“The Next Queen of Soul”

Alicia Keys, photographed in lower Manhattan for her cover story of the 881st issue of Rolling Stone magazine by Mark Seliger on September 13, 2001. 

Published November 8, the photographs for the magazine’s cover were captured in lower Manhattan, just two days after the World Trade Center attacks, a mile and a half from Ground Zero. The shoot was originally scheduled for September 11th. 

Immediately after the shoot, Alicia and her crew were escorted to a police checkpoint at Fourteenth Street, then uptown to Washington, D.C., where a tour bus was waiting to take the young star and her band to Atlanta for a show the following night at Chastain Park Amphitheatre on the 14th. Alicia was scheduled to open for singer Maxwell, despite her debut album already selling more than 3 million copies. 

In the wake of the catastrophe, Alicia felt the shoot had to be something relevant: "To see Chambers Street and the Brooklyn Bridge lookin' like some old spot you might see in Kuwait on TV just puts things in perspective for me," she says. "Some people live with war every day, and we just these small-ass little children who always been protected for one reason or another. The things that people hold in high esteem is fuckin' stupid. That's the reason why I wanted this shoot to mean something. I couldn't go in there and just put on some clothes. I couldn't possibly do a fuckin' photo shoot after what just happened. I would feel like the person I despise. The physical is such an important part of today's society, and that's sickening, sickening, sickening, and it makes it more sickening when something like this goes on.”

She continues: “The last couple days I been thinkin', 'What's happenin' to this world? What's really goin' on?' Couple weeks ago we was dealin' with that plane shit with Aaliyah, and now it's a whole nother thing. It's strange. For me, I can't take myself out of that equation. I feel like everyone who died in that building was part of me. The thing that keeps goin' through my head is the phoenix that rises out of the ashes. Although there's despair and confusion, that's definitely not the end of the world, and it's not gonna stop us. It's gonna make us stronger."

But Alicia felt conflicted: “All day I been seein' everyone rockin' flags in they hats and on the street, and I'm torn," she says. "I look at that flag, and I'm not able to completely go there for some reason. I see lies in that flag. I can't suddenly be all patriotic. But this is about human life beyond any country or flag. That's why it makes me feel so strange. Because I'm so torn, and there's so many layers involved."