Alicia Keys
‘I ask myself, “Do you want to be good or do you want to be great?” Then I tell myself I am going to allow myself to be great’
FEW THINGS ARE MORE EMBARRASSING FOR A WRITER than sitting in an empty recording studio listening to a singer’s new album for the first time, alongside her assistant, whom you have never met before. ‘Awkward’ doesn’t even cover it.
It becomes more troubling for a woman like me, whose every emotion is etched across her face the instant she feels it, and who has a pathological inability to lie. Then the aforementioned assistant drops the bombshell that the music is a ‘change of direction’ (wait, what? I loved all the old stuff). So I’m feeling the pressure to be positive as a thunderstorm on an apocalyptic scale rages outside, simultaneously firing lightening and rainbows over the skies of New York. It’s all most discombobulating.
Thank goodness, then, for 15-times Grammy Award winner Alicia Keys. A woman whose vocal gymnastics are so practised, pure and luxurious you feel as though a rich, velvet cloak has been thrown over you. Her album, Here, has taken four years to create and is the work of a collective – ‘The Illuminaries’ as she calls them – that includes producer Mark Batson, rapper (and husband) Swizz Beatz, and songwriter Harold Lilly. The album is, as every music industry insider who had heard it before me explained, an extraordinary mix of musical genius with gospel overtones and lyrical storytelling that demands you concentrate on each track.
Alicia, 35, arrives at the studio and settles, feet up, into a swivel chair beside me. Make-up free (I usually hate it when interviewers write this about a woman, but bear with me because it is relevant this time) and with her hair tied up in her trademark scarf, she radiates calm, charm and quiet determination.
‘If I had a voice like yours,’ I tell Alicia, who is a judge on the US version of The Voice alongside Miley Cyrus, ‘I would wake up every day singing. You’re a vocal superhero.’
‘Well, that’s cute,’ she replies. ‘I assure you I don’t get up at 5.30am every day to get the kids to school and think about singing! That’s not to demean or disregard it, because of course I love it.’
And indeed, singing has been the sole purpose of her life. She has written or performed many of the most-played anthems of her generation, from Fallin’ in 2001 to Girl On Fire in 2012, and of course she was the voice of Jay Z’s Empire State Of Mind in 2009. And the numbers don’t lie: her 2001 album, Songs In A Minor, debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 chart in its first week on sale in the US, sold more than 12m copies worldwide and earned her five Grammy Awards when Alicia was just 20. Throughout her career, she has internationally sold more than 35m albums and 30m singles*.
AN ONLY CHILD, THE STUDIOUS and classically trained musician was brought up by her single mum Terria Joseph, a paralegal and actress, in Hell’s Kitchen, Manhattan, then one of New York’s poorest neighbourhoods. Alicia has an extremely single-minded approach to her passion. What struck me, during my research in preparation for the interview, was her stubborn refusal to be anything but the real deal. After turning down a hard-earned music scholarship in favour of a record deal in her teens, she refused to be packaged and marketed in a way she was uncomfortable with. She bought all of her own production equipment because she didn’t want to be produced by anyone else. It takes guts to do that at the beginning of your career.
All through her life, Alicia has taken the path of smart rebellion: she is a sensible rule breaker, if there is such a thing. ‘You have to be strong and a little crazy and belligerent,’ she says when I ask about this route to success. ‘I always knew I was good, and what I was doing was going to be good.’
FEW WILL FORGET HER CLIMBING BAREFOOT on top of the piano while eight months pregnant at a BET Awards tribute to Prince in 2010 (look up Prince’s surprise reaction to it online), or the poem in honour of Martin Luther King Jr that she wrote and read out at the VMAs this year, giving a global audience of seven million people goosebumps.
Her commitment goes way beyond the music. She ran the New York City Marathon less than a year after having her second child to raise awareness for Keep A Child Alive, a charity she co-founded to help supply Aids and HIV medication to children in Africa. She also made the short film, Let Me In, to highlight World Refugee Day this year, and used $1m (£818,330) of her own money to fund the launch of her social-justice organisation, We Are Here, two years ago. And she played her part in the most hotly contested US presidential election of our time when, in July this year, she closed the US Democratic National Convention by dedicating her performance to all the mothers who had lost their children to violence.
Yet, the most talked about move Alicia has made this year came from a subtle, understated place. In May, she wrote an essay about not wearing make-up for Lena Dunham’s digital newsletter, Lenny Letter, which reaches more than half-a-million subscribers. In the essay, she said she considered going barefaced ‘the strongest, most empowered, most free, and most honestly beautiful that I have ever felt. I focused on cultivating strength and conviction, and put a practice in place to learn more about the real me.’
The essay spread like wildfire across the internet, with more than 30k people using the piece’s hashtag, #NoMakeup. The message caused intense debate, with critics calling it both ‘brave’ and ‘fake-ass feminism’.
‘You know the make-up thing is not a campaign. I mean, come on!’ she tells me, rolling her eyes. ‘The thing is, you should just be doing what makes you feel great.’ Alicia also went make-up-free for her new album-cover shoot. As the former face of an acne skincare brand, this was an enlightened decision.
