Alicia J. Augello-Cook , professionally known as Alicia Keys, is an American R&B, soul, and neo soul singer-songwriter, pianist, and actress. Keys has sold over thirty million albums worldwide and has won numerous awards, including eleven Grammy Awards, seventeen Billboard Music Awards, and three American Music Awards. Keys has a vocal range of a dramatic contralto, spanning three octaves. Keys cites Stevie Wonder as her biggest influence. She is often called the "Princess of Soul".
Keys' debut album Songs in A Minor was a worldwide success, selling over eleven million copies, and received five Grammy Awards in 2002, with Keys winning Best New Artist and also Song of the Year for "Fallin'". Her second studio album, The Diary of Alicia Keys, was released in 2003 and quickly became another great success worldwide selling about nine million copies and garnered Keys four Grammy Awards in 2005. After the successful Unplugged release in 2005, Keys returned to the music scene with her third studio album, As I Am, released in 2007, which has sold nearly six million copies and established her as one of the best-selling artists of the decade.
On September 13, 2008 Keys has been inducted into the All time Hot 100 Artist by the Billboard Hot 100. She is one of the few artists of her generation to be mentioned.
Early life
Keys was born in a Harlem neighborhood of Manhattan, in New York City, New York, the daughter and only child of Teresa "Terri" Augello, a paralegal and part-time actress, and Craig Cook, a flight attendant. Keys' mother is of Irish and Italian descent, and her father is Jamaican. Keys describes herself as comfortable with her biracial heritage: "I grew up in New York and, thank God, I never had to go through that in regards to, 'You're not black enough, you're not white enough,' the whole kind of white/black-mixture thing. I never had to go through that. I went through prejudices and all, surely. But I never had to battle with those two parts of me
