Adam Howard: This is The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm Adam Howard, sitting in today for David Remnick.

[clip begins]

[applause]

Alicia Keys: New York, how are you feeling tonight?

[music]

[clip ends]

Adam Howard: There's no doubt the unofficial anthem of New York City is Empire State of Mind, the Jay-Z song with that unforgettable hook sung by Alicia Keys, so it was only fitting that when New York celebrated the Knicks with a triumphant parade, Alicia Keys took the stage at City Hall.

[MUSIC - Alicia Keys]

Adam Howard: You could see Knicks captain Jalen Brunson and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani grooving along in the background.

[MUSIC - Alicia Keys]

Adam Howard: It was a classic New York moment for an artist who is herself classic New York. Alicia Keys's musical Hell's Kitchen uses her songs to tell a story about a teenager growing up in Manhattan, right near Times Square. It won two Tony Awards, including Best Actress in a Musical for Maleah Joi Moon in her first appearance on Broadway. Alicia Keys talked with David Remnick when the show was still in previews in 2024.

[clip begins]

Alicia Keys: We're recording, and he said that the level looks fantastic, it's going to be the most phenomenal level you ever had.

[clip ends]

Adam Howard: Hell's Kitchen just started a national tour, starting in Las Vegas and going all over the country. Here's David Remnick with Alicia Keys.

David Remnick: Can you pin down how long it's been in the making in your mind from first conception to right now delivering the baby?

Alicia Keys: I'm going for 13 years because I know it was before my first son was born. Then I know that Kris and I, the book writer, Kris Diaz, we talk often about that. Even when Egypt was very, very little, like, just born, we were talking through the concepts and how we want to develop the characters and all of these things.

David Remnick: What was the original idea? What was the original impetus to do that? You had to have a huge career as a singer, as a songwriter, as a performer. This is something entirely different, even though I know you love musicals in general, but for you to do this on an autobiographical basis, to make your life the centerpiece of this work, how did that begin?

Alicia Keys: Well, first, I do want to say that this isn't autobiographical. I think that's important to say because I think a lot of people think autobiographical and they think quite literal, like every single piece, but it's definitely based on the experiences that I had growing up in New York.

In that way, it's very, very real. It's very authentic. It's very genuine. That was a bit of the impetus of like why is this important to me and why I felt motivated and eager to create something that really reflected the level of diversity that I've been blessed to grow up with, and for also it to be set in Manhattan Plaza, which is the building that I grew up in, and is a quite unique building because it's a subsidized, rent-controlled living for artists who, as we know, oftentimes there's months they go without work or there's times when you have more work. It's a fluctuating lifestyle. My mother would have never been able to raise me in the city if we hadn't lived there.

David Remnick: Did you find the three, the four-minute record, the song form limiting in some way and you wanted to break out of it and do something larger on the screen? Did you see things on stage that you thought, "Oh, I like this form. This could really fit for me. This could work for something called Hell's Kitchen and based at least on my own story."

Alicia Keys: I love songwriting, and it's such a beautiful way to capture a moment, an emotion, a special feeling, but I do also love performance. My mother, she was born in Toledo, Ohio. She's the quintessential New York story, I like to say. She was born in Toledo, Ohio and moved to New York City to follow her dreams of dancing and acting. She went to NYU, and that was how she got here.

That was why I was born here, that's the reason why, la, la, la. I think that because of that and because of her love of acting and her love of theater specifically, I was really introduced to the theater world from a very young age. I remember we would stand on the lower price ticket line, the TKS line, and everybody be there and you get your tickets and you go to the show. I was able to really see different worlds, different creative experiences from a young age.

I'll never forget seeing Bring in 'da Noise, Bring in 'da Funk. That was the first time I felt, "Whoa," one, I see myself up there or I feel rhythm, I feel dance, I feel power, I feel street, I feel these different New York experiences, and so I was very attracted to that. Now as I look back at, it's so thrilling to be able to merge two worlds together, this kind of contemporary music world with this musical theater world.

David Remnick: Talk to me about the neighborhood. The show is called Hell's Kitchen. Of course, it's cheek by jowl with what we think of in our imaginations and in reality of The Great White Way, Broadway.

