The New Yorker Radio Hour - Alicia Keys Returns to Her Roots with Her New Musical, “Hell’s Kitchen”

Episode Date: March 29, 2024

Alicia Keys’ new musical is opening on Broadway about a ten-minute walk from where she grew up in Hell’s Kitchen. She describes the New York City neighborhood in the eighties as a “place where anyone who didn’t belong anywhere accumulated.” She tells David Remnick, “There was this unique balance between that grime and the potential of Broadway” just steps away. “Hell’s Kitchen” is the name of the musical that incorporates her songs to tell a story about a teen-ager named Ali who is growing up and finding her love of music, and it is even set in the apartment building where Keys was raised. Yet she is adamant that the show is not autobiographical, “because a lot of people think ‘autobiographical’ and they think quite literally.” Keys, who was offered a recording contract at 14, was called the top R&B artist of the millennium by a recording-industry group, and with Jay-Z, she’s responsible for the New York City anthem of our time: “Empire State of Mind.” In casting the role of Ali, a young woman very much like herself, Keys was looking for a “triple-threat” performer who also had “the energy of a true New Yorker … That’s the hardest part, because you can’t teach that.” New Yorker Radio Hour listeners, we want to hear from you.  We have a few questions about the show and how you listen to it. The survey takes about twenty minutes, and your feedback will help us make our podcast better.  Take the survey here.

This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. At the age of 14, Alicia Keys was offered a recording contract, a deal from Columbia Records that came along with a baby grand piano. That was nearly three decades ago. Since then, she's won 16 Grammys for songs that might give you the feeling of classic pop from the 60s and 70s, along with the R&D. be in hip-hop of our own time. In 2022, a recording industry group named her the number one R&B artist of the millennium. Keys is also very much the voice of New York City. Empire State of Mind, which she recorded with Jay-Z, has become the city's unofficial anthem, with all due

respect to Frank Sinatra. And even her sense of humor struck me as quintessential New York. We're recording, and he said that the level looks fantastic. It's going to be. be the most phenomenal level you ever had. She's just a girl and she's on fire. I was talking with Alicia Keys about Hell's Kitchen. It's a musical that incorporates her songs to tell a story about a teenager growing up in that neighborhood of Manhattan near Times Square. The show ran first at the public theater, and it's now in previews for Broadway.

I've got to ask you, you're opening soon. Are you nervous as hell? You know, I don't feel nervous. I feel really, really excited. Hell's Kitchen has been such a moment in the making for so long that I'm in all. I'm in all of the process. I'm in all of how it's all coming together. I'm in awe of how people are responding to it so much.

I'm in love with the cast. I'm in love with our team. And I just feel like it's surrounded by the best energy. And I just feel really safe and good. Can you pin down how long it's been in the making in your mind from first, conception to right now delivering the baby? I'm going for 13 years because I know it was before my first son was born. And then I know that Chris and I, the book writer, Chris Diaz, we talk often about that.

Even when Egypt was very, very little, like just born, we were talking through the concept and how we want to develop the characters and all of these things. And what was the original idea? What was the original impetus to do that? You had to have a huge career as a singer, as a songwriter, as a performer. And this is something entirely different, even though I know you love musicals in general. But for you to do this on an autobiographical basis to make your life the centerpiece of this work, how did that begin? Well, first, I do want to say that this isn't autobiographical.

I think that's important to say, because I think a lot of people think autobiographical and they think quite literal, like every single piece, but is definitely based on the experiences that I had growing up in New York. And so in that way, it's very, very real. It's very authentic.

It's very genuine. And so that was a bit of the impetus of like, why is this important to me and why I felt motivated and eager to create something that really reflected the level of diversity that I've been blessed to grow up with, and for also it to be set in Manhattan Plaza,

which is the building that I grew up in and is a quite unique building because it's a subsidized rent-controlled living for artists who, as we know, oftentimes there's months they go without work or there's times when you have more work and, you know, it's a fluctuating lifestyle. And my mother would have never been able to raise me in the city if we hadn't lived there.

