Alicia Keys: sounds off on men, love & fame - Interview - Cover Story

Ebony, Jan, 2004 by Lynn Norment

ALICIA Keys is not your ordinary recording star. In fact, there is nothing ordinary about this vibrant 22-year-old musical dynamo.

She's more than pretty enough to shake and shimmy scantily clad with the rest and best of the well-endowed crew. But that's not her style.

She's more than talented enough to crank out cookie-cutter pop hits, but that's not her vibe.

She's a classically trained pianist and knows Beethoven and Mozart as well as any Juilliard student, but she prefers to tickle the ivory keys to soul.

She graduated at the top of her high school class, yet gave up a promising academic career to pursue music.

Equally as extraordinary is the fact that Alicia Keys' debut recording, Songs in A Minor, sold 10 million copies worldwide and won Keys five Grammy Awards, including one for "Best New Artist." Her signature jam "Fallin'" became an instant soul classic and the No. 1 song around the world.

Again, there's nothing ordinary about Alicia Keys. tier extraordinary music appeals to millions of ordinary people, from Blacks and Whites to other ethnicities and nationalities, from people who love jazz, R&B, hip-hop and soul music. Her devoted fans are ordinary people who appreciate good musicianship, thoughtful lyrics and songs that speak to the heart.

On a bright, crisp day in New York City, EBONY sat down with Keys to delve into her heart and soul and ask her thoughts on love, fame and men, among other topics. Just who is Alicia Keys?

"I Would say that I'm a simple person," she says, relaxing on the sun-drenched terrace of the penthouse suite atop a hip, New York hotel that is popular with entertainers and the young at heart. "I'm a very caring person. I'm really not impressed with external, superficial things, materialistic things, I definitely would prefer to sit somewhere like this" She waves her slender right hand with neat, unpolished nails. "Just open on the beach, on a bench with a really good friend, and talk rather than go to the best, the hottest party or club--any day.

"And I'm an evolving person. I'm a person who's learning a lot. Always and forever learning."

That learning and evolving are reflected in her greatly anticipated new recording, Diary of Alicia Keys. There are questions about whether this young, smart, multifaceted artist can top or even match her successful debut. But that is not a concern for Keys. She feels good about the finished project and about herself. "I love my own music," she says. "If I didn't love it, I would not record it ...

"It's from my life and my experiences," she says of Diary. "It's the same me, but it's different because of how much I've learned and how much I've grown vocally, and my musicianship definitely has grown. It's only natural for it to be a step higher."

Note for note, word for word, song for song, Alicia Keys' music reflects who she is as a person, as a woman. Despite her age, more than once she has wrestled with would-be handlers who wanted to shape her and her music into their vision rather than to reflect who she is as an artist. "This is just who I am and I'm happy that this is what people loved and accepted me for," she says of her music. "I would hate to make music and people love me for something that isn't me. Then l would have to keep doing that kind of thing, even though I really hated it. It would be like living a lie. But this [my music] is always me and it's always the truth."

A strong sense of self is reflected in the fact that Keys has never had issues with her biracial heritage. There is no confusion about who she is. "I grew up in New York, and thank God, I never had to go through that in regards to "you're not Black enough, you're not White enough,' the whole kind of White/Black-mixture thing," she says of the confusion that afflicts some of interracial parentage. "I never had to go through that. I went through prejudices and all, surely. But I never had to battle with those two parts of me. I was with people who were Indian and Spanish, people who were Italian. In New York, it's like anything goes. New York is so diverse and there are so many different types of people. People couldn't care less what you are. They really don't care. I think that's the reason I don't have any real issues. I never had to deal with those kinds of things. I'm blessed because of that."

But that doesn't mean she never experienced racial discrimination. "One time I was actually in Ohio and I was young and I got my first taste of that kind of racial thing. It was like. 'I'm ready to go. I don't like it here.' I was shunned for being different. I was pretty young and I remember that vividly. I felt horrible; it makes you feel terrible. It was like, 'What's wrong with me?'"

Keys grew up in the gritty Hell's Kitchen section of New York with her mother, Terri Augello, who is White, an actress who also worked as a paralegal. Her father. Craig Cook, is African-American and lives in Colorado. To escape the prostitutes, pimps and drug dealers on the streets in her neighborhood, Keys devoted herself to the piano and music. At 4, she sang in her kindergarten's version of The Wiz. Her mother worked a second job so a young Alicia could study the very disciplined Suzuki method of classical piano.