NEW YORK — 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 Timberland 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 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 said. "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 while her mother worked long hours. It's just one of the many telling stories the Grammy-winning performer shares in More Myself: A Journey, her new book (An Oprah Book/Flatiron Books, $29.99).
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 multi-dimensional career and a strong family life with hubby-musician Swizz Beatz and two kids.
She spent the past two years writing the book, taking time to reflect on her life and bare it all. She opens about her mother wrestling with the decision to keep her child after finding out she was pregnant after 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.
Keys also uncovers her songwriting process; her interactions with legends Stevie Wonder and Prince, who critiqued her sound at one of her shows; 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."
"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."
Keys credits her mother, who at 19 left Toledo, Ohio, to pursue her acting career in New York, and the piano given to them with helping her fall in love with music, and wanting to take it on professionally.
Keys dropped out of Columbia University, forgoing a scholarship, to pursue her career and first record deal at Columbia Records. Things didn't work out. Later, she signed with Clive Davis and his J Records label.
Davis, the legendary music executive who has made superstars of Whitney Houston and Barry Manilow and created second acts for Aretha Franklin and Carlos Santana, wrote Oprah Winfrey and asked her to book Keys for her top-rated talk show. After watching Keys perform, she did.
Almost 20 years later, Winfrey and Keys are close friends.
"I feel like a mother, sister, friend to her," Winfrey said. "I felt it from the very first moment that she hit that key on my show and she did 'Fallin.' I was in awe of this young woman. It's not until actually reading her book that I knew that we were such real kindred spirits. In reading her book, I feel and see so much of myself in her story, even though it's not the same story."
Winfrey is one of the famous faces and friends who introduces the chapters in More Myself; other participants include Keys' parents, Swizz Beatz, Michelle Obama, Bono and Jay-Z, who said he initially thought of asking fellow New Yorker Mary J. Blige to collaborate on the smash hit "Empire State of Mind" before calling Keys. The guests also lend their voices for the audio version of the book, which is read by Keys and includes her breaking out in song throughout the process.
"Her whole story is about a woman learning how to fuel the flames of her own heart's desire," Winfrey said. "So that when she says, 'This girl is on fire' — that is coming from a real truthful space. She epitomizes what it means to bring the light. She is a living example of that."
Style on 04/05/2020