Did you find the three, the four-minute record, the song form limiting in some way and you wanted to break out of it and do something larger on the screen. Did you see things on stage that you thought, oh, this, I like this form. This could really fit for me. This could work for something called Hell's Kitchen and based, based at least on my own story. I love songwriting and it's such a beautiful way to capture a moment and a motion, a special, you know, a special feeling. But, you know, I do also love performing. And my mother, she was born in Toledo, Ohio. She's the quintessential New York story I like to say.

She was born in Toledo, Ohio, and moved to New York City to follow her dreams of dancing and acting. She went to NYU, and that was how she got here. That was why I was born here. That's the reason why, la, la, la. So I think that because of that and because of her love of acting and her love of theater specifically, I was really introduced to the theater world from a very young. age. You know, I remember we would stand on the, the, like, lower price ticket line, the TKS line, and everybody be there and you get your tickets and you go to the show. And I was able to really

see different worlds, different creative experiences from a young age. And like, I'll never forget seeing bringing the noise, bringing the funk. There was the first time I felt, whoa, one, I see myself up there, or I feel rhythm, I feel dance, I feel power, I feel street, I feel, you know, these different New York experiences. And so I was very attracted to that. And so now as I look back at it, it's so thrilling to be able to merge two worlds together, this kind of contemporary music world,

with this musical theater world. Talk to me about the neighborhood. The show is called Hell's Kitchen. And of course, it's cheek by jow with what we think of in our imagination and in reality of the Great White Way, Broadway. Right. Exactly.

So talk to me about that. side-by-sideness that you grew up with, you grew up in the middle of, you're growing up in Manhattan Plaza in Hell's Kitchen. What was the Hell's Kitchen of your childhood and adolescence and how did it coexist with this street of dreams, this Broadway that you were so taken with and that becomes the subject also of your show? You're so right. And, you know, Hell's Kitchen when I was growing up was literally, perfectly described in that name. Like, you know, and those who lived or walked to the streets of Hell's Kitchen, I always like to say that it was the place of the have-nots.

Like, it was the place where everyone who kind of didn't belong anywhere accumulated. Prostitutes, drug dealers, pimps, you know, X-rated theaters, you know, all kinds of grimy, Hell's Kitchen-esque vibe was all up in there. And so I think that in a lot of ways, being so close to that reality all the time, it really hardened me. It really kind of gave me a certain grit and definitely a certain way to protect myself. And I also think, to your point, there was this unique balance between that grime and then the potential of Broadway.

You started playing the piano, I think it's seven years old. When did the dream of doing it as a... as a real performer, as a professional, enter into your mind. Seven and a half? Probably four, because... Even before you sat down at the keys. Yeah, because I remember really being introduced to music through my very first kindergarten teacher.

She was one of those people that, even to this day, she's still alive. And, you know, she always had some scheme up her sleeve. She was going to get us to sing at this place and get us to perform at the that place. And, you know, we always kind of had to, Okay. And I think that that was a wonderful experience for me to try things that was quite nerve-wracking. But the minute I opened my mouth, I learned this song and I sang, I just felt something. That I was like, this is something that takes away all the nerves, all the fear, all the things that get in our way. Do you remember what you were singing at that point?

I do. It was somewhere of the rainbows for the Wizard of Oz. It was like the quintessential song that would open your mind like that. the song we just released for Hell's Kitchen called Collidescope is very much this somewhere over the rainbow kind of feeling of, you know, your mind opening and realizing that there's more for you out there in the world. Tonight is shining bright, you know, oh, yeah, oh, no. This is really about a life of a young girl in her 17th year and how she is, trying to find her way out from under everybody's expectations, everybody's demands, everybody's,

you know, weighted things that end up on all of our shoulders because people, really, they want to protect us, but they, in a lot of ways, stifle us. And so she's in that very critical time in her life. She's looking for more. She's feeling quite rebellious. She doesn't want to just be told what to do and just, you know, be treated as a little girl. She really is looking for her her muse. So your main character is 17 years old and she's named Allie. She's named Allie. And some people call me Ali, but not many. Not even then? Nope. That's a very special reserved name for only the very, very, very, very most intimate to me. So people really didn't call me that. They called me Alicia. They called me Lelo. I had another nickname Lello.