‘We felt that as the new music I was creating was so raw, honest and real,’ she says, ‘and one song is about me not wanting to be dressed up and not wanting to cover up or put make-up on, it would be interesting to be conscious of that.’
She has appeared on the red carpet, sung live and been photographed without wearing make-up many times since then. ‘But you have amazing skin,’ I protest, assuming the decision was perhaps not so hard for her. She throws me a knowing look.
‘It took me forever to get this skin,’ she explains. ‘I mean, I know how it feels to have a face full of bumps and pimples. I lived through that in the public eye. But when I first got pregnant [six years ago with her son, Egypt] I started to eliminate dairy from my diet and drank a lot more water, which made a huge difference to
my skin. Some have called this a crusade. Well, I died laughing at that. I used to feel the pressure to appear as the music industry expected, but I don’t now.’
For Alicia, this new album marks a new, more confident and relaxed stage in her life. A mother of two, her youngest son Genesis is almost two years old, and she has been married to musician and producer Swizz Beatz for six years. Their social media portrays a lovedup couple who spend a lot of time kissing.
‘He is an electric current,’ she tells me. ‘There is not a soul who has met him who hasn’t fallen in love with him.’
‘Is he a feminist?’ I ask, interested to learn how a man who has existed in the very male hip-hop world may fit into the life of a campaigning woman like Alicia. ‘He is now,’ she shoots back.
Alicia is also stepmother to his two sons, aged 10 and 16, and one daughter, aged eight. ‘I have a very blended and interesting perspective of what family life looks like,’ she adds. Alicia’s own father left when she was two, but the pair reconnected when her grandmother passed away in 2006.
‘There is no one way, no perfect way. Each way is different with beautiful scope to be something good. That is life. Our eldest son is 16, and it’s really cool to be in his life as an adult figure who is not his mum, and he gives me a prelude to what is coming with my children.’
A CONVERSATION WITH ALICIA is a soothing experience, yet it would be foolish to ignore the steely interior of this disciplined, hardworking woman who once told a male interviewer, ‘You can do better than that,’ when he asked her if she was a diva.
‘I used to be very much head down and eyes only on getting ahead and moving forward, but I’ve now realised that you can actually achieve more when you lighten up and relax, and stop taking everything so seriously,’ she says. ‘I am pleased I had that discipline, and you have to be very self-motivated. But now I know you need a little magic, and it is that mix of intention, action and magic that makes [working] fun.’ She admits to having worked so hard in the past that it has felt manic. ‘My world has been one of complete lunacy. Unbelievable hours of travelling and working. Now I am committed, and have put so much time in, I don’t really feel like I’m working. What we do now feels more intentional. The things that are happening are poignant and not pushing me into overdrive.’ Alicia believes that everything she achieves is ‘1,000% mind over matter’.
‘I always ask myself, “Do you want to be good or do you want to be great?” Then I tell myself I am going to allow myself to be great. It is very simple: once you say it, you have no option but to do it.’ ‘You seem very zen,’ I tell her, ‘but you must have a darker side.’ ‘All of us have that,’ she replies. ‘I am definitely more introspective. I am a swallower, not a reactor. My mum was a reactor, which is why I am definitely not one. I take things in, it churns and burns into all these emotions and then later I figure out how to verbalise it. Often, it’s through a song.’
THOUGHTFUL, PATIENT AND IMPASSIONED, Alicia’s brand of feminism is refreshing in a climate where many US celebrities nervously piffle on about a watered down definition of feminism because the word seems to alienate many American women. This being our fourth annual feminism issue, I’m keen to hear her take.
‘Let’s look the definition up because I have in my mind what I feel it means,’ she says. Then, reading from her phone, she continues: ‘“The advocacy of women’s rights on the grounds of political, social and economic equality” – so yes. Yes, I am a feminist and whoever isn’t is crazy,’ she concludes.
When I ask what femininity means to her, she tells me: ‘It’s about owning your power, embracing your womanhood.’ If ever a woman has done this, it is Alicia Keys. Using her enormous reach and influence, she is undoubtedly on her way to becoming an activist icon and feminist role model.
But, perhaps more importantly, Alicia is one of the most authentic and talented singers of her generation. Watching her perform at London’s Roundhouse a few weeks after the interview was a career high for me – and I’ve seen Adele, Beyoncé, Donna Summer, Dusty Springfield, Amy Winehouse and Prince when he sang to just 100 people at a secret London venue in 2014. As I watched on from the crowd, rammed with VIPs, I realised I’d never seen an audience so truly captivated by one woman and a piano. Alicia’s performance was emotionally charged and joyful.
So I’m filing Alicia’s new album alongside my copy of The Miseducation Of Lauryn Hill and between Aretha Franklin’s Young, Gifted And Black and Nina Simone’s I Put A Spell On You.
Alicia is a superstar whose manifesto for life is a masterclass in authenticity. When our interview ends, she bearhugs me and jumps into the driving seat of an enormous black four-by-four, rushing home in time to put her sons to bed.
Alicia Keys’ new album, Here, is out now