Alicia Keys

Biography of Alicia Keys

Alicia Keys was born on January 25, 1981 in Manhattan, New York.

She is the only child of Teresa Augello, a paralegal and part-time actress, and Craig Cook, an African-American flight attendant. Her mother is half Italian and half English with Irish and Scottish ancestry.

Her parents separated when she was two years old being raised by her mother in Manhattan.

In 1985 Alicia Keys made an appearance on The Bill Cosby Show.

Throughout her childhood she received music and dance lessons from her mother. She studied classical piano from the age of seven and enrolled at the Professional Performing Arts School at 12, specializing in choir.

Alicia Keys began writing her own songs at 14, her first song titled Butterflyz. She graduated at 16 years old. She enrolled at Columbia University, but she did not start her studies because she decided to dedicate herself fully to the world of music.

She worked hard on her first record until she was discovered by Clive Davis at Arista Records. On June 26, 2001 they released Songs in A Minor, an album with which she won five Grammy Awards and where most of the songs were composed and produced by Alicia.

Her second album was released in 2003 under the name of The Diary of Alicia Keys'. With it, she got 8 nominations for the 2005 Grammy Awards. In October 2005, Unplugged, the MTV acoustic dedicated to Alicia Keys, went on sale. This album was number one in sales in the United States and got four new nominations for the Grammy Awards.

On November 13, 2007, As I Am was published. With the song No One, as her first single, she reached number one on the Billboard list just ten hours after it began playing on the radio in the United States. In ninety days it got forty million views on YouTube.

She had a controversy with Amy Winehouse since they chose her song instead of Amy's for the James Bond movie Quantum of Solace. Amy Winehouse stated that she would post her song to prove that it was better than Alicia Keys' song.

At the end of 2009 she released her fifth album, The Element Of Freedom. In 2012, her studio album Girl On Fire appeared. In October 2016, she released a single from her next album Here's called Blended Family.

She recorded duets with artists like Bono from U2, Alejandro Sanz, Beyoncé or Jay-Z. In 2002 she co-wrote the song Impossible with Christina Aguilera for the album Stripped.

Her seventh studio album, Alicia, is due out in March 2020, and Alicia: The World Tour, her first tour in seven years, kicks off in June 2020 in Europe.

In May 2021, Alicia Keys was featured on DMX's album Exodus featured on the song Hold Me Down. On September 9, 2021, she released the single Lala featuring American rapper and singer Swae Lee of hip hop duo Rae Sremmurd . The song is part of the eighth studio album: Keys.

In 2008, she acted in the movie The Secret Life of Bees with actresses like Jennifer Hudson, Queen Latifah or Dakota Fanning.

Married to hip hop singer Swizz Beatz since 2010, she is the mother of Egypt Daoud Dean, born on October 14, 2010. On Saturday December 27, 2014, she gave birth to her second child, a boy named Genesis Ali Dean.