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Alicia Augello Cook (born January
25, 1981), better known by her stage name Alicia Keys, is an American
recording artist, musician and actress. She was raised by a single mother
in the Hell's Kitchen area of Manhattan in New York City. At age seven,
Keys began to play classical music on the piano. She attended Professional
Performing Arts School and graduated at 16 as valedictorian. She later
attended Columbia University before dropping out to pursue her music
career. Keys released her debut album with J Records, having had previous
record deals first with Columbia and then Arista Records.
Keys' debut album, Songs in A Minor, was a commercial success, selling
over 12 million copies worldwide. She became the best-selling new artist
and best-selling R&B artist of 2001. The album earned Keys five Grammy
Awards in 2002, including Best New Artist and Song of the Year for
"Fallin'". Her second studio album, The Diary of Alicia Keys, was released
in 2003 and was also another success worldwide, selling eight million
copies. The album garnered her an additional four Grammy Awards in 2005.
Later that year, she released her first live album, Unplugged, which
debuted at number one in the United States. She became the first female to
have an MTV Unplugged album to debut at number one and the highest since
Nirvana in 1994.
Keys made guest appearances on several television series in the following
years, beginning with Charmed. She made her film debut in Smokin' Aces and
went on to appear in The Nanny Diaries in 2007. Her third studio album, As
I Am, was released in the same year and sold six million copies worldwide,
earning Keys an additional three Grammy Awards. The following year, she
appeared in The Secret Life of Bees, which earned her a nomination at the
NAACP Image Awards. She released her fourth album, The Element of Freedom,
in December 2009, which became Keys' first chart-topping album in the
United Kingdom. Throughout her career, Keys has won numerous awards and
has sold over 30 million albums worldwide. Billboard magazine named her
the top R&B artist of the 2000–2009 decade, establishing herself as one of
the best-selling artists of her time.
Keys was born Alicia Augello Cook on January 25, 1981, in the Hell's
Kitchen area of Manhattan, in New York City, New York. She is the daughter
and only child of Teresa Augello, a paralegal and part-time actress, and
Craig Cook, a flight attendant. Keys' mother is of Scottish, Irish, and
Italian descent, and her father is African American; Keys has expressed
that she was comfortable with her biracial heritage because she felt she
was able to "relate to different cultures". Her parents separated when she
was two and she was subsequently raised by her mother during her formative
years in Hell's Kitchen, Manhattan. In 1985, Keys made an appearance on
The Cosby Show at the age of four, where she and a group of girls played
the parts of Rudy Huxtable's sleepover guests in the episode "Slumber
Party". Throughout her childhood, Keys was sent to music and dance classes
by her mother. She began playing the piano when she was seven and learned
classical music by composers such as Beethoven, Mozart and Chopin. She
enrolled in the Professional Performing Arts School at the age of 12,
where she majored in choir and began writing songs at the age of 14. She
graduated in three years as valedictorian at the age of 16. She was
accepted to Columbia University and had a recording contract with Columbia
Records; she attempted to manage both, but dropped out of college after
four weeks to pursue her musical career.
Keys signed a demo deal with Jermaine Dupri and So So Def Recordings,
where she appeared on the label's Christmas album performing "The Little
Drummer Girl". She also co-wrote and recorded a song entitled "Dah Dee Dah
(Sexy Thing)", which appeared on the soundtrack to the 1997 film, Men in
Black. The song was Keys' first professional recording; however, it was
never released as a single and her record contract with Columbia ended
after a dispute with the label. Keys called Clive Davis, who sensed a
"special, unique" artist from her performance and signed her to Arista
Records, which later disbanded. Keys almost chose Wilde as her stage name
until her manager suggested the name Keys after a dream he had. Keys felt
that name represented her both as a performer and person. Following Davis
to his newly formed J Records label, she recorded the songs "Rock wit U"
and "Rear View Mirror", which were featured on the soundtracks to the
films Shaft (2000) and Dr. Dolittle 2 (2001), respectively.
Keys released her first studio album, Songs in A Minor, in June 2001. It
debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 and sold 236,000 copies in its
first week. The album sold over 6.2 million copies in the United States,
where it was certified six times Platinum by the Recording Industry
Association of America (RIAA). It went on to sell over 12 million copies
worldwide, establishing Keys' popularity both inside and outside the
United States, where she became the best-selling new artist and
best-selling R&B artist of 2001. The album's lead single, "Fallin'", spent
six weeks at number one on the Billboard Hot 100. The album's second
single, "A Woman's Worth", peaked at number three on the same chart. The
following year, the album was reissued as Remixed & Unplugged in A Minor,
which included eight remixes and seven unplugged versions of the songs
from the original.
