About

Fifteen-time Grammy-winning singer, songwriter and producer, Alicia Keys, presents her highly-anticipated sixth studio album, Here. From the human condition to global politics, Here offers a keen glimpse of everything that matters most to Keys. Urgent, intimate and musically daring, Here is Keys' truth laid bare: each track a confession; every melody a prayer.

The majority of Here's production credits belong to a creative force Keys calls the ILLuminaries, comprised of herself; songwriter/producer Mark Batson; rapper/producer Swizz Beatz; and long-time Keys songwriting collaborator Harold Lilly. With this album, Keys made a list of things she wanted to talk about, themes she wanted to explore. The result is Here speaking to Alicia's roots in NYC and hip-hop culture. The music on the album blends her perspective of the raw humanity of the world and who she is today as a woman and artist.

"On this album, I've arrived Here," Keys says. "A place where I'm willing to truthfully look at myself in the mirror and to also see the reality of who we have become in this world. The good, the ugly, the shadows and the light. I've come to realize that in order for us to grow and to understand and accept each other we have to recognize the complexity of ourselves. We have to be able to talk about it and meet each other where we are, Here." – Press Release

“Alicia Keys' eighth album downplays her classical training in favor of a grittier R&B edge. She roughs up the piano she once played prettily, endows her vocal exertions with more church than ever, and leans into a solid old-school hip-hop backbone fortified in large part by her husband Swizz Beatz. Her socially consciousness lyrics are as tough as her sound, from the sex-positive pacifism of "Holy War" to the inner city blues of "The Gospel," where her raw holler skirts the edge of despair.” – Rolling Stone

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