on the Hot 100. Her collaboration with Spanish artist Alejandro Sanz, "Looking for Paradise," topped the Billboard Hot Latin Songs chart. That made her the first African-American artist of non-Hispanic origin to reach number one on Hot Latin Tracks. The Element of Freedom, released that December, gave her the first album to top the UK Albums Chart.

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• 7. Beyond The Studio

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  In 2003, Keys co-founded Keep a Child Alive, a nonprofit organization fighting HIV/AIDS, and she serves as its Global Ambassador. Her humanitarian work has run alongside her music from nearly the start.

  Tears for Water, published in 2004, collected unreleased poems from her journals and song lyrics. The title came from a line in her poem "Love and Chains": "I don't mind drinking my tears for water." The book sold over US$500,000 and reached The New York Times bestseller list in 2005. That same year she headlined The Great Wall Concert at the Juyongguan section of the Great Wall of China, marking 20 years since its restoration project.

  In 2006, Keys nearly had a mental breakdown. Her grandmother had died, and her family leaned heavily on her. She went to Egypt for three weeks, saying, "I just needed to run away, honestly." The same year, in November, she performed live with David Bowie at a fundraiser in New York, which turned out to be his last public performance.

  Her film debut came in early 2007 in Smokin' Aces, where she played an assassin named Georgia Sykes opposite Ben Affleck and Andy Garcia. Ryan Reynolds called her "so natural." She followed it with The Nanny Diaries and The Secret Life of Bees, and she voiced Mommy Martian on the children's series The Backyardigans. In 2008, she recorded "Another Way to Die" for Quantum of Solace with Jack White, the first duet in the history of Bond theme songs.

  In 2011, Keys made her directing debut with Five, a documentary about five women affected by breast cancer, co-directed with Jennifer Aniston, Demi Moore and Patty Jenkins. In 2016 she joined The Voice as a coach, and in May 2017 she won season 12 with her artist Chris Blue.

  She launched She Is the Music in 2018 after learning that the number of women in popular music had reached a six-year low in 2017. Jody Gerson, Sam Kirby and Ann Mincieli helped her start it. On the 10th of February 2019, she hosted the 61st Annual Grammy Awards, the first time in 14 years that a woman had hosted. She returned as host on the 26th of January 2020, and performed a tribute with Boyz II Men to Kobe Bryant, who had died in a helicopter crash earlier that day.

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• 8. Voice And Legacy

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  On the 7th of October 2011, Sony's RCA Music Group announced that it would absorb J Records, Arista and Jive. Keys moved to RCA, and her first album there, Girl on Fire, came out on the 27th of November 2012. Its overall sales were considerably lower than her earlier albums.

  The RCA era ended with Keys in 2021, and in 2022 she released Santa Baby on the 4th of November, exclusively on Apple Music. It was a Christmas album and her first independent release, on her own label, Alicia Keys Records. It peaked at number 148 on the Billboard 200.

  Hell's Kitchen, a musical she wrote, composed and produced with Kristoffer Diaz, premiered at The Public Theater's Newman Theater in November 2023. It shares its name with the neighborhood where she was born. It moved to Broadway's Shubert Theatre in March 2024 and won two Tony Awards. In February 2024, she appeared at the Super Bowl LVIII halftime show as a guest of Usher, singing "If I Ain't Got You" before joining him for "My Boo."

  Critics have often come back to her voice. Keys has a three-octave contralto range, and in 2023 Rolling Stone ranked her number 185 on its list of the 200 Greatest Singers of All Time. NPR described her voice as "yearning and ready to break, even as it remains in control." Rolling Stone wrote that she reintroduced the self-reliant R&B singer-songwriter, a type that stretches back to Stevie Wonder.

  Keys has sold over 90 million records worldwide. She has received 17 Grammy Awards and 17 NAACP Image Awards, and Billboard named her the Top Artist of the 2000s in the R&B/Hip-Hop category. In August 2024, she released "Finally," a collaboration with Swedish House Mafia.

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