You see it in the way Bob Marley spoke, how he chose his words through music. GLAMOUR: Do you see your art and your activism as two different sides of your brain? How do they relate?ĪK: They totally go together. And it looks nothing like what anyone else is doing.” There’s something so powerful about being my own gorgeous, beautiful, individual, unique self.
#WE ARE HERE ALICIA KEYS ALBUM COVER FREE#
And to break free from that and say, “Wait, I’m deciding to be my own individual self. I think what happens in the world, and I think it’s part human nature and part programming, is we become an emulation of what we see. Love me or hate me, I really don’t care.” I guess that is the revolution. I recognize now that how you look is your statement, because it’s a claiming of yourself.
I didn’t think wearing braids was something revolutionary or iconic that was just how I loved wearing my hair. Do you consider beauty to be a revolutionary act?ĪK: It definitely is, but I didn’t think about that then. I’m thinking back to when you dropped Songs in A Minor in 2001. To bust through all of the noise is very challenging. We listen so much to everybody-more than ever, because we have a kabillion voices whose opinion we can access-and we care so much if everybody agrees with us. Even if my husband says, “You know, babe? I don’t know…,” I still have to know that, for myself, that something is good for me. And for me, and I would not be surprised if a lot of women feel this same way, it’s this thing of not being 100 percent comfortable with myself. I do feel there are certain things we come into this world having to defeat. And there’s a victory in those moments where you can be like, “Yo, I like me.”ĪK: I have to say, personally, that has been a challenge for me. Not my face, not my mind, not my soul.” It’s been almost a year since you embarked on that journey. GLAMOUR: Last May you wrote that you were swearing off makeup because, you said, “I don’t want to cover up anymore. And not confidence in a way that’s only on the surface, but a deep-down knowing of yourself or settling into who you are. Right now the way I define beauty is individuality and wisdom, which I think creates a certain inner confidence. How do you define beauty for yourself?ĪK: That’s been such an evolution for me. GLAMOUR: I think of Maya Angelou, Nina Simone, and Patrice Rushen, and I think of incredibly beautiful black women. And then I started discovering Nina Simone and Patrice Rushen, two black female pianists who were creators of their own music and their own style and their own way. I recognized that your life can become the background for the art you create. GLAMOUR: Let’s go back to the beginning: Who were some of your earliest influences as a young woman?ĪLICIA KEYS: I remember first discovering Maya Angelou-I’ve always been a really voracious reader-and realizing the correlation between people’s stories and their work.
My 10-year-old self needed to see a woman like that then. “Every day I realize that this might / Be the last day of my life / Walking down the streets I find / I’m coming closer and closer to losing my mind” she wailed on “The Life.” My young heart wailed back. It was then that I learned to lean on her words to help make sense of the messy reality all around me. Three months later two planes crashed into the World Trade Center. Back then her image-flawless braids, tough-as-nails exterior-was the goal for me: I wanted to look like her I wanted to be her. When Songs in A Minor dropped in 2001, I listened to the CD over and over on my dad’s computer in our house in New Jersey. I have been a fan of hers since I was 10 years old. Few artists are able to distill the chaos and connect us to one another quite like Alicia Keys. The songs we sing, and the melodies and words we let sink into our bones, allow us to reconcile our lived experiences with the conflicting messages that surround us.
At its best, music can cross boundaries of race, gender, and class.
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