5 essential tracks from Alicia Keys' 'Here'
Fifteen years after her breakthrough 2001 debut Songs in A Minor introduced the world to Alicia Keys, it finally feels like we're meeting the real star.
Keys has spent 2016 moving away from her persona of the glam piano-playing pop star audiences met in the mid-00s, speaking out more explicitly about social issues. Arriving the weekend before Election Day, Keys' sixth album Here joins a number of thoughtful meditations from black artists about race in America, including Solange’s soulful masterpiece A Seat at the Table and Common’s outspoken Black America Again.
Alicia Keys: 'I’ve come to a place where I can be honest and raw'
And while Keys may have publicly ditched her makeup to preach the gospel of natural beauty, Here isn’t a stripped-down affair in any respect, as the singer surrounds her stories of race, poverty, family and love with instrumentation as vibrant as her songs’ New York City backdrop.
Ready to start listening? Start with these five Here highlights.
The Gospel
Here's second track is the album's Hollywood-style opening scene, as Keys sing-raps her way through stories of gritty urban life over a military-style drumbeat and a gospel choir.
Kill Your Mama
"How you gonna kill your Mama / When only Mama's gonna love you to the grave?" asks Here's most grimly contemplative track. A quiet moment amidst the album's colorful urban sprawl, Keys meditates on the pitfalls of fame, with her bare vocals paired simply with acoustic guitars.
Blended Family (What You Do For Love)
Keys spends plenty of time addressing love and marriage on Here, but Blended Family takes the singer's examination of her personal life a step further, referencing the drama around her coupling with now-husband Swizz Beatz. As the mom of two sons, and stepmom to her husband's three other children, Keys dedicates Blended Family to all the kids she cares for in her life: "I know it started with a little drama / I hate that you had to read it in the paper / But everything's over with me being your mama / Baby everyone here knows they adores you."
More Than We Know
The track's informal sing-along, complete with hoots and hollers from assorted background voices, has the easy call-and-response melody and feel-good messages of communal action as Motown classics five times its age. Here is an record full of rallying cries, but More Than We Know's simplicity and warmth makes it one of the album's best.
Holy War
The album's final song brings Here's cinematic arc to a close, its hypothetical credits rolling over Keys' smoldering vocals and cinematic chorus likening war, sex and love.