So her name is Ali. And she's 17. And she's really looking for her muse. And she finds a woman who is named Miss Liza Jane. And she ends up being quite the mentor for her. She opens her universe to the craft of piano playing, actually. And so she's a skilled, beautiful, classical pianist. And so when she hears her in the Ellington room,

which is this kind of multipurpose room in Manhattan Plaza that, really exists. She's blown away and she feels like she was she's found what maybe's been calling her. Her mother's raising her as a single mother and she is really doing everything she possibly can to hope that she could escape all the traps her mom, Jersey, played by Shoshana Bean,

has had to endure. Has your mom been able to see the show? Yes, she has. I want to hear all about that. How did she, how did she, How did you react moment by moment? Do you sit with her? Of course.

First of all, she's at the public. While Hell's Kitchen was at the public, she went at least two times a week. And she is the world's best audience member. No question. She's going to scream. She's going to yell. She's going to, ooh, she's going to ah. She's going to sing as if she never saw it before.

It must also have been a deeply emotional, fascinating thing to cast someone to play the character that is essentially you. You're going to stop that. I told you it's not autobiographical, and you're not going to keep saying that. Yeah, I know. But on the other hand, you keep giving it away, say how autobiographical it is, but we won't argue. Tell me about casting this young actress. Tell me her name, tell me who she is, and what was it like to encounter her?

The you. Yes. Okay, but you know what? How about sort of you? David? Yeah. So, Ali, Ali is played by Malia Joy Moon, and she is a 21-year-old, what I would like to say, will be a breakout star, especially of this season.

And just period. This is the beginning of her entire creative, you know, artistic experience. And so to find Ali really. took quite a lot because you need to not only be an exceptional dancer, an exceptional, exceptional actor and quite nuanced because she carries the entire show and the way that Chris Diaz wrote the show, she breaks the fourth wall the entire show. So you are actually kind of her best friend. So the acting ability has to be very natural and developed in a special way. And then she has to have a killer voice for some really, really quite difficult songs.

And so she's a triple threat. And wait, the hardest part? I'll tell you the hardest part. You might find people who act. You might find people who dance. You might find people who sing. You might find people do all three. But to then have the energy of a true New Yorker

who grew up in Hell's Kitchen and Harlem and have that kind of grit to you, that's the hardest part. Because you can't teach that. Was it an audition process? or did you go to see people perform around town? How did it work? Yeah, it was an audition process.

We have a tremendous casting agency, and they were able to bring forth a lot of different, you know, different options. I've definitely been notoriously hard on everybody because it really has to resonate and feel pure. And so we auditioned a couple of different people, and then all of a sudden Malia kind of showed up, and we were like, hmm, she would do.

have this tenderness and this ability to tap into these emotional places that felt really sincere. No, any number of the songs in the show are songs that you've recorded and made hits, gigantic hits in the past, but there's also, I think, four new songs? Yes, there are new songs, and it's been really, it's been great to kind of see what works in regards to the songs that you might be familiar with. It's also been wonderful to see what works with songs that have been in my catalog but are not the quote-unquote gigantic hints. And there's a really special way to connect with them.

And in some ways, I feel, man, these songs must have been written for this. Talk to me a little bit about songwriting, something that you've been doing since you're quite, quite young. I think maybe 11 years old was the first time you're writing songs? Yeah, I think you're right. 11, yes. How has that process changed for you over time? Surely I've definitely gotten more accustomed to how it kind of happens. At first, mostly I was writing out of pain or passion or inexperience or things like that.

