Alicia Keys As I Am CD

This is an Enhanced CD, which contains both regular audio tracks and multimedia computer files.
Personnel: Alicia Keys (vocals, piano, Fender Rhodes piano, harpsichord, Wurlitzer organ, Mellotron, bass synthesizer, Moog synthesizer, vocoder, background vocals); Alicia Keys (synthesizer, string synthesizer, programming); Jack Splash (various instruments, programming); John Salvatore Scaglione (guitar, guitars); John Mayer (guitar, background vocals); Ron Haney, Peter Thorn, Rony Henry, John Jubu Smith (guitar); Everette K. Harp (saxophone); Darryl Dixon , Darryl Dixon (alto saxophone); David Stout (trumpet); Mark Batson (piano, Clavinet, Hammond b-3 organ, Moog synthesizer, programming, drum programming); Damon Fox (Hammond b-3 organ, Mellotron, Moog synthesizer); Mark Robohm, Mark Robham, Steve Jordan , Steve Jordan (drums); L.C. Green, L. Green (background vocals); David Ryan Harris (guitar); Steve Mostyn (acoustic guitar, bass guitar); David Watson (tenor saxophone); Carl Maraghi (baritone saxophone); Duane Eubanks, Jumaane Smith (trumpet); Jason Sugata (French horn); Harry Kim (trombone); Michael Dease (tenor trombone, bass trombone); Ryan Keberle (tenor trombone); Linda Perry (piano, background vocals); Paul Ill, Sean Hurley (bass guitar); Trevor Lawrence (drums, percussion); Kerry Brothers (drum programming); Alonzo "Novel" Stevenson, Harold Lilly (background vocals); Ann Mincieli.
Additional personnel: John Mayer .
Audio Mixer: Manny Marroquin.
Recording information: Glenwood Studios, LA; Oven Studios, NY.
Photographer: Thierry Le Goues.
Arrangers: Alicia Keys; Jack Splash.
The third full-length from contemporary R&B diva Alicia Keys is called AS I AM, a title that adequately reflects the album's straightforward, confessional soul-pop. Keys built her popularity making stylish, reflective, voice-&-piano music; AS I AM continues that trend, albeit in a poppier vein that balances neatly between neo-soul and adult contemporary. This is reflected in the mid-tempo grooves, songs of empowerment ("Superwoman"), and stirring ballads ("The Thing About Love").
Keys's collaborators on the album include songwriter Linda Perry, who co-wrote three of the album's tracks, and John Mayer, who twines voices with Keys on the sensual "Lesson Learned." Top-notch arrangements, which include gorgeous, retro-tinged flourishes via strings and horns, make the set shimmer, but it's the strength of the hook-heavy tunes and Keys's moving performances that make AS I AM stick. It's not the five-star album she's capable of, but it leaves little doubt that Keys is moving steadily in that direction.
By now established as a major and talented force in the mainstream music world, Alicia Keys has perhaps earned the right to explore a little, to venture into new genres while still keeping a foot firmly planted in the R&B/neo-soul she grew out of. On her third full-length, As I Am, Keys takes a step closer toward the soul revival popularized by John Legend, with full-band arrangements and bright horn hooks, only occasionally falling back into the piano/melisma combination that drove the singles off her first two albums. Instead, here, as evidenced in "No One" -- which sounds all too ready to take on a "reggae dance mix" -- the guitar-driven "I Need You," "Wreckless Love," or "Where Do We Go from Here," which pays tribute to both Stax and Motown ("All I can do/Is follow the tracks of my tears," she sings, after a sample of Wendy Rene's "After Laughter [Comes Tears]" crackles through the first few bars), this is music that owes as much to pop as it does R&B, highlighted no less by the fact that the queen of radio rock herself, Linda Perry, co-writes three of the songs with Keys, including the straight-from-the-Stripped-sessions "The Thing About Love" and "Superwoman." It is on the latter, in fact, that Keys, unsurprisingly, turns furthest away from the style that brought her initial success (more so even than on the John Mayer collabo,Rolling Stone (p.192) - 3 stars out of 5 -- "[T]he prevailing mood is reflectively soulful and the prevailing tempo mid."
Rolling Stone (p.114) - Included in Rolling Stone's "50 Top Albums of the Year 2007" -- "Keys' ever-deepening vocal power is the first thing you notice on AS I AM."
Spin (p.120) - 4 stars out of 5 -- "[O]n her melodically powerful third studio album, she matures into the matriarch of her genre."
Entertainment Weekly (p.75) - "'The Thing About Love' begins as a melancholy R&B lament and rolls into pure pop-rock uplift..." -- Grade: B
Mojo (Publisher) (p.98) - "She certainly has vocal dexterity and prodigious keyboard skills....Tracks like No One and Thing About Love become exercises in power soul..."
Blender (Magazine) (p.146) - 4 stars out of 5 -- "AS I AM advances by showing an experimental side....The music is dizzying, even mesmerizing."