A.D. Amorosi Alicia Keys spent the first five albums of her career as a sleekly sophisticated singer-songwriter and pianist, crafting anthemic R&B that was often bold but just as often bland.
After releasing 2012’s “Girl on Fire,” she grew tired of such perfection, stopped wearing make-up and released “Here,” a raw, unrefined album filled with nervous jazz-R&B-hop and lyrics that looked into the topicality of the environment, poverty and addiction.
It wasn’t exactly Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On,” but it was as close as Keys had come to standing outside the shadows of silken soul so to see the cracked, funky mess below.“Alicia” goes further, freakier, funkier, quieter and jazzier down that gritty path, with experiments in subtly melodic.
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