Alicia Keys: Right. [laughs]

David Remnick: Exactly. Talk to me about that side-by-sideness that you grew up with, you grew up in the middle of. You're growing up in Manhattan Plaza in Hell's Kitchen. What was the Hell's Kitchen of your childhood and adolescence, and how did it coexist with this street of dreams, this Broadway that you were so taken with, and that becomes the subject also of your show?

Alicia Keys: You're so right. Hell's Kitchen when I was growing up was literally perfectly described in that name. You know and those who lived or walked through the streets of Hell's Kitchen, I always like to say that it was the place of the have-nots. It was the place where everyone who kind of didn't belong anywhere accumulated, prostitutes, drug dealers, pimps, X-rated theaters, all kinds of grimy Hell's Kitchen-esque vibe was all up in there.

I think that in a lot of ways, being so close to that reality all the time, it really hardened me. It really kind of gave me a certain grit and definitely a certain way to protect myself. I also think, to your point, there was this unique balance between that grime and then the potential of Broadway.

David Remnick: You started playing the piano, I think, at seven years old. When did the dream of doing it as a real performer, as a professional, enter into your mind? Seven and a half?

Alicia Keys: Probably four.

David Remnick: [laughs] Even before you sat down at the keys.

Alicia Keys: Yes, because I remember really being introduced to music through my very first kindergarten teacher. She was one of those people that, even to this day, she's still alive. She always had some scheme up her sleeve, she was going to get us to sing at the this place and get us to perform at the that place, and we always kind of had the, "Okay." I think that that was a wonderful experience for me to try things that was quite nerve-wracking, but the minute I opened my mouth, I learned this song and I sang, I just felt something. I was like, "This is something." That takes away all the nerves, all the fear, all the things that get in our way.

David Remnick: Do you remember what you were singing at that point?

Alicia Keys: I do. It was Somewhere Over the Rainbow. It was from The Wizard of Oz. It was like the quintessential song that would open your mind like that. The song we just released for Hell's Kitchen called Kaleidoscope is very much this Somewhere Over the Rainbow kind of feeling of your mind opening and realizing that there's more for you out there in the world.

[MUSIC- Alicia Keys: Kaleidoscope]

Kaleido-leido-leido-leido-leidoscope

Tonight is shining bright, you know, oh, yeah, oh, no

So light it, light it, light it, light it, light it up

Put it in the air and let it go, oh, yeah, oh, no

Can you feel the love now?

Alicia Keys: This is really about a life of a young girl in her 17th year and how she is trying to find her way out from under everybody's expectations, everybody's demands, everybody's weighted things that end up on all of our shoulders because people really they want to protect us, but they in a lot of ways stifle us. She's in that very critical time in her life. She's looking for more. She's feeling quite rebellious. She doesn't want to just be told what to do and just be treated as a little girl. She really is looking for her muse.

David Remnick: Your main character is 17 years old and she's named?

Alicia Keys: Ali.

David Remnick: Which you are.

Alicia Keys: She's named Ali. Some people call me Ali, but not many.

David Remnick: Not even then?

Alicia Keys: No. That's a very special reserved name for only the very, very, very, most intimate to me. People really didn't call me that. They called me Alicia. They called me Lelo. I had another nickname Lellow. [laughter]

[MUSIC - Alicia Keys: Kaleidoscope]

Nights like this, never want them to finish

Don't wait for the end, let's start a beginning

Better to be alive than just to be living

Alicia Keys: Her name is Ali, and she's 17, and she's really looking for her muse. She finds a woman who is named Miss Liza Jane. She ends up being quite the mentor for her. She opens her universe to the craft of piano-playing, actually. She's a skilled, beautiful classical pianist. When she hears her in the Ellington Room, which is this multipurpose room in Manhattan Plaza that really exists, she's blown away and she feels like she's found what maybe has been calling her.

Her mother is raising her as a single mother. She is really doing everything she possibly can to hope that she could escape all the traps. Her mom, Jersey, has had to endure.

David Remnick: Has your mom been able to see the show?

Alicia Keys: Yes, she has.

David Remnick: I want to hear all about that. How did she react moment by moment? Did you sit with her?

