Alicia Augello Cook, known professionally as Alicia Keys, is a multiple Grammy Award-winning singer-songwriter with a passion for activism.
Keys loved music and singing from early childhood and discovered a passion for piano at age six. After receiving an upright piano from a neighbor who was moving, she immersed herself in music lessons and practiced for up to six hours a day. Her mother’s insistence that her daughter stick with her passion led to her attendance at Manhattan's Professional Performance Arts School. At the age of 15, she signed with Columbia Records, before moving to Arista Records and releasing her first album, “Songs in A Minor,” in 2001. The album was a smash and the first single, “Fallin’,” sold more than 12 million copies worldwide.
Keys has released eight studio albums, two live albums, one remix album, four reissue albums, one extended play, seven box sets, 45 singles as lead artist, and six promotional singles. She has sold more than 90 million albums worldwide and accumulated numerous accolades, including 15 competitive Grammy Awards, 17 NAACP Image Awards, 12 ASCAP Awards, and an award from the Songwriters Hall of Fame and National Music Publishers Association.
Keys is also the co-founder and Global Ambassador of Keep a Child Alive, a non-profit organization that provides medicine, orphan care, and social support to families with HIV and AIDS in Africa and India.
“There’s nothing more important to me than my generation seeing the end of the AIDS pandemic. We’re on the road to end extreme poverty, let that be our legacy,” Keys said to international advocacy organization Global Citizen in 2019.
Keys’ dedication to humanitarian efforts has not gone unnoticed. In 2009, BET honored her with its Humanitarian Award. In 2017, she received and shared the Ambassador of Conscience award from Amnesty International alongside Canadian Indigenous-rights activists.
“Keys has mixed activism with art, advocating for social justice issues, and the Canadian movement fights for indigenous legal and land rights,” Amnesty International said of Keys in 2017.
She continues to regularly perform in fundraising concerts.