Alicia Keys has made her crisis album (the result of having to care for a sick relative and, generally speaking, having to keep her shit together), but being Alicia Keys, she made it so that it didn’t sound like the product of crisis. She’s not Mary J. Blige, and with all due respect to Mary, that’s why we love her: Girl is smooth. And smart, and controlled — put unromantically, a sort of R&B player piano with songs you want to hear again and again. Fourteen new ones, in fact.
As I AmAlicia Keys
J Records
Out Nov. 13
$18.98