And that's really how I always write. So that hasn't changed too much, but I do think that with growing, I learned how to create, how to just create the container for what wants to be held. And then also recognizing that through that creation, sometimes there's different ways it comes about. If anything has changed, it's that I realize that I never know how it's going to happen, ever, never. Well, take a song, an early song like Fallen,

which I think is also in the show. It is. It is. It's really cool. The way we put it in there, it's totally unexpected. You've never heard it sung like this before. How did it come about? Like the song itself. Yeah.

The song itself was really written. I remember writing it while I, in my first car, which was a Mazza 626. And at the time, at the time I was living between in Harlem. And I was also going back to my mother's house because she had the piano. And I would go to my mother's house to play the piano. But I wasn't really living there anymore. And I remember feeling kind of frustrated about a very early relationship I was in. And it was like, sometimes it was so good.

And then we'd be like, are you? be frustrated and it was annoying and then I didn't get it and then we were like what was happening and I remember being in my car like feeling that back and forth and back and forth and I remember singing this kind of hook thingy something I was doing something sometimes you know something and I was recording it in my phone or my voice notes and then I got to my mother's house and I sat at the piano and I kind of played these basic chords and somehow between there and there and there and there, all of that emotion and feeling kind of revealed itself in this song. I'm talking with Alicia Keys, the songwriter and performer, and we'll continue in a moment.

This is The New Yorker Radio Hour. More to Come. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. I've been speaking with Alicia Keys, one of the top R&B singers of our time. She's got a huge string of hits and Grammy Awards and now a musical called Hell's Kitchen, and it's just opened in previews. Hell's Kitchen is loosely based on Keyes' own life experiences. It's about a teenage girl named Allie growing up in the Gritty New York of the 1980s, falling in love with music and wanting to get out into the world. She's got a love interest, but the crucial relationship in the show is between the girl and her protective mother.

Keys herself grew up early. She had a record deal and had already been struggling with the music industry while she was still in her teens. Now, you are so committed. You've been so devoted to this pursuit for such a long time. And at the same time, I think I'm getting this right, you really seriously considered getting out of the music business. There was a time that you were burned out. You booked a trip to Egypt, I think it was, only after you'd run a full marathon in Greece. What was happening with you? You would, God only knows you had made it. Now you're trying to think about going out the back door. You know, I don't know if I ever felt like I was going to not be a part of music.

But I definitely, for sure, experienced a very, you know, critical time to recognize how much you have to protect your spirit. And whether you're in music or whether you're a doctor or whether you're a hedge fund. It doesn't matter who you are. you're in college, you have to protect your spirit. And the world won't do it for you. They really won't. And a lot of times we're out here chasing what we think is success or what we think is a dream or whatever it is that we want to achieve. And oftentimes we're forgetting about how to continue to be a whole human being and a whole person.

And at the time that you're referring to, I was so eager to be successful. I was so eager to, you know, you only get one shot at a dream. So here it is. and you see it right in front of you and you get all these opportunities and you're running after them and you're saying, I could do this and I could do that and I can also do that and sure I can do that, but I didn't really get any sleep, but I could still do it because maybe tomorrow they won't ask me again. And you have all these feelings of like fear and lack that you won't ever have the chance to do these things again. And so it depletes you.

And so at that point I was realizing that I just, I lost a part of myself or I had never found it yet. and I needed to slow down. Since then, I've messed it up 100,000 times more. I had no boundaries. I still didn't create space. I had people that didn't have my best interest in my world. But slowly but surely, you start to realize, you know, you have to take control of your life. But you've talked sometimes about the loss of what you've called sweet anonymity.

And yet there you are half time with the Super Bowl. You're on concert stages. you're about to open a big show. What is that like to lose the gray zone pretty much forever? I don't know how you get that back. Hmm. You know, I feel like I have found a good balance. You know, I think that a lot of times I realize that it's also where you go, you know.

When I, if I go upstate and take a height among the trees, you know, there's a few other people on the trail and I'm just doing my thing and nobody's, everybody's just trying to get to the top of the mountain. So you're a New York girl who believes in trees? I do. Oh, man. Not in the beginning. I was like, I was like, what? What do you mean trees? I don't need no cement, concrete.