Alicia Keys: Of course. First of all, she's at The Public-- While Hell's Kitchen was at The Public, she went at least two times a week.

[laughter]

Alicia Keys: She is the world's best audience member. No question. She's going to scream. She's going to yell. She's going to, "Ooh." She's going to, "Ah." She's going to sing as if she never saw it before.

David Remnick: It must also have been a deeply emotional fascinating thing to cast someone to play the character that is essentially you. Tell me about--

Alicia Keys: You're going to stop that. I told you it's not autobiographical, and you're not going to keep saying that. [laughs]

David Remnick: I know. On the other hand, you keep giving it away saying how autobiographical it is, but we won't argue. Tell me about casting this young actress.

Alicia Keys: Ali.

David Remnick: Was it an audition process, or did you go to see people perform around town? How did it work?

Alicia Keys: Yes, it was an audition process. We have a tremendous casting agency, and they were able to bring forth a lot of different options. I've definitely been notoriously hard on everybody because it really has to resonate and feel pure. We auditioned a couple of different people. Then, all of a sudden, Maleah showed up, and we were like, "Hmm." She would have this tenderness and this ability to tap into these emotional places that felt really sincere.

David Remnick: Any number of the songs in the show are songs that you've recorded and made gigantic hits in the past, but there's also, I think, four new songs.

Alicia Keys: Yes, there are new songs. It's been great to see what works in regards to the songs that you might be familiar with. It's also been wonderful to see what works with songs that have been in my catalog but are not the "gigantic hits." There's a really special way to connect with them. In some ways, I feel, "Man, these songs must have been written for this."

[MUSIC - Alicia Keys: Teenage Love Affair]

Another secret meeting

On the fifth-floor staircase

I'm gonna give you this letter

Of all the things I can't say

Want you to be my first, my last, my ending and beginning

David Remnick: Talk to me a little bit about songwriting, something that you've been doing since you were quite, quite young. I think maybe 11 years old was the first time you're writing songs.

Alicia Keys: Yes, I think you're right. 11, yes.

David Remnick: How has that process changed for you over time?

Alicia Keys: Surely, I've definitely gotten more accustomed to how it happens. At first, mostly I was writing out of pain or passion or inexperience or things like that. That's really how I always write. That hasn't changed too much, but I do think that with growing, I learned how to just create the container for what wants to be held. Then, also recognizing that through that creation, sometimes there's different ways it comes about. If anything has changed, it's that I realize that I never know how it's going to happen, ever, never.

David Remnick: Take an early song like Fallin', which I think is also in the show.

Alicia Keys: It is. It is. It's really cool the way we put it in there. It's totally unexpected. You've never heard it sung like this before.

David Remnick: How did it come about?

Alicia Keys: The song itself?

David Remnick: Yes.

Alicia Keys: The song itself was really written-- I remember writing it in my first car, which was a Mazda 626.

[laughter]

Alicia Keys: At the time, I was living in Harlem, and I was also going back to my mother's house because she had the piano. I would go to my mother's house to play the piano, but I wasn't really living there anymore. I remember feeling kind of frustrated about a very early relationship I was in. Sometimes, it was so good, and then it'd be arguing. It'd be frustrating, it was annoying. Then, I didn't get it.

Then, we were like, "What was happening?" I remember being in my car feeling that back and forth and back and forth. I remember singing this hook thingy, something [sings]. I was doing something, and I was recording it in my phone or in my voice notes. Then I got to my mother's house, and I sat at the piano and I played these basic chords. Somehow, between there and there and there, all of that emotion and feeling revealed itself in this song.

[MUSIC - Alicia Keys: Fallin']

Lovin' you, darlin' makes me so confused

I keep on fallin' in and out of love with you

David Remnick: I'm talking with Alicia Keys, the songwriter and performer. We'll continue in a moment. This is The New Yorker Radio Hour. More to come.

[MUSIC - Alicia Keys: Fallin']

Oh, oh, I never felt this way

How do you give me so much pleasure

Adam Howard: This is The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm Adam Howard. We've been hearing from Alicia Keys, one of the top R&B singers of our time with a huge string of hits and Grammy Awards. Her musical Hell's Kitchen, which opened on Broadway, is now touring the country. It's loosely based on Keys's own experiences. The main character is a teenage girl named Ali, growing up in the gritty New York of the 1980s, falling in love with music, and wanting to get out into the world.

