For new book, Alicia Keys looks to past to find herself
As a young woman growing up in the 1980s and ’90s in New York City’s Hell’s Kitchen — “the name was exactly accurate for what it looked like, what it felt like,” as Alicia Keys recalls it — the budding musician born
Alicia Cook would purposely wear baggy clothing and Timbaland boots as she walked to and from the one-bedroom apartment she lived in with her mother.
She didn’t wear bright colors. She didn’t wear her hair in a way that would warrant attention. She wouldn’t even paint her nails.
A self-proclaimed tomboy, part of Keys’ look was her own preference. The other part — the major one — was for her own protection.
“There were pimps and prostitutes everywhere. There were those XXX-theaters everywhere. Besides that, heroin addicts, crack addicts, drug addicts — those streets were filled with all those people and all those situations,” Keys told The Associated Press in a recent interview. “As a young woman, I definitely learned early how to call the least attention to myself possible. How could I get through those spaces unnoticed?”
It worked, and allowed Keys, the daughter of a single mother, to take trains in the city to school and to play music unbothered while her mother worked long hours. It’s just one of the many telling stories the Grammywinning superstar shares in “More Myself: A Journey,” her new book.
“More Myself ” takes readers from Keys’ childhood to her breakthrough debut in 2001 to where she stands now — on the heels of her seventh studio album “Alicia” (out May 15) with a multidimensional career and a strong family life with hubbymusician Swizz Beatz and two kids.
She spent the past two years writing the book, taking time to deeply reflect on her life and bare it all. She opens up about her mother wrestling with the decision to keep her child after finding out she was pregnant after just briefly dating Keys’ father, and decades later, Keys learning she was already four months pregnant with her second child and her own decision to keep the baby even though she said it came at “the worst time ever” since she was working on a new album and her husband had gotten into Harvard Business School.
In “More Myself,” she also uncovers her songwriting process; her interactions with legends Stevie Wonder and Prince; and her longtime and hidden relationship with producer Kerry Brothers Jr., who worked on Keys’ first four albums, including the hits “Diary” and “No
One.”
She also recalls feeling burned out after releasing her sophomore album; her tumultuous relationship with her father; first meeting her nowhusband when they were teenage musicians; and even fielding questions about her sexuality early in her career.
“How many times do you actually look back on things and have enough space between it to realize how it affects what you’re doing now, or whatever you want to start to do now? Honestly, I feel really good. Even the timing of this all, with where we are on the planet, feels right. It feels like the right conversation,” Keys said. “I want people to get into it. We’re all on that journey. It’s my personal story, but it applies to everybody.”