Alicia Keys Delivers a Huge Album Without a Huge Ego

2021 has seen its share of albums in which major artists meet huge expectations with supersize tracklists — records like Drake’s 86-minute Certified Lover Boy and Kanye West’s punishingly enormous Donda. Now you can add Alicia Keys to the list of A-list epic-makers. Keys, her eighth album, is a 26-song double-LP.

But Alicia has never been one for self-indulgence, so she’s neatly divvied the project up into two distinct, easily digestible collections: Originals is, as she puts it, a set of “laidback piano vibes,” while almost all of its companion Unlocked is comprised of the songs from Originals reworked with an “upbeat, drums and level up” sound.

The result spans everything from jazz ballads to modern dance tracks, with a list of co-writers and collaborators that spans from Swae Lee to Brandi Carlile, but while Keys’ sound is mildly refurbished, the overall sensibility isn’t all that new for