Songs in A Minor led Keys to win five awards at the 2002 Grammy Awards:
Song of the Year, Best Female R&B Vocal Performance, and Best R&B Song for
"Fallin'", Best New Artist, and Best R&B Album; "Fallin'" was also
nominated for Record of the Year. Keys became the second female solo
artist to win five Grammy Awards in a single night, following Lauryn Hill
at the 41st Grammy Awards. That same year, she collaborated with Christina
Aguilera for the latter's upcoming album Stripped on a song entitled
"Impossible", which Keys wrote, co-produced, and provided with background
vocals. During the early 2000s, Keys also made small cameos in television
series Charmed and American Dreams.
Keys followed up her debut with The Diary of Alicia Keys, which was
released in December 2003. The album debuted at number one on the
Billboard 200, selling over 618,000 copies its first week of release,
becoming the largest first-week sales for a female artist in 2003. It sold
4.4 million copies in the United States and was certified four times
Platinum by the RIAA. It sold eight million copies worldwide, becoming the
sixth biggest-selling album by a female artist and the second
biggest-selling album by a female R&B artist. The singles "You Don't Know
My Name" and "If I Ain't Got You" both reached the top five of the
Billboard Hot 100 chart, and the third single, "Diary", entered the top
ten. The fourth single, "Karma", was less successful on the Billboard Hot
100, peaking at number 20. "If I Ain't Got You" became the first single by
a female artist to remain on the Billboard Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart for
over a year.
Keys won Best R&B Video for "If I Ain't Got You" at the 2004 MTV Video
Music Awards; she performed the song and "Higher Ground" with Lenny
Kravitz and Stevie Wonder. Later that year, Keys released her novel Tears
for Water: Songbook of Poems and Lyrics, a collection of unreleased poems
from her journals and lyrics. The title derived from one of her poems,
"Love and Chains" from the line: "I don't mind drinking my tears for
water." She said the title is the foundation of her writing because
"everything I have ever written has stemmed from my tears of joy, of pain,
of sorrow, of depression, even of question". The book sold over $500,000
and Keys made The New York Times bestseller list in 2005. The following
year, she won a second consecutive award for Best R&B Video at the MTV
Video Music Awards for the video "Karma". Keys performed "If I Ain't Got
You" and then joined Jamie Foxx and Quincy Jones in a rendition of
"Georgia on My Mind", the Hoagy Carmichael song made famous by Ray Charles
in 1960 at the 2005 Grammy Awards. That evening, she won four Grammy
Awards: Best Female R&B Vocal Performance for "If I Ain't Got You", Best
R&B Song for "You Don't Know My Name", Best R&B Album for The Diary of
Alicia Keys, and Best R&B Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals" for
"My Boo" with Usher.
Keys performed and taped her installment of the MTV Unplugged series in
July 2005 at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. During this session, Keys
added new arrangements to her original songs and performed a few choice
covers. The session was released on CD and DVD in October 2005. Simply
titled Unplugged, the album debuted at number one on the U.S. Billboard
200 chart with 196,000 units sold in its first week of release. The album
sold one million copies in the United States, where it was certified
Platinum by the RIAA, and two million copies worldwide. The debut of Keys'
Unplugged was the highest for an MTV Unplugged album since Nirvana's 1994
MTV Unplugged in New York and the first Unplugged by a female artist to
debut at number one. The album's first single, "Unbreakable", peaked at
number 34 on the Billboard Hot 100 and number four on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop
Songs. It remained at number one on the Billboard Hot Adult R&B Airplay
for 11 weeks.
Keys opened a recording studio in Long Island, New York, called The Oven
Studios, which she co-owns with her production and songwriting partner
Kerry "Krucial" Brothers. The studio was designed by renowned studio
architect John Storyk of WSDG, designer of Jimi Hendrix' Electric Lady
Studios. Keys and Brothers are the co-founders of KrucialKeys Enterprises,
a production and songwriting team who assisted Keys in creating her albums
as well as create music for other artists.
In 2006, Keys won three NAACP Image Awards, including Outstanding Female
Artist and Outstanding Song for "Unbreakable". She also received the
Starlight Award by the Songwriters Hall of Fame. In October 2006, she
played the voice of Mommy Martian in the "Mission to Mars" episode of the
children's television series The Backyardigans, in which she sang an
original song, "Almost Everything Is Boinga Here". That same year, Keys
nearly suffered a breakdown. Her grandmother had died and her family was
heavily dependent on her. She felt she needed to "escape" and went to
Egypt for three weeks. She explained: "That trip was definitely the most
crucial thing I've ever done for myself in my life to date. It was a very
difficult time that I was dealing with, and it just came to the point
where I really needed to—basically, I just needed to run away, honestly.
