Friend to Michelle Obama and Beyoncé, 30 million-selling pop legend, charity campaigner... Alicia Keys is one of the most powerful women in pop, says Craig McLean
Midnight on Alicia Keys’ tour bus, and the talk — as it is so often with visiting American superstars — is of Nando’s. ‘Everyone freaks out over it!’ exclaims the singer who has sold 30 million albums and won endless Grammys. ‘I gotta get the Nando’s!’ Perhaps when she plays the O2 two days after our meeting, a banquet of peri-peri chicken will be top of her rider.
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It’s fair to say she’s used to a higher class of catering, especially when dining with her Washington associates. Keys counts Barack and Michelle as friends (she played at last year’s presidential inauguration, changing the chorus of her recent smash ‘Girl on Fire’ to ‘Obama’s on fire!’), their connection forged by a shared interest in philanthropy, notably in the area of the Global Fund to Fight Aids, tuberculosis and malaria. Later this year, New York hosts the 10th anniversary outing of Keys’ Black Ball, a gala that has raised over $15 milllion in charitable funds. ‘I very much connect with Michelle,’ she says, ‘and we’ve done different things together that have given us so much to talk about — she’s really interested in girls and empowerment too.’
Tonight, though, we are in Nottingham, bound for London. The tour bus engine idles while Team Keys assembles hot drinks — a fragrant concoction for the workaholic star of the show, who’s now swaddled in a jersey and scarf. ‘Mmm, it’s good!’ she shouts, drumming her hands on the table in delight. ‘It has ghee, cardamom, turmeric, all these yummy Indian spices,’ she explains. ‘And a little bit of almond milk. It’s delicious. It’s supposed to be relaxing. And it does help everything — skin, throat…’
The 33-year-old New Yorker (she lives in the upmarket SoHo district) stepped off the Capital FM Arena stage an hour or so ago, another rapturously applauded date completed on her Set the World on Fire global tour. In the upstairs lounge of the sleek coach, Keys peeks through the curtains as we start to move. ‘I love you guys, I’m sorry I couldn’t hang out,’ she murmurs to the fans waiting outside. ‘It sucks. Man,’ she sighs, ‘it’s all rainy, too. So,’ she says, turning her attention and her mega-watt smile to me, ‘I’m so excited to talk to you because you’ve officially known me for so long, that I actually wanna interview you! When was the first time you met me?’
Keys and I have encountered each other several times over the past decade. Things only became really frosty once. It was during our first interview, in 2003, which was also conducted at night, in a car driving from London to Brighton for a Radio 1 event. She was still only 22 but already rocket-propelled by album sales of around ten million. As her manager said at the time, she’d had ‘seven figures in the bank since she was 14,’ the age at which she signed her first million-dollar record deal; but she wasn’t nearly as regal as she might have been, perhaps because of her upbringing. An only child, Alicia Augello Cook was raised in tough Hell’s Kitchen by her single-parent mum.
That journey to Brighton was a surreal set-up, made more so by the fact that her writing partner, Kerry ‘Krucial’ Brothers, was driving. When I asked her to confirm what I’d heard from someone at her record label, that Brothers was also her boyfriend, her glare would have shamed Medusa. ‘Who said we were dating?’ Keys retorted sharply, before pulling down the shutters on any further questions on her private life.
She maintained that emotional omertà for the next decade. Each of our interviews was characterised by my trying to pin her down on some basic personal details — was Brothers her boyfriend? If not, was she dating someone else? What did she make of the rumours that she was gay? — and her deploying smiley platitudes and her formidable intellect to wriggle away every time. She might have been a global superstar, but Alicia Keys remained fundamentally unknown. Highly talented as an artist, for sure, but businesslike, remote and curiously two-dimensional as a person.
Our next two encounters took place in New York, most recently at the 2006 Fashion Rocks concert. Before that, we had met up in China — she was playing a show on the Great Wall of China, a mark of how far her success had taken her since the release of her mega-selling 2001 debut album Songs in A Minor.
In China I was introduced to Alicia’s mum, Terri Augello, a paralegal and sometime actress. She is a formidable woman. ‘How’s your mum?’ I ask her now, like an old friend: ‘She’s cool. She’s able to focus on her acting, which is her passion. I didn’t keep her on the road for very long. Basically what happened was, we were arriving at some city at some awful time of night. And everybody has to get off the bus to go to the hotel, and she fell out of her bunk and she was on her hands and knees and I was like, “That’s it, you can’t be here any more. You gotta just be my mom, ’cause this is breaking my heart.” This,’ Keys nods coolly, reflecting on a dozen years’ international jet-setting and gig-hopping, ‘is such a hard road, man.’
