Alicia Cook, Queen of R&B and Diva of Pop

The opening line from the UK DailyMail is typical of the salvo of reviews for music diva Alicia Keys, born in New York and raised in the area of Manhattan known as Hell's Kitchen. Alicia Augello Cook has two cultures to her credit, an American African father and a mother of Italian, English, Irish, and Scottish roots.

The 32 year old musician has been around the piano keys since the tender age of seven and started with a classical music background, attending the Professional Performers Arts School at 12 and graduating a valedictorian at 16.

Alicia has been billed as a singer, songwriter, music producer and actress however as she racked up a staggering number of Grammies (14 wins so far from 28 nominations) critics have become more outspoken and derisive of her style and talent.

While most editorial references connect her work in the R&B category her music is also known to have crossed over into pop, dance, hip hop, rap and jazz.

The onset of 2012 saw Alicia Keys releasing her latest and fifth studio album, Girl on Fire, which hit the number one position on Billboard's US and US R&B charts and fared strongly in the UK at number 13 and elsewhere in Europe, Canada and Australia with positions ranging from the top 10 to top 30, a stellar and forceful bravura performance for an artist with an extremely limited number of remix albums and best of hits.

For those that remember Whitney Houston so vividly, the managers of Alicia Keys may seem to be treading carefully with her musical style on the hit track Girl on Fire that dances so close to Whitney's and yet attempts to make its own place under the sun.

Technically speaking, Alicia's vocal range is unquestion- able and can easily span three octaves. Her critics

though have denounced her sound as manufactured.

Alicia credits Clive Davis for bringing her style along while at Arista during the 1990s and when Davis was fired and went on to build his own record label, J Records, Keys was the first to sign on as a banner
artist for his company. Her first album was said
to have been delayed four years by this setback
however in 2001, it set the world on fire and got
Alicia her first five Grammy awards in one night.
All of a sudden, Alicia had the spotlight and the
world was buzzing about her album, Songs in A
Minor, and the new superstar artist that was in making.

Her song A New Day from her latest album brings hip hop and Caribbean styles into the mix and is possibly her second strongest song from the set and stands out well from the melodic and mellow Brand New Me. In contrast, Fire We Make has an extremely deft adult smooth jazz vibe evocative of Al Jarreau's landmark Moonlighting theme for the TV series of the same name.

At the age of 13, Alicia had already connected with her long term manager, Jeff Robinson from the after-school program she was in and he in turn introduced her to Peter Edge of Arista Records. The year of her high school graduation she already had a track, Dah Deeh Dah Sexy Thing, featured in Men in Black, the hit movie from Columbia and Sony Pictures.

Unlike her noteworthy predecessors and contemporaries such as Seal and Sade, bringing into their music the European classical traditions and appealing strictly to more adult audiences, Alicia has been able to mix different styles and tempos and has catered to more commercial tastes with a broader set of demographics and younger audiences.

The Alicia team has also been able to weather the decade while skillfully avoiding any major controversy