Listen to Alicia Keys’ ‘ALICIA’ Album
Written by SOURCE on September 18, 2020
Alicia Keys has released her latest, self-titled offering, ALICIA.
The project is her seventh studio album and includes features from Khalid, Sampha, Tierra Whack, Miguel, Snoh Aalegra, Jill Scott, and Diamond Platnumz.
“So deep, so deep. This is so deep,” she told Zane Lowe, when asked why she named the album after herself. “I feel like I think about this a lot. I specifically think about this a lot with the Alicia album. And that’s why I feel so strongly about calling this work Alicia. Because I feel like I have, for the first time, been most fully myself now.”
She continued:
“In the beginning, I was very myself. I really was. Although I was unsure of this crazy world that I was in and I definitely didn’t know the rules or how to do it or exactly what I was doing, I was very sure of myself. I knew that I was a young woman. I’m boyish. I’m not trying to be all pretty and girly. I got my piano. I got my songs. I got my braids. Don’t try to make me do this. Don’t talk to me about that. Don’t bring me no flower dresses and shit. This is me. Take me or leave me, I don’t care. And then success came. I had never been successful before and everybody was there, and I was going places I’d never been before, and I was meeting people I never met before. And they were telling me things I never heard before. I was having experiences that I would never have experienced before. And people liked what I did. So then, when it came time to do it again, for the first time in my life, I had been exposed to what it feels like when people like what you do. And then you start to think, ‘Well, what if people don’t like what I do? Then what?’”
Keys has been steadily offering a string of singles over the past year in anticipation of ALICIA. Last week, she shared the song “Love Looks Better” and in mid-August, she dropped the Khalid-featuring track “So Done.” Other singles she’s released in advance of the project are “Show Me Love,” “Time Machine,” “Underdog,” “Good Job,” and “Perfect Way to Die.”
More recently, Keys teamed up with the NFL to start a $1 billion endowment fund centered on advocating for Black-owned businesses and communities.
Stream ALICIA below or on Apple Music.