And I hated camp. My mother would send me to camp and I'd be like, ugh. Trees. I don't like the bug, the trees. I'm with you. I'm with you. But now I realize, wow, you know, you're missing out if you're not touching the grass or seeing some trees or seeing some nature. Like, that's part of how you keep on, hold on to your soul and your spirit, too.

I have to ask you about this. There was a song that came out called Thunder on the Mountain by Mr. Dillon, and all of a sudden the lyrics are, I was thinking about, I won't do the voice, I'll spare you. I was thinking about Alicia Keys couldn't keep from crying when she was born in hells. kitchen and so on and so forth. How did you hear that? How did you hear that? And how did you react? You know the craziest part is that the person who told me about Bob Dylan writing a song with my name in it and Hell's Kitchen. He had a premonition of this musical that was John Mayer.

And he was like, did you know that Bob Dylan wrote a song with your name and it about you? And I was like, what? What are you talking about? I had no idea because he was so early, you know, to it that I just hadn't made his way to me yet.

And so, of course, then I'm in shock. Did you meet? I'm like, I felt like we couldn't meet. I was like, there's no way we can meet. Like, if you, if you, If you wrote that amazing song and put me in it, I just feel like I need to forever see you from afar and just be in awe of the greatness.

So we actually didn't. We didn't. Now, it's a good thing you really stuck through that hard time that you were describing earlier because Fast on its heels came tracks on Jay-Z's album, Empire State of Mind, which came out in 2009. Tell me a little bit about that. collaboration. You've had so many

amazing collaborations. That may be the most famous single to come out of a collaboration. What was that like? What's that working process like? I think what was unique about that process is I was right at the precipice of making a lot of changes in my life

and, you know, sometimes there's different relationships that you have and you hold on to and, you know, you don't know how to move from them. But during this process, I remember hearing from somebody else that Jay-Z was really trying to make sure I heard this song. And I'm like, what song?

I never heard the song. And so he was saying that he was going through all the channels, all the professional channels and all the things to get me the song. And like, nobody was answering him back. Like, nobody was getting back to him. And so he started to think of like, well, who else can I call? Like, maybe I should call. Nobody was returning his calls? For what I don't know why or it was just have no idea but like I said there were some there were some needs for some change and I was just on the precipice of kind of learning that and I was a heads were going to roll I mean shouldn't I at least know about something coming from an esteemed friend you know what I mean so so anyway

Of course, then I was like, are you kidding me? Let me come see you and let me listen to what it is. And I remember sitting in the room with him and he had kind of the very bare bones of the song. But immediately you could feel this energy and this great, like, uplifting triumph in the music and the song. And of course, about our city, you know. But funny enough, creating that song was definitely not kind of normal. Normal to me, because I'm kind of a true school creator where I really like to be in the room with people that I'm creating with. I'm cutting the baselines and I'm playing the Moog parts and I'm, you know, we're putting it all together and we're together.

Yeah, we're going to write together. We're going to be in the same room. We're going to be like feeling the whatever. We're going to like create it. I really like that the best. And in this case, he was kind of on one side of planet. I was on another side of planet and we had to get done. files back and forth.

Sharing across files. And that was one of my first experiences kind of doing it like that, which is why there's also quite a funny story that came from it, that I cut the first vocals in L.A. And I send it to him, and he asked me to redo it. Excuse me? It was a good idea because I was sick. I was trying to get it done because he was on deadline. Did you have laryngitis or something?

something? I didn't have laryngitis, but I had like a cold, and so you could hear it in my nose. It sounded a little nasally, and it was just like, it just wasn't exactly right, but I just wanted to deliver. Now, we've all seen red books, seen movies, heard about the bad old days of the music business, and musicians take piano lessons, they take singing lessons, they have all kinds of apprenticeships, but usually they're not trained in business, But sooner or later, if you get as big as you are or JZ or whoever, you encounter business and the stakes are high, what's the music business like now and what do you have to watch out for?

