ASK Alicia Keys what smell reminds her of her childhood and she doesn’t have to think about it. “Garbage.” I was expecting something more along the lines of “my mom’s home-baked cookies”, but okay.
“The smell of New York City garbage is really . . .” she smiles dreamily, “spectacular.”
We’re sitting in a chauffeur-driven black Escalade opposite the brutalist tower block Alicia grew up in. The 15-time Grammy winner is wearing double denim – indigo jeans paired with a shirt in a lighter wash – and rose-gold flip-flops she’ll later swap for the lumberjack-style mustard boots lying discarded by her feet.
Aside from a flick of eyeliner, she’s makeup-free, but her hair has been sculpted into one of the most elegant up-dos I’ve ever seen: the cornrows leading back in perfectly symmetrical tracks to a series of buns and plaits, finished with gold thread.
HERE, SHE’S AS CLOSE TO ROYALTY AS IT GETS AND AN EXAMPLE OF WHAT’S POSSIBLE
If we crane our necks, she tells me, we might just be able to make out the window of the 43rd-floor studio flat she and her mother shared, bang in the middle of Hell’s Kitchen – now a little more gentrified than one of Manhattan’s toughest areas.
“Eighth was always the hardest block to walk down,” Alicia winces. “The grimiest, the dirtiest, the dingiest. The one with the most addicts, pimps and prostitutes. I would have to walk past that every day on my way to school – but then you get to Broadway.”
Her face brightens. “And to me it was this dichotomy, like an
