Alicia Keys Biography and History :
Barely out of her teens, singer, songwriter and classically trained pianist Alicia Keys stormed the pop charts in the early 2000s with a mature-beyond-her-age mix of soul, jazz and hip-hop. With an extra push from an appearance on Oprah the day before the release of her debut, Songs in A Minor (Number One, 2001), the album sold 235,000 copies in its first week. By the end of the year it had produced two Top 10 singles — "Fallin' " (Number One) and "A Woman's Worth" (Number Seven) — and was still red hot. Keys wound up taking home five trophies at the following year's Grammy ceremony including Best New Artist, Best R&B Album and Best R&B song. Songs in A Minor went on to sell platinum six times over.

She was born Alicia Augello-Cook on January 25th, 1981, in Manhattan, New York, to a white mother and Jamaican father. Her dad left early on, and she was raised by her mother, Teresa M. Augello (a.k.a. Terria Joseph), a paralegal and sometime actress. Keys' maternal grandfather was a Detroit radio disc jokey and actor who appeared in the Sixties TV series The Lone Ranger and The Green Hornet. When she was four, Keys landed a one-off role as part of a slumber party on The Cosby Show. By seven, she had become serious about music, studying piano and learning to play Beethoven, Mozart and Chopin. Keys graduated as the valedictorian from Manhattan's prestigious Professional Performing Arts high school at 16 and was accepted to Columbia University, however she dropped out of college early to pursue her musical career.

Keys initially inked a deal with So So Def Records and in 1997 wrote and recorded a song that appeared on the soundtrack of the movie Men in Black. The contract never resulted in a single or album, but it attracted the attention of powerful music-industry mogul Clive Davis, who signed Keys to his Arista Records, which eventually merged with the newer J Records. Keys recorded two more songs for soundtracks, and then, in June 2001, released Songs in A Minor. The album rocketed to Number One and was well-received by critics, who hailed Keys as the likely neo-soul successor to Lauryn Hill and Erykah Badu.

Keys' late-2003 follow-up, The Diary of Alicia Keys, debuted at Number One and produced another batch of hits including "You Don't Know My Name" (Number Three, 2004), "If I Ain't Got You" (Number Four, 2004) and "Diary" (Number Eight, 2004). That year, she performed along with Beyoncé and Missy Elliott on the Verizon Ladies First Tour, and also headlined tours in Asia and Australia. The album — and a duet with Usher on "My Boo" (Number One, 2004) — earned her another eight Grammy nominations, four of which she won: Best Female R&B Vocal Performance for "If I Ain't Got You," Best R&B Song for "You Don't Know My Name," Best R&B Album and Best R&B Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals for "My Boo." She also won Best R&B Video at both the 2004 and 2005 MTV Video Music Awards for the album's "If I Ain't Got You" and "Karma," respectively. The next album she dropped was the obligatory MTV Unplugged (Number One, 2005), on which she and Maroon 5 singer Adam Levine performed a duet of the perennial Rolling Stones ballad "Wild Horses." The album didn't produce any Top 10 hits, although one of two new songs, "Unbreakable," reached Number 34. Although it was her weakest-selling album to date, moving only 1 million in the U.S. and 2 million worldwide, it was the highest-charting Unplugged debut since Nirvana's in 1994 and was nominated for four more Grammys. In 2006, Keys' talent inspired Bob Dylan to drop her name in a line from his song "Thunder on the Mountain": "I was thinkin' 'bout Alicia Keys ..."

She came back strong with As I Am (Number One, 2007); selling 742,000 copies in its first week, the album marked her fourth consecutive Number One debut on the Billboard 200 — a tie with Britney Spears for the most consecutive Number One debuts from a female artist. For the single "No One" (Number One, 2007), Keys took home two more Grammys in 2008: Best R&B song and Best Female R&B Vocal Performance. A second single, "Like You'll Never See Me Again" reached the Top 20 of the pop chart and topped the R&B chart.

Since her TV debut on The Cosby Show, Keys has sporadically appeared on other series including Charmed, in 2001, and American Dreams, in 2003. In 2007 she made her film debut in Smokin' Aces, and appeared in The Nanny Diaries later that year.

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