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“He just had gotten that wire off of his jaw from that car accident that he had. We actually sat in his room and he played me, ‘Through the Wire,'” she said of West’s debut single. Keys said she has to give credit to her then-A&R exec Peter Edge, who is now the chairman and CEO of RCA Records: “I remember he was actually the one who said, ‘Why don’t we try something with Kanye? He’s coming up.’ I was like, ‘OK.'”Īt the time, West had been a buzzed-about producer crafting songs for Jay-Z and others. Who would have known that it would have panned out in this way when we first met up?” The trio joined forces to create the smoky R&B hit “You Don’t Know My Name,” the first single from Keys’ sophomore album, “The Diary of Alicia Keys.” It’s really incredible and this was something that feels really moving to me and makes me kind of want to cry.”īefore they released their epic, Grammy-winning debut albums in 2004, Kanye West and John Legend worked behind-the-scenes with Alicia Keys. “When I look at my life and I look at her, a lot of the times I really feel like she threw all her dreams and all her wishes and prayers, even for herself, on me. “She had to suddenly become a responsible parent to have me and be able to put food on the table as a single mother do those things, those sacrifices that mothers do,” she said. Terri Auguello graduated from New York University but had to put the breaks to her career when she learned she was pregnant with Keys. She threw all the caution into the wind and came here.” She believed that she could come here and make her life as an artist. That story that fuels the spirit of New York is her story. She left Toledo, Ohio, at 19 years old after having to beg her mom to get out of a small town and make her way in the world and come to New York.
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“I feel like I’m the living embodiment of my mother’s dream. That was it.”Īs a child, Alicia Keys was surrounded by the arts: Her mother moved to New York City to pursue acting and she lived in building for those working in the creative world. I just know that for me personally that didn’t feel right for me when I realized that many, many people would hear that from me. “Everybody has their own thoughts and I’m not here to judge anybody either. I don’t want to do that anymore,'” she said. “Once I realized, ‘Wow! Millions of people will hear this from me’ – I didn’t know what that felt like before – and then once I did know how that felt, I realized that … this was another moment where I was able to look at myself and be like, ‘Hmmm, does that feel right to me? No, that doesn’t feel right to me. I’ll never forget.”īut Keys admits she created the song before she became a public figure or a successful musician with an audience of listeners. At the end of the Ol’ Dirty Bastard song, he says that line and I put it at the end of my song kind of like an homage to how much I love Wu-Tang.
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The soul of it, because a lot of it samples the ’60s and ’70s and then the hardness of New York, Staten Island streets – it had such a really big influence on me. “It was so cool to play it at the piano and sing a song over it. “At the time, I was loving Wu-Tang, that Ol’ Dirty Bastard song,” said Keys, referring “Brooklyn Zoo” by Ol’ Dirty Bastard, which she interpolates on “Girlfriend.” On Alicia Keys’ Grammy-winning 2001 debut album, “songs in A minor,” the singer uses the N-word on the upbeat track “Girlfriend.” She said shortly after releasing the song she decided to never use the word again. But I was like, ‘OK, you know best, right?'” When that person started suggesting that I take off this or pull down that or show more of that, I felt awkward as hell. It was a big deal and it was made to be a big deal to me, and this would be a great start to everything. “The fact that I was even shooting with him was unheard of they don’t even shoot new artists. “This was a big-time photographer,” she said, referring to her 2004 Vibe magazine cover, where half of her nude body is emerging from water as she covers her breasts with her hands. In her new book, Keys tells the story about a photoshoot that taught her an important life lesson – if you’re ever uncomfortable or unsure about something: speak up and say no. Read the interview with Keys and Winfrey here. In outtakes from a recent interview with The Associated Press, Keys discusses working with a sleazy photographer for one of her first big magazine shoots, getting a piano as a teenager, her decision to never use the N-word and collaborating with Kanye West and John Legend before they were household names. NEW YORK (AP) – Alicia Keys, already a New York Times best-selling author, looks to the past and opens up in her new book, “More Myself: A Journey,” to be released Tuesday on Oprah Winfrey’s imprint via Flatiron Books.