For some reason, when I think of the word Goddess, I think of Alicia Keys. There is just something about this woman that feels more than human. I am not sure if it is that she is beautiful, has incredible style, her attitude or what but this woman is a Goddess. Oh that's right it is her incredible song writing and singing skills! Anything she puts her seal of approval on, I am there. From singing, to playing piano, to producing tracks for others and even her poetry, it all raises me on the spiritual scale. Luckily for me, as my spiritual side of life was draining, Alicia would bless the world with another album.
As I am (Intro)- As with her first two albums Ms. Keys starts playing a classical piece on the piano and then infuses it with a hip-hop sounding beat to perfectly meld the two worlds from where she lives. It is a short but sweet introduction to the album but ultimately not anything new. 2/5
Go ahead- Alicia Keys getting her empowerment on with the first track as she kicks her man to the door with a sense of pride and funk. The beat drips of confidence and a brash sense of confrontation, which lends itself perfectly to Alicia screaming at her man "You knew you was wrong." Her voice sounds powerful, sexy and is capable of matching the beat when it gets to the bridge and breaks down for her to vent over. Her ad libs get a bit over the top at the end, but it gives the song a sense of new found freedom to express ones pent up feelings. 4/5
Superwoman- Another woman empowering track and none of that Pussy cat dolls taking-off-your-clothes-and-grinding-on-a-pole is empowering nonsense. Alicia is soulful about her dripping with sincerity as she sings "For all the mothers fighting For better days to come/And all my women, all my women sitting here trying To come home before the sun." This is the kind of song you wish you could sing for all the women in your life. Alicia has owned her womanhood and is now trying to help women everywhere be proud of who they are and what they endure. The music is kind and optimistic and Alicia gets to rip her piano up too. 4.5/5
No one- The lead single with the distorted keyboard that drips of love and passion. Her voice blends perfectly with the light piano at the beginning and even better when her keyboard gets a bit distorted when the song really gets going. The lyrics are rich with unadulterated love like "When the rain is pouring down And my heart is hurting You will always be around This I know for certain." The music on the track follows her perfectly and she really shows off the big voice here as she proclaims a love so deep and so pure that nothing can come between them. The bridge is just as beautiful and everything really comes together on this track. 5/5
Like you'll never see me again- The upcoming second single off the album Alicia begs her man to "Kiss me like you’ll never see me again" over a very soft melodic bell and snap beat. The music is a haunting background for a gorgeous yet ultimately sad track about wondering how much time we really have together with the ones we love. Alicia provides a new dynamic to her voice- a lilty quiet, and subdued beautiful soprano. The lyrics sometimes go into cheeseville with "I don't want to forget the present in a gift" but the underlying message of the song is beautiful and is done very well as the first real ballad on the album. 4/5
Lesson Learned- John Mayer helps out with his blues guitar and his unusual voice and it really works here. The song has a very emotional blues feel to it as Ms. Keys laments over a love lost. She is trying to look on the bright side though as she learns her lesson. The verses are broke into little couplets and as the song goes she gets just a little bit more into them like her emotions are finally really getting to her as she goes through the verses. It feels like this is a little ways away from the relationship and one starts to look at things clearly. Her piano playing is probably at its most prolific up this point int he album and it blends nicely with the feel of the rest of the song. Mayer doesn't try and overpower anything here as he seems content to just chill and let Alicia do her thing. 5/5
Wreckless love- This song is about celebrating the first few months of a new love. The times when you were wreckless with your love, when you couldn't keep your hands off of each other. This song is about how she wants that kind of love back, that wreckless love. The horns on the track add a fun flirty almost sexy quality to the beat and Alicia has lightened up her voice, like she is flirting with all of her listeners and I am buying everything she is selling. The hook is an infectious jingle that goes as follows "Have that wreckless love/That crazy love/That off the wall won't stop til I get enough kind of love/I need that love/So baby, let's go." Does that kind of love not sound like an amazing place to be in life? 5/5
