"Alicia in Wonderland"

Alicia Keys, appears on the cover of the Summer 2002 issue of Canadian magazine Inside Entertainment. 

Canadian author and music journalist Nicholas Jennings goes one-on-one with the Grammy winner over the phone from Montgomery, Alabama. Where Alicia talks about attending the Grammys for the first time earlier in February: “I’m not the type who gets really worked up about things,” she says. “But that day, I felt extremely calm. It surprised even me.”

As well as growing up on New York’s streets: “Being on the streets and living in New York when you’re younger, you sometimes do what you shouldn’t do,” she says. “Different circumstances could’ve led me to very negative places, but for whatever reason I decided that wasn’t what I wanted for myself. There’s so much pressure around you to succumb to what other people are doing. Those times led me to realize that I have to do what I feel is right and let my intuition lead me.”

Even mentioning a future album [‘Diary]: “I have all these new things that are going on in my head. Just peering through my heart as I travel and see different things, and the way the world has been this whole year. I’m not stressing the (next) album. I’m not even on it like that. I’m just sitting down and writing what comes to me.”

She tries to explain where her maturity and self-assurance comes from: “Maybe being an only child,” she ventures. “You’re around adults more often.” Raised by her mother, they formed a close bond. “She’s an actress,” explains Alicia, “but to support us she was a paralegal. And I used to go with her, both to her acting jobs and to her 9 to 5, falling asleep in theatres and underneath conference tables.”

And she’s flattered to be compared to idols like Aretha Franklin and Roberta Flack, who she comments as “historical and beautifully strong women,” but also recognizing the need for future accolades: “I know that I still have a lot to prove and a lot to do and say,” she says. “I intend to be here for a very long time. Maybe after 20 or 30 years, when people say ‘Man, she can be in a category with Roberta and Aretha,’ then I will say ‘Wow, I think I’ve worked hard enough and long enough to be here too.’”