Who Is She?
Alicia Keys
A true musical prodigy whose
multi-dimensional gifts emerged at age five, the beautiful
Alicia will soon take modern R&B soul to a whole new level at
the tender age of nineteen.
Alicia Keys grew up in the Hell's Kitchen area
of New York. Alicia composed her first love song at the
tender age of fourteen. At age 16, Alicia’s outstanding
grades allowed her to finish high school early. "I was so
deeply involved in music, I had already outgrown all the
pressure of high school cliques and gossip." Right out of
high school, Columbia University accepted Alicia Keys and though
she gave it a whirl, the desire to focus on music was the
driving force over all else. In 1998, at age 18, she
ignited a fierce major-label bidding war. When the smoke
cleared, it was Arista that came out the winner, and in late
1999 she followed Arista founder Clive Davis to become one of
the first artists on his new label, J Records. Her debut, The
Life, debuted at Number One on the Billboard charts and
established Keys as the brightest R&B star of the new
millennium.
Alicia
Keys always knew she wanted a career in music and was signed
briefly to Jermaine Dupri's So So Def label while still a
teenager. For years she navigated the tough industry
waters, cutting demos and recording cuts on both the Men in
Black and Shaft soundtracks.
Keyes didn't know who Clive Davis was when she
met him, she recalls their meeting:
- "I remember just walking into this big
office with thousands and thousands of pictures on the wall.
I've never seen so many pictures in all my life, of so many
people that I've admired," Keys says. "Stevie Wonder, Earth
Wind and Fire, Bruce Springsteen, Janis Joplin. And, just in
that moment, when I walked in, I realized exactly who he was.
Prior to that, you know, I knew what the news said, and I knew
[his protégé] Monica, but I knew that I didn't know how deep
or far, and how serious it really was. And so that just gave
me a whole deeper understanding of the whole situation. So, we
talked, and he played my music, and he told me what he
thought. He told me that he loved my individuality and
encouraged that, and asked what I saw myself doing, and I mean
it was completely a two-sided road in conversation, which
sometimes is rare in the music thing. And that just gave me an
even deeper respect [for the situation]. And that was where I
started."
The stunning, bi-racial Alicia Keys recognizes
a number of influences including her ultra-supportive mother who
told her "You can quit anything else but you can never give up
on your piano lessons." Alicia also sites a teacher at the
Professional Performance Arts School in Manhattan who, while she
was majoring in Choir, gave her valuable instruction on her
voice. "This teacher spent so much time with me, she became the
closest thing to vocal training I received," Alicia recalls.
Now the time has come for this crooning honey
to charm the world over with her own debut album, Songs in A
Minor. Quite impressively, Keyes serves as writer and
producer on much of the project, which is a collection of deep,
passionate tunes.
In the current edition of Sister2Sister
Magazine, Publisher Jamie Foster Brown interviewed Alicia Keys and
asked her about the current rumors regarding her being gay.
Alicia flat out states "it's a lie."
Also in the article, Alicia
talks about how she handled a very embarrassing moment, gives an
open account of trials she experienced in the beginning of her
career and talks about her feelings about being biracial.
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Alicia Keys
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