And I needed to get as far away as possible."
Keys made her film debut in early 2007 in the crime film Smokin' Aces,
co-starring as an assassin named Georgia Sykes opposite Ben Affleck and
Andy García. Keys received much praise from her co-stars in the film;
Reynolds said that Keys was "so natural" and that she would "blow
everybody away". In the same year, Keys earned further praise for her
second film, The Nanny Diaries, based on the 2002 novel of the same name,
where she co-starred alongside Scarlett Johansson and Chris Evans. She
also guest starred as herself in the "One Man Is an Island" episode of the
drama series Cane.
Keys released her third studio album, As I Am, in November 2007; it
debuted at number one on the Billboard 200, selling 742,000 copies in its
first week. It gained Keys her largest first week sales of her career and
became her fourth consecutive number one album, tying her with Britney
Spears for the most consecutive number-one debuts on the Billboard 200 by
a female artist. The week became the second largest sales week of 2007 and
the largest sales week for a female solo artist since singer Norah Jones'
album Feels like Home in 2004. The album has sold nearly four million
copies in the United States and has been certified three times Platinum by
the RIAA. It has sold nearly six million copies worldwide. Keys received
five nominations for As I Am at the 2008 American Music Award and
ultimately won two. The album's lead single, "No One", peaked at number
one on the Billboard Hot 100 and Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs, becoming Keys'
third and fifth number-one single on each chart, respectively. The album's
second single, "Like You'll Never See Me Again", was released in late 2007
and peaked at number 12 on the Billboard Hot 100 and number one on the Hot
R&B/Hip-Hop Songs. The album's third single, "Teenage Love Affair", peaked
at number three on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart. She released the
fourth single, "Superwoman", which peaked at number 82 on the Billboard
Hot 100 and number 12 on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs
"No One" earned Keys the awards for Best Female R&B Vocal Performance and
Best R&B Song at the 2008 Grammy Awards. Keys opened the ceremony singing
Frank Sinatra's 1950s song "Learnin' the Blues" as a "duet" with archival
footage of Sinatra in video and "No One" with John Mayer later in the
show. Keys also won Best Female R&B Artist during the show. She starred in
"Fresh Takes", a commercial micro-series created by Dove Go Fresh, which
premiered during The Hills on MTV from March to April 2008. The premiere
celebrated the launch of new Dove Go Fresh. She also signed a deal as
spokesperson with Glacéau's VitaminWater to endorse the product, and was
in an American Express commercial for the "Are you a Cardmember?"
campaign. Keys, along with The White Stripes' guitarist and lead vocalist
Jack White, recorded the theme song to Quantum of Solace, the first duet
in Bond soundtrack history. In 2008, Keys was ranked in at number 80 the
Billboard Hot 100 All-Time Top Artists. She also starred in The Secret
Life of Bees, a film adaptation of Sue Monk Kidd's acclaimed 2003
bestseller novel of the same name alongside Jennifer Hudson and Queen
Latifah, released in October 2008 via Fox Searchlight. Her role earned her
a nomination for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Motion Picture at the
NAACP Image Awards. She also received three nominations at the 2009 Grammy
Awards and won Best Female R&B Vocal Performance for "Superwoman".
In an interview with Blender magazine, Keys allegedly said "'Gangsta rap'
was a ploy to convince black people to kill each other, 'gangsta rap'
didn't exist" and went on to say that it was created by "the government".
The magazine also claimed she said that Tupac Shakur and The Notorious
B.I.G. were "essentially assassinated, their beefs stoked by the
government and the media, to stop another great black leader from
existing". Keys later wrote a statement clarifying the issues and saying
her words were misinterpreted. Later that year, Keys was criticized by
anti-smoking campaigners after billboard posters for her forthcoming
concerts in Indonesia featured a logo for the A Mild cigarette brand
sponsored by tobacco firm Philip Morris. She apologized after discovering
that the concert was sponsored by the firm and asked for "corrective
actions". In response, the company withdrew its sponsorship.
Keys and manager Jeff Robinson signed a film production deal to develop
live-action and animated projects with Disney. Their first film will be a
remake of the 1958 comedy Bell, Book and Candle and will star Keys as a
witch who casts a love spell to lure a rival's fiancé. Keys and Robinson
also formed a television production company called Big Pita. Keys and
Robinson will develop live-action and animated projects from their
company, Big Pita and Little Pita, with Keys as producer, thespian, banner
spearheading soundtrack and music supervision.
