Princess of soul expands her realm

Alicia Keys has struck again. Her latest album, MTV Unplugged, went straight into the Billboard chart at No 1, making her the first female R&B artist to score a hat-trick of No 1 debuts.

"Performing is my thing," Keys says. "It just felt like it was absolutely the right time to be able to do a broken-down version of my songs and make them really intimate and personal.

"I wanted to draw the listener into my world, into my personal, private, intimate location."

Sitting pretty in a Manhattan hotel, Keys has a curvaceous figure that contrasts sharply with the industry's usual requirements. Today, she's wearing her trademark braids, but has taken to wearing her hair straight. "I'm definitely not afraid to branch out and try new things, new looks."

Keys is charming and thoughtful in conversation, and even when admitting she may need a holiday, she leavens the complaint with a megawatt smile. "I haven't had the greatest life-work balance," she says, "but I definitely make sure that when I need time to relax or just be with my family, or sit down and do silly things like watch movies, or go bowling, or whatever you need to do to relax or unwind, I make sure I take it."

I ask if she makes time for a boyfriend. She has been linked to 50 Cent and Lenny Kravitz and even to her production partner, Kerry "Krucial" Brothers. But she never likes revealing details of her private life and says, "I choose to keep that information to myself."

The singer's admirable work ethic hasn't been in vain. Her first two albums, Songs in A Minor and The Diary of Alicia Keys are multi-platinum-sellers, and she has taken home nine Grammys.

But she is modest about her success and more inclined to focus on the lessons she has learned.

"I've learned about who I am as an artist in the sense of as a performer and as a woman, and how much is too much, and how much I can handle - and I'm really being honest with myself about that," she says. "That's a big thing in this business - especially in being able to meet as many people as you can but still stay sane and stay healthy."

It's easy to forget that Keys is only 24. Born Alicia Augello Cook, she led the life of an ordinary New York teenager, growing up in the notorious Hell's Kitchen area of Manhattan.

She credits her overprotective mother with shielding her from the daily spectacle of prostitutes and drug dealers. Terri Augello, an Italian-American and an aspiring actress, raised her daughter single-handedly after separating from Keys's African-American father, a flight attendant, when Alicia was 2.

Some reports have suggested that she is seeking a reconciliation with her dad, but Keys dismisses the rumour. "I don't know how that got out into the press," she says. "I think it just came from the fact that I said somewhere that I didn't really want to hold on to any negative feelings towards him.

"I feel it's important to experience and grow and feel hurt or whatever you feel when you have different situations in different relationships. But to move on and try to get past it is important."

When Augello was persuing her acting career, young Alicia started taking piano lessons. But her classical training didn't preclude a love of hip-hop, of which she is an avid fan, and her mannerisms and speech - she has a tendency to say "yo" - reflect the rap culture she embraces.

On MTV Unplugged she features guest rappers Common, Mos Def and Damian Marley, and Kanye West was the man behind her hit single You Don't Know My Name.

A friend introduced her to Marvin Gaye's What's Going On, which helped which inspired her love for soul music.

Keys made her first steps towards a music career by joining a girl group, although that "didn't work out". Nevertheless, by the time she was 16 she had signed her first record deal, with Columbia Records.

She was dropped shortly afterwards, but at the prompting of her manager, Jeff Robinson, she adopted the stage name of Keys and signed a deal with Clive Davis' J Records.

Davis gave Keys the space and time to develop her talent, just as he had with Whitney Houston. But an appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show, where she sang her debut single Fallin', brought Keys to public attention.

The lyrics of her songs rarely stray from matters of the heart, but her musical style - crawling blues coupled with a hip-hop backbeat, and soul melodies enhanced with her raw vocals - made her different from her R&B contemporaries.

Keys has maintained this formula in her past three albums and is happy that people understand what she does as an artist.

"They understand the way that I like to engage real emotions and real feelings and talk about real situations that go on with everyone in the world.

"I want to always be able to stretch myself and my hope is that people will accept me in all my variety of ways." The "variety" is a reference to her work as an author and actress. Two months ago she published Tears for Water, a top-selling songbook of lyrics and poems from her journal. And she's hoping to get out a novel. Keys's first big-screen outing will be in the thriller Smokin' Aces, in which she will play an assassin, alongside Ray Liotta, Ben Affleck and Andy Garcia.

And she was chosen by Halle Berry for the lead in a film called Composition in Black and White, about the life of the mixed-race pianist Philippa Schuyler.

Keys went to Manhattan's Professional Performance Arts School, the "Fame school". Acting, she says, is in her blood. "For me, it's very important to do film. I love film. I always knew I would come back to it."

She is ambitious and believes there is a lot more of her for the world to see. "I have so much more to do. I've barely begun to scratch the surface of what I'm going to get into out there."

- INDEPENDENT