From such personal questions, the old Alicia would have run a million miles, ‘in the other direction,’ she chips in with a laugh, ‘that’s true. I am way more relaxed,’ she admits. ‘Life is many things, and I didn’t know how to balance it before. And I didn’t know how to enjoy it very much, either. One of the things my husband has taught me is how to be more free. To be more fluid and flow.’
Keys has changed. A lot. The shutters have lifted with age, and by her finding personal happiness: she married fellow writer/producer Swizz Beatz (real name Kasseem Dean, 34) in 2010, and their son Egypt was born the same year. The toddler even appears on Girl on Fire, her fifth album, speaking on the track ‘When It’s All Over’. Like his wife, Swizz has been in the music industry since he was a teen, producing his first track at 16. Kanye West once called him ‘the best rap producer of all time’. He most recently co-produced (with Timbaland) Jay Z’s ‘Open Letter’, between designing a trainer line with Reebok and adding to his art collection (with a Basquiat).
At the Nottingham gig Alicia sang her hits (‘Fallin’, ‘Empire State of Mind’) with ear-tingling power, and moved smoothly from piano to drums (for the finale of ‘Girl on Fire’) with the odd bit of choreographed shimmying in between. But that was as far as the production went. Keys might be one-third of an A-list American diva triumvirate alongside Beyoncé and Rihanna, all of whom are playing in London this summer, yet, whereas those superstars deploy pyrotechnics, calisthenic dance routines and dizzying costume changes, her performance is more low-key: she changes piano more than she changes costume.
Did she consider beefing up her show to compete with her peers? ‘I think always our thing is that I am who I am… It’s gonna be an emotional connection.’ She acknowledges that ‘Jay and B’ are ‘good friends’ of her and Swizz, as are Bono and his wife Ali Hewson (who shares Keys’ passion for projects in Africa). ‘And Emeli Sandé is a friend,’ she adds of the Scottish star with whom she’s written songs for both artists’ albums. Does she like Rihanna? She answers that she loves her ‘style’ and her boldness, and the fact that she is, ‘no pun intended, so unapologetic…
‘But also,’ she continues, ‘it’s such a tricky, crazy business, and when people are a little bit younger than me, I’m always hoping that their soul is good ’cause it can be such a soulless space. Who’s really loving you and making sure that you’re OK? Because everybody wants to make sure you’re OK when they can get something from you, and they’re getting a percentage from you. But they don’t technically care if you’re OK. They just wanna make sure you can stand so you can go to work. So naturally I am always thinking about people and hoping that in this very soulless place they can find completion.’
It’s a thoughtful — and remarkably forthright — reply, suggesting that it’s an issue that’s been on her mind. Does she think Rihanna has people around her who will help her complete herself? ‘Um. I don’t know, because I don’t know her personally like that. But I do know there’s a lot of good people at Roc Nation [her management company]. And I do think that as we all get older, you start to be able to say, “No, I’m not gonna take that from you any more.” So,’ she smiles, ‘I’m proud of Rihanna. Because it’s not easy to stand up in this crazy world and make it and keep going and try new things. And find your way through it.’
Of course Alicia Keys, of all single-minded people, knows there’d be no telling Rihanna what to do. But there is one member of her inner circle she’ll happily advise. He might not yet be three, but in little over a decade Egypt will be the same age his mum was when she started touting her musical wares to record companies. ‘Gaaagh!’ she shrieks when I point this out. ‘No!’ she laughs. Would she encourage him to do as she did? ‘Jesus,’ she exhales, fiddling with her fancy tea. ‘Well, he has crazy rhythm. So, yeah, man. But he has to do what makes him happy. And if it makes him light up, hell yeah, I want him to do it. And if my husband and I can fast-track him past the bullshit a little bit, that would be cool.’
Blue Ivy Carter, it seems like you’re going to have some stiff competition.
Alicia’s new single ‘New Day’ and album Girl on Fire are out now
Styled by Orsolya Szabo. Shot on location at the New York Palace Hotel (newyorkpalace.com)
Monday, August 19, 2013 at 04:35PM
