“The Next Queen of Soul”

Unpublished shot of Alicia Keys, photographed in lower Manhattan for her cover story of the 881st issue of Rolling Stone magazine by Mark Seliger on September 13, 2001.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