She has a love interest, but the crucial relationship in the show is really between the girl and her protective mother. Keys herself grew up early. She had a record deal and was struggling with the music industry while she was in her teens. Here is David Remnick talking with Alicia Keys in 2024.

David Remnick: Now, you are so committed. You've been so devoted to this pursuit for such a long time, and at the same time, I think I'm getting this right, you really seriously considered getting out of the music business. There was a time that you were burned out. You booked a trip to Egypt, I think it was, only after you'd run a full marathon in Greece.

Alicia Keys: [laughs]

David Remnick: What was happening with you? God only knows, you had made it, now you're trying to think about going out the back door.

Alicia Keys: I don't know if I ever felt like I was going to not be a part of music, but I definitely for sure experienced a very critical time to recognize how much you have to protect your spirit. Whether you're in music or whether you're a doctor or whether you're a hedge fund person, it doesn't matter who you are, if you're in college, you have to protect your spirit, and the world won't do it for you. They really won't.

A lot of times, we're out here chasing what we think is success or what we think is a dream or whatever it is that we want to achieve, and oftentimes, we're forgetting about how to continue to be a whole human being and a whole person. At the time that you're referring to, I was so eager to be successful. I was so eager to-- You only get one shot at your dream. Here it is, and you see it right in front of you, and you get all these opportunities, and you're running after them, and you say, "I could do this, and I could do that, and I could also do that, and sure I could do that," but I didn't really get any sleep, but I could still do it because maybe tomorrow they won't ask me again.

You have all these feelings of fear and lack that you won't ever have the chance to do these things again. It depletes you. At that point, I was realizing that I lost a part of myself or I had never found it yet, and I needed to slow down. Since then, I've messed it up 100,000 times more. I had no boundaries. I still didn't create space. I had people that didn't have my best interests in my world, but slowly but surely, you start to realize you have to take control of your life.

David Remnick: You've talked sometimes about the loss of what you've called sweet anonymity, and yet there you are, half-time at the Super Bowl, you're on concert stages, you're about to open a big show. What is that like to lose the gray zone pretty much forever? I don't know how you get that back.

Alicia Keys: I feel like I have found a good balance. I think that a lot of times I realize that it's also where you go. If I go upstate and take a hike among the trees, there's a few other people on the trail, and I'm just doing my thing, and everybody's just trying to get to the top of the mountain.

David Remnick: You're a New York girl who believes in trees?

Alicia Keys: I do.

David Remnick: Oh man.

Alicia Keys: Not in the beginning.

David Remnick: [laughs]

Alicia Keys: I was like, "What? What do you mean trees? I only know cement, concrete." I hated camp. My mother would send me to camp, and I'd be like, "Ugh."

David Remnick: "Trees?"

Alicia Keys: I don't like the bugs, the trees, the grass.

David Remnick: I'm with you.

[laughter]

Alicia Keys: Now I realized, "Wow, you're missing out if you're not touching the grass or seeing some trees or seeing some nature." That's part of how you keep on, hold on to your soul and your spirit, too.

David Remnick: I have to ask you about this. There was a song that came out called Thunder on the Mountain by Mr. Dylan,-

Alicia Keys: Oh my God.

David Remnick: -and all of a sudden, the lyrics are, I was thinking about-- I won't do the voice. I'll spare you. "I was thinkin' 'bout Alicia Keys, couldn't keep from crying. When she was born in Hell's Kitchen," and so on and so forth.

[MUSIC - Bob Dylan: Thunder on the Mountain]

I was thinkin' 'bout Alicia Keys, couldn't keep from crying

But she was born in Hell's Kitchen, I was living down the line

I'm wondering where in the world Alicia Keys could be

David Remnick: How did you hear that, and how did you react?

