Alicia Augello Cook (born January 25, 1981), better known by her stage name Alicia Keys, is an American R&B singer-songwriter, record producer, and actress. Keys was raised by a single mother in the Hell’s Kitchen area of Manhattan in New York City. At age seven, Keys began playing the piano. She attended Professional Performing Arts School and graduated at 16 as valedictorian.

Keys’ debut album, Songs in A Minor , was a commercial success, selling over 12 million copies worldwide. She became the best-selling new artist and best-selling R&B artist of 2001. The album earned Keys five Grammy Awards in 2002, including Best New Artist and Song of the Year for Fallin . Her second studio album, The Diary of Alicia Keys , was released in 2003 and was also another success worldwide, selling eight million copies. The album garnered her four additional Grammy Awards in 2005. Later in that year, she released her first live album, Unplugged , which debuted at number one in the United States. She became the first female to have an MTV Unplugged album to debut at number one and the highest since Nirvana in 1994.

Keys made guest appearances on several television series in the following years, beginning with Charmed . She made her film debut in Smokin ’ Aces and went on to appear in The Nanny Diaries in 2007. Her third studio album, As I Am , was released in the same year and sold six million copies worldwide, earning Keys three additional Grammy Awards. In the following year, she appeared in The Secret Life of Bees , which earned her a nomination at the NAACP Image Awards. She released her fourth album, The Element of Freedom , in December 2009, which became Keys’ first chart-topping album in the United Kingdom. Throughout her career, Keys has won numerous awards and has sold over 30 million albums worldwide and 25 million singles, which makes her one of the best selling artists of all the time. Billboard magazine named her the top R&B artist of the 2000–2009 decade, establishing herself as one of the best-selling artists of her time. In 2010, VH1 put Keys on its list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time. Billboard magazine placed her number ten on their list of Top 50 R&B/Hip-Hop Artists of the Past 25 Years.

Keys has a vocal range of a contralto, which spans three octaves. She can sing from B flat over an octave below middle C (B2) to B below soprano C (B5). Often regarded as the "Princess of Soul”, Keys has been commended as having a strong, raw and impassioned voice; others feel that her voice is "emotionally manufactured" at times and that she pushes her voice out of its natural range. Keys’ songwriting is often criticized for lack of depth, which has led to her writing abilities being called limited. Her lyrics have been called generic, clichéd and that her songs revolve around generalities. Greg Kot of the Chicago Tribune feels that she "pokes around for multi-format hits rather than trying to project any sort of artistic vision". Diversely, Jon Pareles of Blender magazine stated that the musical composition of her songs makes up for their lyrical weakness, while Gregory Stephen Tate of The Village Voice compared Keys’ writing and production to 1970s music.

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她的處女專輯《極微之歌》以在全球售出12,000,000張的成績(jī)?nèi)〉昧松虡I(yè)上的巨大成功。她以此成為了2001年度最暢銷的新人和最暢銷節(jié)奏布魯斯歌手。2002年，艾麗西婭·凱斯憑借處女專輯贏得了5座格萊美金唱機(jī)。她是自1994年涅磐樂隊(duì)以來唯一的一位以《MTV Unplugged》專輯空降第一位并獲得最好銷售成績(jī)的女歌手。在艾麗西婭·凱斯的歌唱生涯中，她已經(jīng)贏得了許多獎(jiǎng)項(xiàng)、專輯全球大賣30,000,000張，成為同時(shí)代最暢銷的藝人之一。