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Songs In A Minor
07/11/2001 9:23 PM, Yahoo! Music
Dan Leroy
Although she's only 20, Alicia Keys has carried the weight of great expectations for a while. Once signed to Columbia as the next Mariah Carey, Keys also spent time as a protege of R&B impresario Jermaine Dupri before inking with Clive Davis's new label. And since Davis is the guy who discovered Whitney Houston, some figured he'd try to turn Keys into a 2001 version.
Yet while her vocal abilities are top-notch, Keys's debut shows she's nobody's artist but her own. The mournful, blues-and-gospel-based "Fallin'"--a great song that was certainly no obvious choice as the first single--is the most notable declaration of independence, but Songs In A Minor is full of them. Chalk part of that up to Keys's musical skills--classically trained as a pianist, her palette is wide enough to escape the same-groove ghetto of contemporary R&B. And part is guts, as a brave (and fairly credible) cover of Prince's "How Come U Don't Call Me Anymore" proves. Despite the machinations to turn her into a mainstream diva, Keys's most obvious peers are left-of-center soulsters like Macy Gray, Angie Stone, and even D'Angelo--but this impressive outing suggests you shouldn't expect her to just blend into that crowd, either.
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