Alicia Keys: Up Close and Personal

A five-time Grammy winner by the time she was 20, superstar Alicia Keys discusses life, success, and using her music to help others.

Following Her Dream

High outside the penthouse of a New York City recording studio, R&B and pop music star Alicia Keys is having fun during a photo shoot. The photographer is trying to coax her into leaning over a balcony railing to get a shot against the eye-popping lights of Times Square. "I'll stand on top of the balcony if you want," Keys tells him. And why not? Keys, who's won nine Grammys for her first two albums, grew up a literal stone's throw from here, in the tough, storied Hell's Kitchen neighborhood. But she owns the town now.

Born Alicia Augello Cook to an Italian American mother (a paralegal and part-time actress), and an African American father (a flight attendant), Keys, 24, changed her name to reflect her passion for piano, which she began playing at age seven. At 12, she entered Manhattan's Professional Performing Arts School, where she got her classical grounding and learned to compose music. By 16, she had finished high school, been accepted to Columbia University (later deciding to postpone college), and landed her first recording contract. Her debut album, Songs in A Minor, which yielded her first five Grammys, came out in 2001. She was 20.

Shortly before the release of Alicia Keys Unplugged and just days after she performed in a Hurricane Katrina relief fund-raiser, Keys sat down with Reader's Digest to talk about respect, raw emotion, and reaching people through her music.

RD: Tell us about your first piano.
Keys: It was a player piano from the '20s. A friend of my mother's was moving and said if you can move it, you can have it. That was an incredible opportunity for us. We moved the piano with just a dolly -- totally unprofessionally. I was ecstatic. The piano became the divider for my bedroom, which was just the farthest part of the living room.

RD: What was it like growing up in Hell's Kitchen?
Keys: It was like a big world of everything. I grew up around prostitutes, drug dealers, pimps, strippers, needles on the ground. Yet right there was Broadway, with the big lights and Theatre Row. I grew up with dreams, in a place that from the beginning told me you can go this way -- or you can go that way.

RD: What was your mother like?
Keys: She raised me single-handedly. It was very hard for her, because she had to be superwoman. She had to work the job and support the daughter and also try to pursue her dreams. She's my rock. I know she will be there no matter what.

RD: What's the biggest lesson you learned from her?
Keys: To honor myself, because no one will honor or respect me if I don't respect myself. And she always challenged me to explain what I meant, what my purpose was when I did certain things. And to not be a quitter.

RD: Was it your idea to take piano lessons, or something she suggested?
Keys: It was all my idea. I loved the way that the piano felt, the way it sounded. I always was drawn to it. There was a time, though, when I wanted to stop, because I was more concerned with doing average 11- and 12-year-old things. She said, You can take a break, because I know you might feel a little overwhelmed, but you need to keep playing. Now, I wonder: If she hadn't told me that, who would I be?

RD: Was your father around?
Keys: My parents weren't married. It wasn't like my dad up and left. I maintained a steady relationship with my grandparents. My dad's mother is my Nana, and I'm closer to her than almost anybody in this world.

RD: Like the keys on a piano, your mother is white and your father is black. Was it hard for you to figure out where you fit in?
Keys: No. I am able to hang with the hardest, the baddest, the worst, and I'm able to hang with the most proper, and be at ease. I'm able to hang with any skin color, any belief. I just fit in everywhere.

RD: How did you learn to write songs?
Keys: When I was younger my mother and I, we'd have these crazy, crazy fights. Everyone would storm out mad, and the only way that I'd be able to express myself was to write her. We would write letters back and forth for days. When I'm writing, I feel uninterrupted. I write what I'm going through and how I see it. And I feel like people can really understand.

RD: What was the first song you ever wrote?
Keys: I was 14 and had just seen the movie Philadelphia. It was such a sad movie, and it was about a year after my grandfather passed and I wasn't really able to grieve. So I saw that movie, came home to my little player piano, sat down and took that whole night writing. The song was called "I'm All Alone." Through it, I was able to finally grieve for my grandfather.