Alicia Keys: You know the craziest part is that the person who told me about Bob Dylan writing a song with my name in it, and Hell's Kitchen, he had a premonition of this musical, that was John Mayer. He was like, "Did you know that Bob Dylan wrote a song with your name in it about you," and I was like, "What? What are you talking about?" I had no idea because he was so early to it that it hadn't made its way to me yet.

[MUSIC - Bob Dylan: Thunder on the Mountain]

Thunder on the mountain, rolling like a drum

Gonna sleep over there

Alicia Keys: Of course, then I'm in shock.

David Remnick: Did you meet?

Alicia Keys: I felt like we couldn't meet. I was like, "There's no way we can meet." If you wrote that amazing song and put me in it, I just feel like I just need to forever see you from afar and just be in awe of the greatness. We actually didn't. We didn't.

David Remnick: Now, it's a good thing you really stuck through that hard time that you were describing earlier because fast on its heels came tracks on Jay-Z's album, Empire State of Mind, which came out in 2009.

[MUSIC - Jay-Z ft. Alicia Keys: Empire State Of Mind]

Tell by my attitude that I'm most definitely from

In New York

Concrete jungle where dreams are made of

There's nothin' you can't do

Now you're in New York

David Remnick: A little bit about that collaboration. You've had so many amazing collaborations. That may be the most famous single to come out of a collaboration. What was that like? What's that working process like?

Alicia Keys: I think what was unique about that process is I was right at the precipice of making a lot of changes in my life. Sometimes there's different relationships that you have and you hold on to, and you don't know how to move from them, but during this process, I remember hearing from somebody else that Jay-Z was really trying to make sure I heard this song. I'm like, "What song? I never heard this song."

He was saying that he was going through all the professional channels, and all the things to get me the song, and nobody was answering him back. Nobody was getting back to him. He started to think of like, "Who else can I call? Maybe I should call--"

David Remnick: Nobody was returning his calls?

Alicia Keys: I don't know why.

David Remnick: What's that about?

Alicia Keys: It was just-- I have no idea, but like I said, there were some needs for some change, and I was just on the precipice of learning that.

David Remnick: Heads were going to roll.

Alicia Keys: I mean,--

David Remnick: [laughs]

Alicia Keys: Shouldn't I at least know about something coming from an esteemed friend? You know what I mean? Anyway, of course, then I was like, "Are you kidding me? Let me come see you and let me listen to what it is." I remember sitting in the room with him, and he had the very bare bones of the song, but immediately, you could feel this energy and this great uplifting triumph in the music and the song, and of course, about our city.

Funny enough, creating that song was definitely not kind of normal. Normal to me, because I'm a true school creator where I really like to be in the room with people that I work with, that I'm creating with. I'm cutting the bass lines, and I'm playing the Moog parts, and we're putting it all together and we're together.

David Remnick: Old school.

Alicia Keys: Yes. We're going to write together. We're going to be in the same room. We're going to be, like, feeling the whatever, we're going to create it. I really like that the best. In this case, he was kind of on one side of the planet, I was on another side of the planet, and we had to get it done.

David Remnick: You're sending files back and forth.

Alicia Keys: Sharing across files. That was one of my first experiences doing it like that, which is why there's also a quite funny story that came from it that I cut the first vocals in LA and I send it to him, and he asked me to redo it.

David Remnick: "Excuse me?"

[laughter]

Alicia Keys: It was a good idea, because I was sick, I was trying to get it done because he was on deadline. I had--

David Remnick: Did you have laryngitis or something?

Alicia Keys: I didn't have laryngitis, but I had a cold. You could hear it in my nose. It sounded a little nasally. It just wasn't exactly right, but I just wanted to deliver.

[MUSIC - Jay-Z ft. Alicia Keys: Empire State Of Mind]

Lighters in the air, everybody say

"Yeah, yeah"

"Yeah, yeah"

In New York

Concrete jungle where dreams are made of

There's nothin' you can't do

Now you're in New York

David Remnick: Now, we've all read books, seen movies, heard about the bad old days of the music business. Musicians take piano lessons, they take singing lessons, they have all kinds of apprenticeships. Usually, they're not trained in business, but sooner or later, if you get as big as you are, or Jay-Z or whoever, you encounter business and the stakes are high. What's the music business like now, and what do you have to watch out for?

