Album Review: Alicia Keys’ Here Is A New Step Forward In Her Music Career
I was extremely excited for Alicia Keys’ new album, Here. After reviewing her song, In Common, I was intrigued by the new. nightlife sound of an artist that is often seen as a daylight of tunes. Keys has usually created music to pass the day to and turn on when you want to smoothly enter your mind and think a little deeper about your heart. What Here manages to do is elevate her philosophical capacities and inject them with a newness and danceability. Through Caribbean stylized pop tracks, a 90’s Hip Hop backdrop, and spiritual hymnals Here feels like a musical reflection of Keys growing perceptions of beauty, blackness, and overall humanity.
//cdn.embedly.com/widgets/platform.jsThe first thing I noticed about Here is that it sounds like a fresher Alicia Keys. Recently, it seems Keys has been more outspoken, throughout media, with her social conscientiousness, but fans, whom have followed her career, know that she has always been a thoughtful songstress eager to discover what moves a society’s heart as much as a personal one. By adding a retro Caribbean/ Hip Hop vibe, keys calls back to the days when singers like, Lauryn Hill were a more prevalent staple to the music industry. Certain songs like “Girl Can’t Be Herself”, “Pawn It All,” and “More Than We Know” feel like the unreleased tracks off of Ms. Hill’s legendary album “The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill”. Keys, like Hill, uses self-discovery as theme with interludes of black women and men sharing anecdotes on life. She uses her lyrics to elevate the sounds that befall her words as pedestals for their virtue. Usually, artists use sounds to escalate their words’ value, but certain of Key’s lyrics like in “The Gospel” are so poetic that they could stand alone in the darkest room and still manage to come off enlightened.
Alicia Keys’ is a poet, and Here elaborates that side of her. She combines her wisdom as a woman, mother, and human being to create an album reflective of her bright intellect and talent. Here has a very familial/ communal sense that makes you want gather with your loved ones and dance and reminisce, which is lovely. Moreover, when you combine that with the upwards danceability of this record and its insightful lyrics, Here becomes a multi-facted album. You can put it on when you want to be physically, mentally, or spiritually moved by music. From “She Really Don’t Care” that has a dangerously rhythmic kick-drum to “Holy War” which is filled with a Biblical sense of earthly prophesy, each song fulfills the needs music satisfies: social analysis and escapism.
Whether you want to escape into the beat or stay in the light of her words, Alicia Keys’ Here is so present like, a clear stream of consciousness, that it almost feels eternal, as if when I hear Here 10 years from now it will still come off as timeless. Moreover, if you love the the humbling, smooth vocals of Keys’ voice, Here does her justice by showing that no matter what bouncing beat R&B/ Hip Hop follow her, it is the unique warmth of her voice that will soar. To buy Alicia Keys album Here Click Here.
