Alicia Keys has created the soundtrack for women’s empowerment, and she also walks the walk for the ladies who make up a small percentage of the music industry.
The 17-time Grammy Award-winning musician, philanthropist, art collector, and woman of many hats got candid in a recent interview, recalling how difficult the music industry can be toward women, including the “boys’ club” nature of the business.
Variety reports that Keys revealed that only a small percentage of women are represented in the music industry, including herself.
“The music world becomes a good old boy network, and all the incredible women working as engineers and producers are not given an open door,” she said. “Women make up 2 percent of the entire business. I’m a producer, and here we are, doing a bunch of work, killing it, so it’s shocking that the number is so small. Rather than just being pissed off about that, it was time to create opportunities.”
As the co-founder of She Is the Music, a non-profit organization launched alongside Universal Music Publishing Group CEO Jody Gerson, engineer Ann Minicieli, and WME partner Samantha Kirby Yoh, Keys takes its mission to increase the number of women in music, especially songwriters, producers, and engineers, very seriously.
No stranger to women’s empowerment, Keys recounted that songs like “A Woman’s Worth,” “Girl On Fire,” and “Superwoman” weren’t created with them becoming anthems for the movement in mind.
“I didn’t aim to come up with feminist message songs, and most of them were written because I wasn’t feeling that strong, so I had to give myself a pep talk to keep going, but it is a thread through my work,” she told The London Times.
Her advocacy for the arts extends far beyond music. Recently, the “Giants” art exhibition, featuring pieces from the collection she owns alongside her husband, Kasseem Dean, better known as Swizz Beatz, opened at the Museum of Contemporary Art in San Diego.
“This is the largest privately owned collection of work by artists of color that has ever toured,” said Keys.
“My husband says his first experience of art was graffiti, and that was mine too: the color and expression on the streets. We went deeper from there, and an exhibition of work by black and brown artists has special meaning right now because so much funding in America is being cut.”
It doesn’t stop at the collection. Keys continues to take up space in the performance arts with “Hell’s Kitchen,” a jukebox musical inspired by Keys’ life. The show opened on Broadway in April 2024 and has since toured the U.S.
“My experiences are infused into the musical,” said Keys. She was raised by a single mother who worked as an actress and paralegal in the Manhattan Plaza housing project, with subsidized rent for people in the performing arts community.
Keys has continued to curate a meaningful legacy within the arts and encourages others to do the same.
“The first thing I would tell an artist is that they belong there, because when it happens, you think, ‘Why me?’ You get imposter syndrome,” she said. “I would also tell them to trust people who give good energy because it really helps to talk to others who have been through similar experiences. And I would tell them to own their intellectual property. People love to utilize what we create, and own it, maximize it, and take loans off of it, and build their businesses off of it.”
She added, “I would advise artists to think about how to become the owners of their own creations.”
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