Helping Others

RD: So you started out composing songs on that old player piano?
Keys: Yes. Then, when I was about 16 and trying to get my first contract, a record company brought me into this amazing room with nothing but windows, on Fifth Avenue overlooking the whole city. There was a white baby grand piano, and I played it. I was in awe. After, the guy sits with me and my manager and says, "That piano is yours if you sign here." Now, to me, a young girl who never had dreamed of owning a piano like that, who had been seduced by this building and the wealth that it took to create it, I looked at my manager, like, We gotta sign. We did, but that [deal] turned sour. So the moral of the story is never sign a contract for a baby grand piano!

RD: So by the age of 16 you had seven figures in the bank from a record company deal.
Keys: Yes. It was seven figures -- well, more like a good solid six.

RD: You've won nine Grammys. When they started coming, did you have any feelings that maybe you didn't deserve to win?
Keys: It's very surreal. But then I remembered this quote about how shrinking from the light doesn't serve the world. That you serve by showing the world that we do deserve to be beautiful and proud and tall and all the great things that can come our way.

RD: What keeps you grounded?
Keys: Having people in my life who really care about me, whether I'm rich or poor, whether I look good or not. My mother came from a big family. She has nine brothers and sisters. They just hug me and say, Sit down, or, How was your day? Those are the things that I surround myself with because this is such a superficial business.

RD: You're involved in a couple of charities. Tell us about why that work is important to you.
Keys: I went to South Africa in 2002 for MTV's World AIDS Day broadcast. I went to medical clinics and there were all these kids, a little younger than me, like 14, living with AIDS. That blew my mind. One woman came up to me and said, "Can you help us? We can't get any medicine and our babies can't live." She was pregnant. I felt like the whole world was on my shoulders. After that trip, I was scheduled to go to the Seychelles, which are beautiful, expensive islands off the coast of Africa. I got there and never felt so much guilt in my life. I would get these huge bills for breakfast and feel like hell. I realized at that moment I can't just go back to New York and pretend I had never seen what I did in South Africa. So I got involved with Keep A Child Alive, which provides antiretroviral medications for [HIV-positive] kids who would never be able to afford it, especially in places like Africa.

RD: You're involved in some charities here that specifically serve teens, right?
Keys: To be able to help a 13-year-old kid from the Bronx follow her dreams just by letting her know she's not forgotten in this crazy world -- that's why I got involved with Frum Tha Ground Up. And I work with Teens in Motion, which is for inner city kids and giving them some hope, making people think that, okay, maybe I can make it out here if I try not to let all of these negative things pull me down.

RD: Do you think you have a particular sense of compassion?
Keys: I've dealt with a variety of people all my life -- from the darkest, really hurting and going through a lot, to the best, the brightest. In my early teens I realized I can walk into a room and tell what's going on in that room.

RD: You must be an old soul. Do you think you've lived before?
Keys: I think I have. I was a much older 13 than most. I'm like, dang, I wish I would have just been a regular 12-year-old. I wish I didn't always take everything on my shoulders so heavy. And still, even musically, I feel I connect with the '30s and '40s. Maybe in some way I was alive then, and came back for this time now.

RD: When you were growing up, did you feel singled out to do something special?
Keys: I felt very determined very early, very adamant about what I wanted and what I didn't want. Maybe it was because of my surroundings. I knew immediately I'm not going to be that girl, standing out on the cold corner, trying to make money selling her body.

RD: Do you want to marry and have kids?
Keys: I do. But I did everything so fast when I was younger that I'm not about to rush into that. I would be a terrible wife right now. You kidding me? So I prefer to wait and live my life as I know I want to now, then later when I feel like that's where my heart and head is, I can dedicate it to another person and definitely to my child.

RD: Is there a way to use music to help people?
Keys: Definitely. I feel like music has a way of reaching people and joining people in a way that not many other things can. With the way everyone got together with Katrina -- music was the driving force that made people say, "Wow, I have to get involved. This moment is my moment to do something good for the world."