that magic is something I deeply respect. I never know exactly how it’s going to happen. Over the last two decades, it feels as if we’ve watched Keys not only come of age but come home. There’s an aura of tranquil satisfaction to the 40-year-old performer, who is also the grateful mother of a blended family that includes her own two sons, Egypt, 10, and Genesis, 6, who she shares with her husband, record producer Swizz Beats. Since that night at the Sultan Room, she has published her first memoir, More Myself: A Journey, and last fall she dropped her seventh studio album, Alicia. It’s been a prolific couple of years for Keys. It’s also when her Keys Soulcare beauty and lifestyle brand will launch three new products. Early June marks the 20th anniversary of her debut album, Songs in A Minor. Self-control is difficult when you are suddenly face to face with Alicia Keys: the pianist, songwriter, composer and producer the philanthropist and businesswoman the artist. I promise myself I won’t scream when her face appears on-screen, but I do anyway. “I just felt totally transported by that show. “Oh my gosh, I felt the exact same way,” Keys recalls now, in the spring of 2021, when I mention that she was one of the last people I saw in concert before the world shut down more than a year ago. She takes to the “keys” that became her stage name, looks at us all for a second, and starts to play. The backlit stage turns red, the spotlights purple - root and crown chakra colored. She looks relaxed, in her pocket, wearing a red, military-style beret, bootcut jeans, and a cut-off Toto “Africa” T-shirt. She breaks pace occasionally to sing the first verse alongside audience members. It’s cramped, but Keys two-steps through the crowd, making it work. The band plays “I Need You,” off of Keys’ 2007 album As I Am, and she begins to harmonize. Janelle Monáe and her Wondaland crew occupy a big black booth in the back left corner behind me stands Kamasi Washington’s guitarist. The room is mostly press, session musicians, and music aficionados. The event is a secret show for Afropunk 2019, rumored to be a night with Alicia and friends the audience is expectant, and the house is packed. There’s no backstage - the late-night lounge is tucked in the back of a Turkish restaurant in Brooklyn - so she is essentially in the hallway, right next to the quilted vinyl door to the restaurant’s kitchen, only partly concealed by the DJ booth. at the Sultan Room, and Alicia Keys is grooving under the exit sign. In place of former hip-hop collaborators she has brought in blues maestro John Mayer, who complements her neatly on the wry, piano-heavy 'Lesson Learned'.It’s 1 a.m.
Much of this album feels like a deliberate homage to the best of mainstream Seventies and Eighties soul, with a pop-savvy modern edge contributed by co-producer Linda Perry. The danger for many artists who spread themselves across such a range of pursuits is that you end up forgetting what it is they are actually good at, so it's fortunate that As I Am brings the focus back to Keys's exceptional voice, which dominates these new songs with all the force of her acknowledged influences - Aretha, Nina, Janis, Billie.Ībandoning the urban influences on Diary, which featured collaborations with rappers Nas and Rakim, As I Am returns to a purer, more traditional soul sound, ranging from the sweet, caramel-smooth 'Tell You Something' or 'Like You'll Never See Me Again' to the powerful, raw-voiced anthems 'Go Ahead', 'Sure Looks Good to Me' and 'Superwoman', in which she channels every great diva who has ever asserted the power of woman. W here does Alicia Keys find the time? Between the release of her last album, 2005's Unplugged, and this, As I Am, her first studio album since the seven-times-platinum, four Grammy-winning The Diary of Alicia Keys in 2003, she has produced a New York Times bestselling book of poetry, appeared in two Hollywood films, established her own production company, developed and co-written a teen drama series, travelled to Africa as ambassador for Aids charity Keep a Child Alive and, presumably finding herself with a spare weekend, run her first marathon.
0 kommentar(er)
