Alicia J. Augello-Cook (born January 25, 1981) better known by her stage name Alicia Keys, is an American R&B, soul and neo soul singer-songwriter, pianist and actress, who has sold over 25 million albums worldwide as of 2007,[citation needed] and has won numerous awards, including eleven Grammy Awards, seventeen Billboard Music Awards, three American Music Awards, and fourteen NAACP Image Awards. Prococious musically she took piano lessons as a long girl and attended the Professional Performance Arts School of Manhattan. She signed with Clive Davis’s J Records at the age of 19 in 1999 and her career sky rocked from the start.
Her official website says she possesses an "old soul," and the hard facts seem to back up the implied claim of wisdom and experience that transcend Alicia Keys' youth. Barely in her twenties, Keys was responsible for an extremely hot debut, Songs in A Minor. The release, which she wrote and produced for Clive Davis' J Records, blends diverse influences, including R&B, hip-hop, classical, and jazz. The day the album went on the market, it sold more than 50,000 copies. Label executives confidently predicted similarly favorable numbers for the first week's tally. Songs in A Minor was a worldwide success and received the record of five Grammy Awards in a single night in 2002. Her sophomore release “The Diary of Alicia Keys” sold 8 million copies.
Around the time that Songs in A Minor was released, Keys was popping up everywhere, including an Associated Press story. Where had she been before then? Her entire life, it seems, had been an accelerated learning experience, preparing her for a career in music. A Manhattan native, her musical gifts became apparent when she was five years old. As a choir major enrolled in Manhattan's Professional Performance Arts School, she further developed her vocal talents with extra help from a teacher. By the time she was 16, Keys graduated and entered Columbia University. Music beckoned, however, and she quickly left Columbia behind.
Keys followed up her debut with The Diary of Alicia Keys, released on December 2, 2003. The album was hailed by critics, and debuted at number one in the U.S., selling over 618,000 copies its first week of release, becoming the sixth biggest-selling album by a female artist and the second biggest-selling album by a female R&B artist. To date, it has sold nine million copies worldwide. Since late 2006, Keys worked on her third studio album, As I Am?whose title was confirmed in a red-carpet interview at the 2007 BET Awards on June 26[22]?, released on November 13, 2007. Keys talked to MTV in early 2007 about the album: "It's coming together incredibly. I am in love with this album. It's very fresh and new".[23] Rolling Stone magazine reported in December 2005 that Keys and her long-term songwriting partner Kerry "Krucial" Brothers would start working seriously on the album in the later half of 2006
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