Alicia Keys is celebrating her influential sophomore album, The Diary Of Alicia Keys, with a special deluxe edition re-release, one-night-only intimate performance, and a limited edition vinyl.
The full deluxe edition of Diary drops on Dec. 1, featuring nine bonus tracks including the previously unreleased “Golden Child,” which stemmed from a poem in her book, Tears For Water: Poems & Lyrics, of the same name.
A decade ago, Keys first unearthed the record from her personal vault, AKVault, that houses an onset of unreleased live performances, recordings, archived behind-the-scenes videos, and more.
On the now-deactivated website, the mother of two revealed, “I wrote this song to pull myself up out of a slump I was in. Feelings of not going anywhere, fears of not being able to make it.”
That evening, Keys will perform the LP in its entirety at New York City’s Webster Hall. This is the same intimate venue she performed at in 2003 for AOL Broadband Rocks!. Tickets go on sale this Friday (Nov. 3), with a portion of the proceeds going to the Keep A Child Alive organization. Four of the new additions to The Diary of Alicia Keys 20 are live performances from that 2003 AOL show— “If I Ain’t Got You,” “Diary” featuring Jermaine Paul, “You Don’t Know My Name,” and “Streets of New York.” The extended LP will also include the recent orchestral and Spanish versions of “If I Ain’t Got You.” Furthermore, Urban Outfitters will be releasing the limited edition vinyl of the original album. Vinyl Me, Please will also be releasing their limited 20th anniversary vinyl of the Grammy-winning LP. This version includes a lyric and photo booklet with a handwritten letter from Keys. Someone at random will be gifted with the original letter.
She previously shared a different song, “Is It Insane,” from her vault that was intended for Diary, but found its home on her 2021 album, KEYS. The New York native told Rated R&B, “Honestly, that song is one of my favorite songs of my entire life. I’m talking about it right now and am getting chills. That’s how I feel about that song.”
When asked about not including it back in 2003, Keys explained, “I remember writing it just how I wrote ‘If I Ain’t Got You’ in that Diary moment… After I finished writing [‘Is It Insane’], I loved it, but I was like, ‘It doesn’t fit.’ Every year, every album after, I would go back to ‘Is It Insane’ and be like, ‘Does it fit here? Can it fit?’ Finally, I started to be like, ‘I guess it’s not meant to fit.’” However, for KEYS, she noted, “It fits as if it has been the missing piece of the entire album. It was meant for this album. Sometimes, songs are just waiting for their time. And now this one has found its time.” Revisit The Diary Of Alicia Keys above.
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