Alicia Keys

Keys is one strong breath in the recent gale of new, refreshing R&B singers. Even though she's impossibly young, Keys brings an older woman's sensibility to her singing. She's got the passion of gospel and blues singers, and timing that would shame a seasoned singer. "Fallin'" and "A Woman's Worth" are the hits, but most of the album shines.

Many young female singers court the tweenie market by exaggerating their girlish charms,
but twenty-year-old Alicia Keys sings for adults. Showing a maturity beyond her years, this
New York newcomer's largely self-produced debut suggests down-home R&B
contemporaries like Jill Scott as well as yesteryear's soul sophisticates. She's not at the
level of her heroes yet: Keys penned much of Songs in A Minor in high school, a... More >

The minor in question is the keys-sweeping Keys, not yet 21, who earns the musty "classically trained" as if it was bequeathed her by Donny Hathaway. Enough song doctors show up in parentheses to make the realist in me wonder just exactly how finished the material she'd begun at 14 was when she signed her deal. But the same realist notes that Brian McKnight gets sole credit for one of the bores that threaten to sink the project midway through, just as Keys does for one of those that buoy it back up at the end. And the grace and grit with which the first half skirts gentility would merit the musty "auspicious debut" regardless. If only Donny Hathaway had been so unassuming. (Grade - A-)