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The choice of Queens as opposed to SoHo or South Beach is defining. "I'm very--almost insanely--passionate about remaining a connected, boring, human person," says Keys. "It's amazing how fast you can be transported out of the normal world if you're not conscious of it or if you don't care. I noticed that immediately, and it scared the s___ out of me." Keys has had a few memorable brushes with fame--she was summoned to Paisley Park to jam with Prince--but mostly, she says, "people are disappointed with my glamour quotient. Just today someone was like, 'You know, Madonna and Britney did the kiss. Do you feel like you have to do something like that when you come back out?' And I'm just like, 'Shut up.' I'm not scared of what I am or what I do. I let the music speak, and I feel good with that."
It's not merely that Keys' humility stands out against the Maxim-style vamping of her peers. She really is a throwback. Keys wrote her first song in 1995 after her grandfather died but says she didn't understand what songwriting was about until a few years later when a friend gave her a yellowing cassette of Marvin Gaye's What's Going On. "That was the best period ever in music," she says. "I probably have romanticized it, but it just seems noble to me. People weren't out chasing hits. They were writing songs about what they felt. They were experimenting and working together. There was a community. Listen to songs of that time, and you can feel the passion. It gives me chills."
Keys wishes she had a community of like-minded contemporaries. She's close to neo-soul singer Angie Stone and admires OutKast and Norah Jones ("I've never met her, but I get the feeling that she's really unimpressed with the world of music entertainment," Keys says. "I feel like when she gets onstage she wonders what everyone's doing there"). But mostly Keys works alone. The dream apartment has a studio downstairs where she can write, record and produce songs all by herself whenever the mood strikes her. "My life is pretty cool. I get up when I want, stay in bed, maybe write in my journal, read a little poetry," she says. "Then I go make music."
On The Diary of Alicia Keys she has made half a great record. The first six songs are models of how to make nostalgic music that is not anti-present. You Don't Know My Name is six minutes of sprawling midtempo lightness that revives that '70s staple, the spoken interlude, without a moment's embarrassment or doubt; Karma uses fraught bursts of strings over a stuttering beat to create great pop tension; while If I Was Your Woman sounds like the product of a one-night stand between Gladys Knight (who made a hit of If I Were Your Woman) and the Notorious B.I.G. The second half of Diary sags, but it's obvious that there will be a third, fourth and fifth Alicia Keys album and that those albums will be worth hearing.