Alicia Keys: [blows a raspberry] Man, the music business--

David Remnick: Let the record show, Alicia Keys just went [blows a raspberry] [laughs]

Alicia Keys: [blows a raspberry] [chuckles] The music business is one of the most corrupt businesses, period. It's been that way since it started, since inception. You'll see Fortune 500 companies and really experience different businesses that are set up as businesses should be, and you can see plainly the difference in the music business, and those businesses are baffling. Like, if I have my music lawyer look at something, and then I have a traditional business lawyer look at it, they will not understand why the deal is done the way it's done. They're like, "Why? This doesn't make any sense." Still, to this day, it's a pennies business. People get pennies on the dollar.

David Remnick: You mean by streaming, especially?

Alicia Keys: From everything. Yes, is it now even more of a smaller division? Yes, but even when records or CDs or things like that were more popular, you're still getting only a small percentage on the dollar. You're going to get maybe 17%. Even as an artist, when you have managers, or business managers, all of them, they try to take 20%, and 15%, and 25%, and they'll take it on gross, not even on net. It's dangerous, and you don't know these things at first. You're just coming off of the street, and this is an opportunity, and somebody offered you whatever, $100,000, $200,000.

David Remnick: And you're thrilled.

Alicia Keys: You're like, "Yes, this is great." You don't realize you're going to spend your whole life trying to get it back.

David Remnick: You feel like you've gotten screwed over time?

Alicia Keys: I feel that I have definitely had my share of screwings, for sure. I also feel like I have also been able to, because I'm the writer and because I'm the producer and because I do so many sides of the creative process, it's definitely been more favorable for me and because I've fortunately learned relatively quickly that a lot of these deals are what you create. You don't have to take a standard deal from anybody.

David Remnick: Right.

Alicia Keys: I feel like I've ended up in a place that actually is where it should be.

David Remnick: A lot has changed because of streaming. Long ago, for the most part, the album unit has shifted over to the song unit in the way people consume music. Do you feel that influence yourself about the way you listen or the way you create?

Alicia Keys: I still really love creating whole projects, which is another reason why I think maybe Hell's Kitchen feels so good, is because it gets to really be a whole project. That's a little bit different now in the music industry. Before, we had a Stevie Wonder that could create a Songs in the Key of Life that would have so much storytelling, and it would all be united all together.

David Remnick: Coherence, yes.

Alicia Keys: Cohesive, yes. You had to listen to the entire thing to really get the whole message. Now there is much more of a short-term mentality, and people are kind of-- they don't even really want to hear a song longer than two minutes at this point, because we're in a TikTok generation and we're in a really more short content, they call it snackable content, and people want that.

David Remnick: Right. Now, I believe that your husband is not a fan of musicals and that your goal was to create a musical that even he would like. Has he seen it? Have you gone over the bar?

Alicia Keys: He gives his thumbs up. I have to say, there's been times in the past where I say, "Baby, let's go to Broadway and let's watch X show, X musical, or whatever." He's like, "I'll go with you because I love you." I have to be shaking him the whole time, "Are you paying attention? Are you listening?"

David Remnick: "He's falling asleep."

Alicia Keys: He's falling asleep. I'm like, "Wake up." He really loves this this piece, and not just because he's my husband but because he really feels like there's a place of connection no matter what age you are, no matter what style of music you like, there's something here that really engages you and captures you, and he says, "Man, you did it. How did you do it? You did it."

David Remnick: Well, then put that on the marquee, "My husband even likes this."

[laughter]

Alicia Keys: And "Your husband might too."

[laughter]

David Remnick: There you go. There you go. Alicia Keys, thank you so much. I really appreciate it.

Alicia Keys: Thank you so much, David. Great talking to you. Thank you for some very thought-provoking questions. I appreciate it.

[MUSIC - Alicia Keys: Kaleidoscope]

Nights like this, they belong in the Guinness

Adam Howard: R&B superstar Alicia Keys. She created the musical Hell's Kitchen with a book by Kristoffer Diaz. The show is making a national tour, and it's in Reno, Nevada this weekend. This is The New Yorker Radio Hour. Stick around.

[MUSIC - Alicia Keys]

 

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