The thing about love- Alicia has love on the mind. She also has the downside of love on the mind, but she prefers to try and put a positive spin on love. The fact that love always comes back in one's life. The words start right as the music hits without an intro and the first word is "love" so it is easy to see where this song is taking us. The piano is gorgeous and understated, just like the vocals. Then right before the chorus comes in there is a very faint violin sounding thing that happens that really gives the song an extra dimension as it comes and goes through the rest of this slow, haunting track. Then about half way through the track, it picks up steam and Alicia belts it out as she is finding her soul again and realizing she doesn't need a man to be powerful and does not need a man to shine. No, no she really doesn't. Preach on Ms. Keys! 5/5
Teenage love affair- This is my song right here. Somehow Alicia found a way to recapture perfectly that high school love, that puppy dog love, that innocent, yet kind of flirty love. The music stays perfectly with her in creating an old school feeling track about falling in love in high school. The chorus is catchy as hell, as I have been humming it for almost a week straight now. With fun flirty, puppy dog lyrics like "want u to be my first my last my ending and beginning/ i write your name in my book your last name my first/ I'm your Mrs it is impossible not to smile your way through the entire song. Then when she starts talking on the track and gets even more flirty and then it hits it's peak when she starts singing about the bases. Oh we all know the bases. I love it! 6/5
I need you- This sounds like a very danceable track with heavy drums and a nice baseline throughout the song. But the song is rich with personification of inanimate objects with human emotions. The metaphors are rich and beautiful, like she was outside on the beach writing this song. Lyrics like "the sand loves when the waves come/ the sky can't wait for the light of the sun." This is the ultimate love song as she wails "there will never be two things that go together better than you and me." There is a sense of sadness as she worries if her man doesn't see it the way she does, but the passion with which she sings seems to erase any doubt that she and her man are meant to be together forever, "like the desert needs rain and like and like joy needs pain" these two people need each other. 5/5
Where do we go from here- This is a song about a relationship clearly at the end. With sadness Alicia knowingly sings over an amazing sample of "After laughter comes tears." The sample is incredibly morose and sad but also energetic and and almost mean at the same time. Alicia is crying all over the track, letting her soul bleed through her words, through her agony as it pierces the listeners ears. The emotions feel all to real when it gets to the chorus of "Where do we go from here?(We go)/ All I can do is - follow the tracks of my tears." The music perfectly captures her pain and remains pretty funky all at the same time. It is a pretty remarkable track. 6/5
Prelude to a kiss- This is a short little interlude, but might find Alicia at her most introspective right off the bat with opening the opening lyrics "Sometimes I feel Like I don’t belong anywhere/ And it’s gonna take so long For me to get somewhere." It is just her and her piano here as she is incredibly vulnerable about how guarded she is and while the track only lasts two minutes, it is an excruciatingly sad song and really shows that even Goddesses question life. My biggest complaint is that it is so short and the only track with just her and her piano. 4/5
Tell you something- I think this is a song for everyone who lost someone before they got to tell that person how they felt. It could be a significant other, family member or even a best friend, but this song is for us. It is a very slow and melancholy song that drips of regret and promise of something better afterwards. The drums add a nice touch during the chorus but never pull focus from the simple but poignant lyrics as Ms. Keys wonders "Imagine there was no tomorrow and I couldn't see your face." This is really a song just telling everyone to tell those you love that you love them and cherish them. 5/5
Sure looks good to me- It would not be an Alicia Keys album without one last uplifting, beautiful track and this is it. This is a song about turning the negatives into positives and just enjoying the life we are given and to let everyone else enjoy their lives too. With uplifting lyrics like "I wanna risk it all, the freedom to fall" and "So don’t rain on my parade Life’s too short to waste one day" I feel like I could do anything after listening to a song like this. The music is essentially just her piano at first and it provides an empowering background for a song that I picture she wrote while sitting on the edge of a cliff overlooking some gorgeous landscape of nature. This is the equivalent of a William Blake poem or William Wordsworth poem. Then the track gets quiet and the builds to a great climatic moment where Alicia is throwing caution to the proverbial wind and really letting loose all over the song. It is the perfect album closer and really lets the listener into where Alicia is as an artist these days and it sure looks good to me! 6/5.
Yet another brilliant album to add to her already impressive discography, As I am is actually her tightest, best, most honest album. Her voice is incredibly mature and expressive and the songs really fit with the one before and the one following. It isn't perfect, but it is close enough to make this an easy top 5 of the year album!
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