Keys is expected to play a 1940s biracial piano child prodigy, Philippa
Schuyler, in an upcoming film entitled Compositions in Black and White. It
is based on a 1995 biographical book of the same name by Kathryn Talalay.
She collaborated with record producer Swizz Beatz to write and produce
"Million Dollar Bill" for Whitney Houston's seventh studio album, I Look
to You. Keys had approached Clive Davis for permission to submit a song
for the album. Keys also collaborated with recording artist Jay-Z on the
song "Empire State of Mind" from his 2009 album, The Blueprint 3. The song
topped the Billboard Hot 100 and became her fourth number-one single on
that chart.
In June 2009, the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers
honored Keys with the Golden Note Award, an award given to artists "who
have achieved extraordinary career milestones". Keys released her fourth
studio album, The Element of Freedom, in December 2009. It debuted at
number two on the Billboard 200, selling 417,000 copies in its first week.
As part of the promotional drive for the album, she performed at the
Cayman Island Jazz Festival on December 5, the final night of the three
day festival which will be broadcast on Black Entertainment Television
(BET). The album's lead single, "Doesn't Mean Anything", has peaked at
number 60 on the Billboard Hot 100. Keys was ranked as the top R&B
recording artist of the 2000–2009 decade by Billboard magazine and ranked
at number five as artist of the decade, while her song, "No One", was
ranked at number six on the magazine's songs of the decade. In the United
Kingdom, The Element of Freedom became Keys' first album to top the UK
Albums Chart.
An accomplished pianist, Keys incorporates piano into a majority of her
songs and often writes about love, heartbreak and female empowerment. She
has cited several musicians as her inspirations, including Prince, Nina
Simone, Barbra Streisand, Marvin Gaye, Quincy Jones, Donny Hathaway and
Stevie Wonder. Keys' style is rooted in gospel and vintage soul music,
supplemented by bass and programmed drumbeats. She heavily incorporated
classical piano with R&B, soul and jazz into her music. She began
experimenting with other genres, including pop and rock, in her third
studio album, As I Am, transitioning from neo soul to a 1980s and 1990s
R&B sound with her fourth album, The Element of Freedom. Patrick Huguenin
of the New York Daily News stated that her incorporation of classical
piano riffs contributed to her breakout success. Jet magazine states she
"thrives" by touching her fans with "piano mastery, words and melodious
voice". The Independent described her style as consisting of "crawling
blues coupled with a hip-hop backbeat", noting that her lyrics "rarely
stray from matters of the heart". Blender magazine referred to her as "the
first new pop artist of the millennium who was capable of changing music."
Keys has a vocal range of a contralto, which spans three octaves. Often
referred to as the "Princess of Soul", Keys has been commended as having a
strong, raw and impassioned voice; others feel that her voice is
"emotionally manufactured" at times and that she pushes her voice out of
its natural range. Keys' songwriting is often criticized for lack of
depth, which has led to her writing abilities being called limited. Her
lyrics have been called generic, clichéd and that her songs revolve around
generalities. Greg Kot of the Chicago Tribune feels that she "pokes around
for multi-format hits rather than trying to project any sort of artistic
vision". Diversely, Jon Pareles of Blender magazine stated that the
musical composition of her songs makes up for their lyrical weakness,
while Gregory Stephen Tate of The Village Voice compared Keys' writing and
production to 1970s music.
Joanna Hunkin of The New Zealand Herald reviewed one of Keys'
performances, where Kylie Minogue also attended. She described Minogue's
reaction to Keys' performance, saying "it was obvious she was just as much
of a fan as the 10,000 other people at Vector Arena". She went on to say
that Minogue was "the original pop princess bowing down to the modern-day
queen of soul". Hunkin characterized Keys' opening performance as a
"headbanging, hip-gyrating performance" and her energy as "high-octane
energy most bands save for their closing finale". At the end of her
two-hour performance, fans "screamed, stomped and begged for a second
encore". Hillary Crosley and Mariel Concepcion of Billboard magazine noted
that her shows are "extremely coordinated" with the audience's attention
span "consistently maintained". The show ended with a standing ovation and
Keys "proved that a dynamic performance mixed with superior musicianship
always wins". Throughout her career, Keys has won numerous awards and is
listed on the Recording Industry Association of America's best-selling
artists in the United States, with 14 million certified albums. She has
sold over 30 million albums worldwide and has established herself as one
of the best-selling artists of her time. |
