In her young career, Alicia Keys has seen firsthand how the task of creating and furthering an image, particularly from a marketing standpoint, is sometimes as important an ingredient in building success as the music an artist creates.
In Keys' case, an image can be established by simply seeing her wear a fedora while performing or, as is the case with her current album, The Diary Of Alicia Keys, in photos featured in the booklet that comes with the disc.
But especially for Keys, an artist who brings considerable musical talents to the table, including songwriting ability, a velvety smooth voice and classical piano training, striking a balance between the roles image and ability play is a delicate task.
"I have to say that's something I deal with every day," Keys says, "and it's really important for me to keep integrity for what I do. My music is—I'm very, very, very passionate about it, and oftentimes, things do become less about the music and more about the image or more about kind of ... I don't know ... a certain political game, shall we say. Obviously that is something that comes with the territory, but I think it's a choice that one makes, and I choose to put my music first and to have a certain integrity that goes along with what I do, and it's something that challenges me constantly, but I think that's what life is about."
Her two CDs, Songs In A Minor and The Diary Of Alicia Keys, have done a lot to give Keys the musical credibility that other young female artists have a hard time establishing.
The second album features just one cover tune, a track that combines "If I Were Your Woman" and "Walk On By." The former was first a hit for Gladys Knight and the Pips, while the latter is one of many familiar songs written by Burt Bacharach and Hal David. Keys tastefully introduces a bit of street-level hip-hop. The other 14 tracks feature Keys' songwriting. And as with her debut, she deftly blends her love of vintage soul and R&B and pop with a modern rhythmic sensibility that draws strongly from hip-hop and jazz. Songs like "Karma," "Dragon Days" and "Wake Up" feature rich vocal melodies and lush instrumentation, but get an undeniable groove from rhythms that are assertive and yet don't dominate other elements of the songs.
Ballads like "If I Ain't Got You," "You Don't Know My Name" and "Diary" scale back on the rhythms and let Keys' piano playing and vocals carry the songs. On such numbers, her music continues a rich soul tradition that stretches back from Aretha Franklin through Knight and Jill Scott.
The timeless sound Keys crafts on Diary is very much in character with the musical identity she established on Songs In A Minor, and the stylistic consistency between the albums is no accident.
"I have to say that, honestly, my theory is, it's not broke, don't fix it," Keys says. "Another theory, when I do my music, my music is very ... it's not contrived. I don't sit there and I don't think about, how am I going to put this together that's going to make it [acceptable]?"
Those theories seem to be working for Keys. Born Alicia Augello Cook to a white mother and black father, she grew up in New York City's Hell's Kitchen. In 1996, at the age of 15, she hooked up with manager Jeff Robinson, who nurtured her talents as a singer and a pianist. (She took classical piano lessons from 6 to 18.)
She landed a deal with Columbia Records a year later, but the situation soured as the label brought in a series of high-profile producers, each trying to put his own stamp on the recording sessions and allowing Keys little room to find her own voice.
That's when Robinson got in touch with the legendary Clive Davis, former label executive for Arista Records and (ironically enough) Columbia. Davis bought her out of her Columbia contract and brought her over to his own, new label, J Records.
Davis, who had developed the careers of Bruce Springsteen, Whitney Houston and countless others, again hit a home run.
Songs In A Minor became a blockbuster debut, selling more than 10 million copies, producing a massive hit in "Fallin'" and netting five Grammys. Diary went straight to Billboard's No. 1 spot when it was released in December 2003 and has topped three million in sales in the United States alone. The album won Grammys last month for Best R&B Album, Best Female R&B Performance and Best R&B Song.
While selling copies of Diary and solidifying her audience may be among Keys' immediate goals, she has other ambitions. When asked if having her own label is in the future, she answers enthusiastically.
"Oh absolutely, and beyond that, being able to have a brainchild of yours come into existence is very fulfilling, and it's also very powerful," Keys says. "There's a certain power that you hold, where you are not only the president, you're not just in front of the scenes, you're behind them and you're the one with the creative ideas kind of pulling it all together. That's something that I definitely aspire to do."
It also would let Keys set an example for others, particularly women, who want to be in the music business.
"I have different conversations with different kids and stuff," she says. "I know how the music world can appear very glamorous and that kind of thing. And a lot of times they tell me, 'I want to be a rapper. I want to be a singer,' whatever. But sometimes we talk and I just say there's so much more that happens behind that rapper or that singer that you can be a part of, that honestly gets you farther than that rapper or that singer will ever reach. It's really interesting to talk about those different things and those different career choices that can happen because they're not really promoted that much, about how you can do things that come from behind [the scenes] and support people, and it's amazing."