Man, the music business. Let the record show, Lisha Keatsh is just when... The music business is one of the most corrupt businesses, period. It's been that way since it started, since inception. You know, it's like it's definitely, you know, You'll see Fortune 500 companies and really experience different businesses that are set up as businesses should be. And you can see plainly the difference in the music business and those businesses are baffling. Like if I have my music lawyer look at something and then I have a traditional business lawyer look at it,

they will not understand why the deal is done the way it's done. They're like, why? This doesn't make any sense. So still to this day, it's a pennies business. You know, people get pennies on the dollar. From streaming, especially. From everything. From, you know, yes, is it now even more of a smaller division?

Yes, but even when records or CDs or, you know, things like that were more popular, you're still getting only a small percentage on the dollar. you're going to get maybe 17%. Even as an artist when you have managers or business managers or, you know, all of them, they try to take 20% and 15% and 25% and they'll take it on gross, not even on net. Right. So it's like it's dangerous and you don't know these things at first, right? You're just coming off of the street and you, this is an opportunity and somebody offered you whatever, 100,000, 200,000.

And you're thrilled. And you're like, yes, this is great. And you don't realize you're going to spend your whole life trying to get it back. You feel like you've gotten screwed over time? You know, I feel that I have definitely had my share of screwings, for sure. But I also feel like I have also been able to, because I'm the writer and because I'm the producer and because I'm also, you know, because I do so many sides of the creative process, it's definitely. been more favorable for me. And because I've fortunately learned relatively quickly that a lot of these deals are what you create. You don't have to take a standard deal from anybody. And so I feel like

I've ended up in a place that actually is where it should be. A lot has changed because of streaming. We've long ago, for the most part, the album unit has shifted over to the song unit in the way people consume music. Do you feel that in? influence yourself about the way you listen or the way you create? Hmm. I mean, I still really love creating whole projects, which is another reason why I think maybe Hell's Kitchen feels so good is because it gets to really be a whole project. That's a little bit different now in the music industry.

You know, before we had a Stevie Wonder that could create a songs in the key of life that would have so much storytelling and it would all be united altogether. You cohesive, yeah, you had to listen to the entire thing and to really get the whole message. Now there is much more of a short-term mentality and people are kind of, you know, they don't even really want to hear a song longer than two minutes at this point because we're in a TikTok generation and we're in a really more short content. They call it snackable content and people want that. Right. Now, I believe that your husband is not a fan of musicals. and that your goal was to create a musical that even he would like.

So has he seen it? And have you gone over the bar? He gives his thumbs up. He, I have to say, he, you know, he's, there's been times in the past where I say, baby, let's go to Broadway and let's watch X show, X musical or whatever. And he's kind of like, I mean, I'll go with you because I love you, but I have to be shaking him the whole time. Are you paying attention?

Are you listening? He's falling asleep? He's falling asleep. I'm like, wake up. So he really loves this piece, and not just because he's my husband, but because he really feels like there's a place of connection, no matter what age you are, no matter what style of music you like, there's something here that really engages you and captures you.

And he says, man, you did it. Like, how did you do it? You did it. I wouldn't put that on the marquee. My husband even likes this. And your husband might too. There you go. There you go. Alicia Keys, thank you so much. I really appreciate it. Thank you so much, David. Great talking to you. Thank you for some very thought-provoking questions. I appreciate it.

R&B superstar Alicia Keys. She created the musical Hell's Kitchen with a book by Christopher Diaz, and it's in previews on Broadway at the Schubert Theater. I'm David Remnick, and that's our program for today. Thanks for joining us. See you next time. The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Merrill Garbus of Tune Yards. This episode was produced by Max Balton, Adam Howard, Kalalia, David Krasnow, Jeffrey Masters, Louis Mitchell, Jared Paul, and Alicia Zuckerman. With guidance from Emily Boutin and assistance from Michael May, David Gable, Alex Barish, Victor Gwan, and Alejandra Deccett. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the

Sharina Endowment Fund.